Rough trade, and heartbreak at playoff time
Turkey time and holiday merriment is over for teams around the Maritime Junior Hockey League.
So, it’s back to work for the Junior A Crushers, who started the 2020 calendar year with two losses. On Jan. 3, they lost 4-3 in Yarmouth, a respectable enough result against the division-leading Mariners. The next night at Amherst Stadium, the Ramblers put a sound beating on Pictou County, a 6-0 final.
Most likely, it was merely a lost weekend on the schedule and not a sign of things to come for Pictou County, who were very good (close to being excellent, really) in the months of November and December.
It would be best to not let a bad weekend turn into bad weeks, though: as a coach once said, “if you’re not moving forward in this league, you’re falling behind.”
Teams will be looking for ways to improve before the Jan. 10 trade deadline, unless they’re out of the playoff race, in which case they might be offering up some good players to teams that see themselves as contenders. That’s when decision-makers around the league will be asking themselves how much they’re going to wager if and when they roll the dice on trades. Some teams might not be in any hurry to do so… in the case of the Crushers, general manager Chad McDavid didn’t seem to be feeling any pressure to make a deal that he doesn’t want to make.
Most certainly, teams should be ready for whatever their opponents will throw at them the rest of the way, because everyone’s going to be a little heavier in their approach (or at least, they should be); the hits will be a little harder than they were in October, the forechecks will be more intense and the games will seem a bit more real.
There is lots of time left in the regular season, but then again, there isn’t: the playoffs will be here before we know it.
RANDOM SPORTS THOUGHTS
■ The NFL playoff game on Jan. 4 between the Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans was one of the craziest football games you might ever see, most particularly the last few minutes of regulation and into overtime. What took maybe an hour in real time felt like six months.
Although I had a small wager on the Bills – strictly for recreational purposes, of course – in no way did I experience the torture that Buffalo fans must have been going through.
It was brutal to watch even if you weren’t heavily invested in the outcome, and I’m sure glad I wasn’t Peter from Hopewell last Saturday (I know two guys from out Hopewell way who are named Peter, both of them huge fans of the Buffalo Bills. One of them is somewhat famous, the other is merely infamous).
NON-SPORTS THOUGHT OF THE WEEK:
■ When the Municipality of Pictou County held a regular council meeting on Jan. 6, there weren’t a lot of smiles seen around the table. Nothing nasty, mind you, just a lot of worried faces about the Northern Pulp situation, and the potential fallout from its imminent closure.
District 12 councillor Andy Thompson predicted some lean times ahead for the region, and he certainly wasn’t the only one.
Thompson also suggested that people “gloating” about the loss of the pulp mill should stay off social media. That is sage advice – no matter what the issue is – but good luck if you want to see that happen. His point seeming to be that people will be hurting (if they aren’t already) and pouring salt into those wounds doesn’t do any good.