Roller-Coaster Season Continues

Foxboro, MA –The 2010 Summer Hockey Season is already off to a tumultuous start, with allegations of inappropriate and illegal behavior running rampant across the league. From age-tampering, to use of illegal performance enhancing drugs, the NESHL is riddled with rumors and hyperbole that are causing a major impact at the ticket-office. Attendance for games was down by over 43.8% over this time last year, and there are indications that things could get much worse before they get much better.

Amid all the issues, the NESHL has once again begun ‘Schedule-Hiding’, a trick used by the league to confuse players on certain teams in the league. Usually, schedule hiding is used on those teams that pose a threat in the standings and who could make a run for the NESHL Athletic Cup at any time. One such team is the Provo Penguins, who with a 1-2 record, have struck fear into the hearts of the league, and have recently fell victim to schedule-hiding.

“If you look at the schedule,” responded Penguins legend, Sean Kenney. “You will see the ‘Penguins’ have games in the month of May. If you take a closer look, you will also notice that the same team with the name ‘Provo Penguins’ has games starting in June. If a player did not spend 6-hours in front of the schedule trying to figure out why there were no games for the Penguins in June, you would have no idea this was happening. We have fallen victim to schedule-hiding in the past, and it appears the league is once again out to disrupt our 1-2 record.”

At the beginning of the season, the Provo Penguins name was changed to just the Penguins, which cause issues with the Provo Liquor sponsor. Instead of changing the entire season to reflect the actual team name, the league has just decided to change the name randomly.

“We are in process of writing a very sophisticated model,” Tragakis added during a recent phone conversation. “This model will scan the NESHL schedule looking for any team with the name, Penguin, Provo Penguins, Provo Liquor Penguins…hell, if it starts with the letter ‘P’ this algorithm will pick it up. We are hoping once the model is developed, our team won’t miss any games, but to be honest it is still a crap-shoot. Who knows what name the league will use for us next week?”

The league was unavailable for comment, but Las Vegas had 100:1 odds that the Penguins would miss a game this year due to the schedule-hiding. That’s one bet this reporter will gladly take.

On a side note, the Penguins / Provo Penguins will be taking on The Herd tonight at 9:10pm in Foxboro. This match-up will prove to be the biggest game of the Penguins / Provo Penguins lives as The Herd has been under allegations of Gender-Tampering, having pulled in three ex-Polish National hockey players who do not have Adams-apples, and who refuse to change in the same locker-room as the rest of the team. In their defense, it was noted that the three players in question were bigger and had more facial hair than the rest of the team combined.