NESHL Random Thoughts...

It’s another Winter Season in the NESHL, and with the mass exodus of the skilled high school/college level players there’s nothing left but us old guys with limited skill...holy crap it’s about time! Now the rest of us can shine…or at least not be so embarrassed!

As we get back in shape after a long, long off-season (longer for some of us than others), and jump onto the ice, we start thinking of ‘all things’ NESHL. For me, the same topics pop-up year after year as we enter into a new season. These random thoughts tend to hold us all back from getting our real work done…or is that just me?!

In no particular order, here are the NESHL Random Thoughts of the Winter Season:

- Is it physically possible for a human-being to ‘warm-up’ in the allotted 3-minute warm-up time before a game?

- Meeting players from other teams off the ice, could ruin the league. It is hard to pound a guy in the face during a game, when you just ran into the guy at the Toys R Us and met his kids. Let’s keep the violence alive…wear your jersey out on the street, and let’s keep to our ‘own kind’ going forward.

- How come it takes a lot longer for the standings to get updated after a Maple Leafs loss? It seems like the standings are updated in-between periods when the Maple Leafs win and it can take weeks after a loss…

- Are we the only team that loses half-a-dozen pucks before every game, during the warm-ups? Who has all the [expletive] pucks?

- Aside from a few hammered refs we ran into during a game in Dedham, they all seem pretty sober. How do the referees go a whole game at an NESHL ‘C’ level game without drinking? We all think we look like Ovechkin or Sid the Kid, but seriously…

- When the economy went into the hole, the NESHL team fees went up. I think the Obama administration has been wasting its time investigating big oil…

- Does Iorio know that there are toilets attached to the locker-rooms? Is splashing some ammonia or bleach onto the layers of urine and feces-caked floors and walls asking too much? I’m not expecting to see a guy handing out towels and mints in there, but they can put an end to the bubonic plague if they just douched the room once a month.

- Is the NESHL doing all it can to prevent ringers from being brought into the playoffs? Last season we submitted season rosters, carried ID’s in our hockey-bags, and declared our playoff roster 6-weeks before the playoffs. But is this enough? How about implementing retinal eye-scans and DNA testing? Is it too much to ask for mandatory blood tests in-between periods in order to keep this game clean?! This is serious, senior hockey damn it, we deserve to know if players are on the active roster list or not!

It is a lot to think about. See you on the ice!