Saline hockey visited its old home rink in Chelsea for a big game: Chelsea and Saline were at the top of their respective SEC divisions, so the game was a conference championship game of sorts.

I’d rant about the good old SEC days and how Saline used to be a huge rival for Chelsea but now they’re just an acquaintance that Chelsea says hi to every now and again when the divisions get together for coffee and how silly it is to have one conference with two divisions and how it would be so much better just to end the sham and have two officially separate conferences because things were better when I was younger dagnabbit and you kids these days have no idea what a real high school athletic conference is anymore, but…well, this is easier:

[insert humorous but bitingly effective rant about the good old SEC days and so on and so forth]

Okay, I feel better. On to the photos.

Take a look at the linesman in the background:

Is he:
A: Confused and calling the runner safe at second because he thinks he’s at a baseball game
B: Gesturing to the imaginary crowd that’s cheering his imaginary speech
C: Pretending he’s Hockey Moses parting the Blue Line Sea
D: Declaring the play onside

From L to R: “Hooray!”; “Hooray!”; “Nobody ever pays me in gum.”

Midway through the second period, the Saline goalie wandered far, far away from his net to play the puck in order to keep it away from a fast-approaching Bulldog. There were two problems with this strategy: first, the Bulldog was approaching faster than he thought, and second, the Bulldog had more on his mind than simply playing the puck. As soon as the goalie touched the puck, the Bulldog arrived, and…well, here, take a look at the next two photos:

The photos do a good job conveying the impact, but let me emphasize this: he hit the goalie hard. No, wait. He hit the goalie all-caps HARD. It would have been a big hit on a regular skater. It was devastating on a goalie.

As one would expect, the Saline players on the ice took serious exception to this breach of hockey etiquette and quickly let him know what they thought of his hit. The goalie stayed down and got attention from the trainer while the referees sorted out the penalties. The final tally for the feisty Bulldog: a whopping 17 minutes in the box. They gave him a 2-minute minor, a 5-minute major, and a 10-minute misconduct. Surprisingly, he didn’t get ejected, but here’s a bit of perspective: he spent the equivalent of one full period in the penalty box. That’s not something you see every day.

What became of the goalie, you ask? Well, as soon as the penalties were announced, he popped back up and skated around like he’d just had a 5-Hour Energy. In other words: he was fine.

(Fun fact: those two photos got top billing in the newspaper.)

Eventually they got back to the game, and…hey, look, Chelsea scored!

And then…uh oh, Jacob has the puck…

…and guess what? Yeah, another goal.

The game was tied at 2 when the Saline goalie got bulldozed, but Chelsea scored the next 3 goals and Saline scored the next zero goals, so…you get the idea.

With the 5-2 win and another win against Skyline three days later — don’t worry, you’ll see a couple photos from that game, too — Chelsea finished the 2011-12 season undefeated in the SEC.