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.

Chelsea hockey welcomed Lake Orion to town. It’s important to note that the Orion part of Lake Orion is pronounced OR-ee-un, and not o-RY-un like the constellation. Please adjust your mental pronunciation accordingly. If you’re reading this out loud to your loved ones, you may adjust your verbal pronunciation as well. Also, please tell your loved ones I say hi.

As you might expect, Lake Orion features a lake named Orion. Yes, that makes it the War of 1812 of town names. Come on, be nice. Anyway, LO also boasts a GM manufacturing plant and a mansion on whose grounds Amelia Earhart flew an experimental glider in 1929. Oh…and one more thing. Lake Orion has a dragon.

That’s the seriously wonderful Lake Orion High School Dragon logo on the shoulder of the hockey jersey. (Is that BLOOD dripping from its mouth? TELL ME IT’S BLOOD.) As a fan of meaningful and unusual high school mascots and logos, this one caught my eye right away. What I didn’t know until later is that there’s a story behind the mascot. From the town’s Wikipedia page:

The story of the Lake Orion Dragon says that sometime in the 1800s a group of local kids played a prank by building a fake dragon and launching it out in the lake. A number of people saw it and soon Lake Orion was known for its dragon. There are a number of stories around about who made it and how they built it but it is widely agreed that it was a prank.

Obviously the dragon is significant enough in the town’s lore to have become the high school’s mascot. That’s fantastic. Well done, Lake Orion.

Anyway: the Dragons showed up to play some hockey. Lake Orion has a solid hockey program, so the expectation was that it’d be a tough game. Indeed, that was the case.

It was clear from the beginning that Lake Orion is a very good team…but Chelsea isn’t exactly frozen liver, so the game stayed close. This made it hard on me: I like to alleviate the stress of a close game by talking to myself a little bit, but because I was sharing the Lake Orion penalty box with their backup goalie and standing right next to their bench, I had to keep my talking quiet and nonpartisan. That can be difficult — especially at moments like this:

I did keep quiet, though. I’m a professional. (When I need to be.)

Sometimes the goalpost is a goalie’s best friend. Sometimes…like this time:

Goalie shots like this can be a fun hockey version of Where’s Waldo in which you look for the puck:

Chelsea managed to find a couple goals in the third period:

Those goals propelled Chelsea to victory over Lake Orion.

At the end of the last post I promised more photos from the Chelsea/Woodhaven hockey game. You promised to be suitably excited. (Yes you did. Don’t argue.) I’m fulfilling my promise. Are you?

Midway through the third period the game was heating up with some good action and a few solid hits. One particular hit brought the entire game to a halt. How? Well…here, take a look. I think you’ll figure it out.

That’s not a pile of diamonds dropped by some swashbuckling pirate who found himself confined in the penalty box, largely because diamond-carrying pirates don’t play hockey, you weirdo. No, those are the remains of the pane of glass — okay, fine, plexiglass — that shattered when a fine gentleman from Woodhaven gently nudged a fine gentleman from Chelsea into the glass. The fine gentleman from Woodhaven was censured by the authorities because he was a bit dilatory in the execution of his wallop, but there was a more pressing matter to be dealt with: there was a gaping hole where once there had been a pane of glass.

As the teams headed to the locker rooms, the first matter of business was to clean up that mess.

Yes, that mess. Cleanup involved several helpful folks.

It also involved shovels.

Even the man known as the Bulldog Clock Guy, the scoreboard operator for home Chelsea hockey games, pitched in.

Once the broken glass was out of the way, replacement glass arrived by special courier.

When the ref arrived with the glass, the other ref blew his whistle and penalized him for delay of pane. (That didn’t happen. But if it had, he would have been my favorite ref of all time.)

The crew started to install the glass…

…but soon discovered it was the wrong size: it was too large. Off they went to find another pane. Again they began to set the glass in place…

…and again they discovered it was the wrong size: it was too small. If my memories of children’s literature serve me right, the next pane should be juuuuuuust right. Right?

Oh, look! Here it comes now!

The crew again put the glass in place…

And…hey! It fit! It was filthy, but it fit.

If this had been a kids book, it would have been called Stripeyshirt and the Three Panes.

Stripeyshirt tried the first pane of glass.

“This pane is too big!” he exclaimed.

So he tried the second pane of glass.

“This pane is too small,” he said.

So, he tried the last pane of glass.

“Ahhh, this pane is just right,” he said happily and he fixed it in place.

With the mess cleaned up and the replacement glass (finally) in place, the game resumed. If you didn’t see the previous post and you’re wondering how the game concluded, go do that now before I hold you in contempt of blog.

(Programming note: there’s one more set of photos from this game. Trust me, you’re going to want to come back for that post.)