Not content with the manner in which their regular season ended, the Sun Valley Suns men's hockey team took on the Jersey City Smelters, a girls' under-13 team based out of Hoboken, N.J., this Sunday.
After a near-perfect season, the Suns had their win streak snapped in their final game, losing in a shootout to the Boston Bulldogs, a renegade team of disgruntled ex-professionals trying to relive the glory days.
On a steady diet of performance-enhancing sour grapes, the Suns decided to hunt for that elusive 24th win.
"Our one weakness is that we're perfectionists," said Chris "Kristops" Warrington, the team captain.
Suns' coach Chris Benson echoed this sentiment in his typical thoughtful and heartfelt manner.
"Yuh," Benson said.
The Smelters, coming off a disappointing 1-13 season, were chosen because of their hometown connection to Suns forward Ryan Enrico.
"My little sister said they stole her scunchy in homeroom, so this is kind of a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Or puck as it were," Enrico said before the game. "Besides, Villi Nikolaisons, Jamie Ellison and I will finally be taller than the other first line. Well, except for that girl listed at 5 foot 6 inches, but I'm guessing that's just wily East Coast intimidation tactics."
New Hampshire native and Suns defenseman Eric "Mousepad" Demment was slightly put out, hoping to bring out the Etna Stuffed Beavers, an intramural team from the Dartmouth's taxidermy graduate school program.
Despite the internal conflict, the Suns performed heroically, defeating the Smelters by a record setting 78 goals.
Paul Baranzelli led the night's scoring, netting 72 of the goals himself and garnering one assist. Amazingly, all of them came off slap shots, a feat that will most likely never again be attempted, let alone matched. He would have had 73 had one of his shots not accidentally hit Scottie Winkler in the chin before going in the net.
This redirection gave Winkler his first goal of the season and brought his total number of stitches to 97, also a Suns record.
Trevor "Tito" Thomas, who claimed to have forgotten that the team didn't have to play on Saturday, dropped his gloves on his first shift, but met with limited success as he had trouble fending off a brutal and merciless onslaught of hair-pulling and high-pitched screeching.
"That was simply shameful," Thomas said while sitting in the locker room, rummaging through his teammates' bags for food. "This is a game of history, tradition and etiquette, all of which those girls clearly ignored. They'll be lucky if they're allowed to lace up their skates again."
The Smelters did manage to get on the scoreboard, however. Their lone goal came when Suns defenseman Jami James, unable to see in which direction he was skating due to the overly dark tint of his mask, blasted a shot past his own goalie, Ryan Thompson.
Thompson, who managed to get a piece of the shot before it went in, left with a concussion, broken pinkie and severely sprained Achilles' tendon.
Team founder and benefactor George Gund celebrated the more palatable end to the season by popping open a bottle of Coors Light and presenting his namesake jacket to Ivars "Leroy" Muzis, who made a triumphant return after suffering a broken tibia and ruptured liver earlier this season.
"In my home country of Latvia, we have saying," an emotional Muzis said. "Man who plays hockey is king, but man who believes anything he just read is fool."
