As I mentioned in my previous post, Mcfadden's Restuarant and Saloon held a NHL 10 Tourney last night. Seese, Kevin, Brick, Zack and myself headed over to pick up the sticks and try our luck. Here's how it went down...
We got to McFadden's around 6:15pm because the event info said 6:30pm was the beginning to registration and that spots to play were limited and on a first come, first serve basis. It looked like we timed our arrival well with about 25 'teams' in before us but plenty of space remained for the five of us to enter.
Our event coordinator's name was Christmas. I'm not kidding.
Anyway, the bracket gets drawn up, and I take a peek. Zack, Kevin, Seese and Brick are all on one side of the bracket...I'm all by myself on the other. I immediately start bragging to them about seeing one of them in the finals after eliminating an entire bracket's worth of pasty doughboys, then realize that I myself am one of those pasty doughboys.
Zack plays...wins handily. Brick plays...loses handily (he had never played before so I suppose that's understandable). Seese has to play Kevin in the first round...and Kevin's never played ether. That's a win for Seese cloaked in sadness as one of our five drops immediately. 'Dems the breaks, I suppose...
In the meantime I'm just waiting, and I'm pretty nervous at this point. Because Zack and Seese have won (my fellow heavy hitters), I'm feeling the pressure to do people proud. The last time I participated in a videogame tournament I'm pretty sure I was 10-years-old, the game was 'Doom,' and when I lost (taking third place!) I cried. I had a lot to make up for...
Finally, I get to play.
The way the rules work is there's a coin flip to decide which team gets home ice. This is important because the home team "goes up" twice...which is directionally the most familiar to the 'Be A Pro' mode most people play online. I know this seems ridiculous, but it's the difference between flicking the stick up to shoot, or flicking the stick down to shoot. I've played enough games to be fairly comfortable at both, but you still want to go up twice. It's a comfort thing.
Anyway. I lose home ice. Then comes picking teams. Each player gets to hit "random" twice and then pick which team they want out of those two. If you hate both options you can hit "random" once more for a new option, but you are stuck with what you get. For the life of me I can't remember who I was...or who he was. I think Chicago was involved...
I go up 2-0...dude I'm playing eventually ties it...then he goes up 4-2. There's two minutes left in the third period and things are looking bad. But Seese and I play to the whistle (this is why we are in the top 200 in the online league, we own the third period), and I happen to sneak one in quickly to *at least* make it interesting.
With :45 left in the game this dude ANSWERS A PHONE CALL! No joke! As soon as he picks up the phone his friends and crowd around us are like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" He keeps saying he's fine, he's fine, the game is over-- blah, blah, blah. And he was fine...until :20 left when I scored to force OT. Everyone was on that dude's case immediately. I just took a breath and prepared for OT.
I delivered the win in OT. The dude sulked off, pissed. I secretly laugh and insult his face.
Zack wins his second game. Seese wins his second game. In my second game I draw the Columbus Blue Jackets with my third pick and was stuck with them against New Jersey. Thankfully Rick Nash (and my Ohio pride) delivered a 3-1 victory.
This puts the three of us into the Sweet 16! The field was originally 64 teams.
Zack and Seese win...and are rewarded with having to play each other in the Elite Eight. Sadly I didn't get a ticket punched to join them, losing 3-2 (hit two posts with :25 and :05 left!) to a nice guy who happened to Ovechkin me to death. I'm pretty sure he scored twice from impossible angles with the man...but that's Ovechkin for you.
Seese feels my pain when he plays Zack and gets shut down by Ovie and the Caps too. It's a tough team to beat.
At this point Zack is our horse and looking to get into the title game. Sadly he runs into one of "those guys" who is a bit too douchebag. I'm not saying this because he won...he's good at the game...but the way he carried himself was a bit much. A fist pump after a goal, sure. A fist pump after your fourth goal a period into the game-- that's douchebaggery. I mean it was pretty clear he had Zack's number...and the game was in hand early (I think he "mercied" --winning by five goals-- Zack halfway through the second). I dunno, it's tough to explain but let's just say there were five or six dudes we didn't know standing with Seese and myself, and everyone was making comments about how this must be the kid's proudest moment in his life.
Side note-- this kid was fat. I'm just saying...
Anyway, I made the top 16, Seese made the top eight, and Zack made it into the final four. You have to be happy with that. Sure, we didn't take home the signed Lemieux jersey that was auctioned off, or the $300 cash prize for first, but it was fun. I'm used to playing NHL 10 on X-Box Live where you either don't talk to your opponent or they're obnoxious because they hide behind the cloak of the Internets. Face-to-face was a nice change of pace.
Wow, even I kinda' lost interest in this halfway through typing about it. Really the only story worth telling other than Seese and Zack's success was the first game for me. But hey, you've read to this point...and aren't you glad you did!?
Next post will be more exciting, and 1/4 less nerdy-- I promise.
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