TAKING A BRAKE FOR THE BETTER

Last wednesday night at la brasserie st-denis (bières et compagnie) for the habs opener. (photo cristophe grenon)

Things always happen for a reason... Anyway… That’s what they say. Following an eventful week, we have now reached our October break, thanks to a tournament happening next weekend at the College Notre-Dame arena. After five weeks of action, including the opening week with pre-season games, we have witnessed one team dominating the Ligue Federale des As: and they are the Acapulco Tomahawks (first Mexican city to be home to an ice hockey team). Taking in consideration requests and concerns from the others teams, the selection committee will meet up and study the case and will make the necessary adjustments before pursuing the season. Without making big adjustments among the teams and despite some wacky ideas spreading, we will still have to make changes to balance the league.

The ambush we will have to keep away from is not to shuffle the cards too hard, because of what we have seen so far since the beginning of the calendar. In fact, our teams have been incomplete most of the times and they often have had to rely on five substitutes to fill up their alignments. Despite having over 300 subs and 121 goaltenders, it is not an easy task to find an available substitute matching a regular player, especially in the beginning of the season when the guys aren't hooked yet and still dream of hot summer nights. We already have received emails with transaction suggestions and we are giving ourselves one week to think about it until next Monday when the meeting of the selection comite will take place. This said, this will probably not be the last time this season we play around with the teams since we are planning on tunning them up if needed until the end of november.

Alexandre pare, tickets in hand in the company of tim, the manager and son of the owner of la brasserie st-denis, bob auger (photo jacob poliquin)

Beside a hectic week for the league, which might have been rough for the sensitive ones amongst us, we had our first LFA event ( beside our annual opening BBQ “open bar and Grill” and regular After-Games), with over 40 friends and LFA players  heading to a new sponsor and land of welcome: The Brasserie St-Denis also known as Bières et Compagnie, the family business rejuvenated its brand after 18 years of running at the same address on the Plateau. Note that they also have an adress in Terrebone. The idea behind this event was to not only announce this new partnership to our members, but also for the beginning of the HABS’ season. As for their first game last season where many of our members also gathered together for the occasion, the Habs won once again against Toronto in an exciting game (which I now forgot the score of). Alexandre Pare from the Tomahawks (thease guys are definitely all over the place) left the event, happy, with the grand prize of the evening: a pair of tickets in the red section of the Bell Center for a Habs game in november, thanks to the La Brasserie St-Denis. The league also provided over 20 other prizes over the course of the evening.

Your LFA journal will take a break until our next games scheduled on the 24th of October, and we will get back to you stronger than ever and for the better…

See ya!
JFD (AS TRANSLATED BY STEPHANIE BEAUPARLANT)