The night's bout was a rematch from the last season's championship. The Pistoffs beat the Grand Prix Madonnas 130-110, after beating them 114-76 in regular season play just a month prior. This was the first time the public could see how the #1 and 2 teams had changed over the off-season.
The teams were not only different, the rules were different. Minor penalties were done away with, and any passing of opposing blockers done by the jammer out of bounds in any situation is now a major penalty. For most of the last season the players were expecting a new rule to prohibit all the blockers from starting right in front of the jammers' starting line, but it didn't materialize.
The Grand Prix Madonnas started strong right out of the gate. Racer McChaseHer scored 17 unanswered, while the Pistoffs' Mean Streak sat in the penalty box. The Pistoffs didn't score until the 3rd jam, when Cookie Rumble scored 9 points as GPM's Anomaly spent most of the jam in the box.
GPM had the lead until the 5th jam. Cookie Rumble gave the Pistoffs their first double digit scoring jam with a 16 point performance, making the score 25-25. The stalemate continued in the next jam, with a 28-28 score. Anomaly then scored 4 unanswered points in the 7th jam, helping GPM regain the lead. This was the beginning of a scoreless streak by the Pistoffs, as they wouldn't put any points on the board until 14th jam, when Combat Cat scored 10. During that streak GPM wasn't making any big plays, and at the end of it they were only ahead 43-38.
Anomaly made a big play in the 15th jam, scoring 19 unanswered points while the Pistoffs' jammer Elle McFearsome was in the penalty box. During this jam I became aware of something that I haven't seen a lot of in past bouts. When a jammer took a nasty hit, that jammer's teammates would lay on extraneous retaliation hits, continuing well after the jammer had left the pack. I saw this after Pistoff Princess Die gave Anomaly a hit that knocked her to the floor. GPM's Spanish Ass'assin kept giving Princess hits, driving out of bounds. Neither jammer was near the pack, but the retaliation hits kept coming. It was all reminiscent of Bob Probert, and the other "enforcers" in the NHL that were there to dole out punishment to any opponents that roughed up the star players too much.
In the 19th and final jam of the first half, the Pistoffs took the lead for the first time in the bout. Combat Cat scored 10 points. GPM's jammer Cali Ente, along with 2 blockers were all in the penalty box at once, but somehow still scored 4. The teams went to the locker-rooms with the scoreboard at 68-66.
The second half started much like the first did, with the Grand Prix Madonnas making a huge scoring play and taking the lead. Their jammer Lily I. Monster scored 19. I had a hard time keeping up with what the jammers were doing, because GPM's Rocky Brawlboa and Cookie Rumble were trying to knock each other down for most of the jam. This was becoming a bout of grudges and paybacks.
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| "Oh, you mad?" |
The last 5 jams of the bout the Pistoffs were completely shutout. The Madonnas had a 3-jam double-digit scoring streak during that shutout, and the bout ended with them achieving a 193-113 victory. This bout deserves to be called and upset. After losing to the Pistoffs twice last season, an 80 point margin of victory surprised even the most ardent GPM fans. This is only the third season for the league's only expansion team. What other surprises will we see when the other 3 teams make their season debut?
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| I'm going to need a Rosetta Stone to figure out what this is supposed to mean |
Post-bout remarks from Spanish Ass'assin, captain of the Grand Prix Madonnas
Detroit Area Dork: What are thinking right now about his bout?
Spanish Ass'assin: I'm so happy. I couldn't be more pleased. My girls played so well tonight. It's everything we've been working for. So, it's awesome, great feeling.
D: What was your strategy in regards to the Pistoffs coming into this bout?
S: Coming into it, we knew we had good walls, but we needed great walls, because they have amazing jammers. We did a lot of wall work, and made sure we had that locked down. We weren't getting our walls torn apart. We worked on walls, and they recycle very well. So we knew that we had to learn how to recycle as well as they did, because they always get the front on us, and then they always desecrate us because they're faster, and they're better at that. Those were the two really big things; walls and recycling. Apparently it seemed to work out for us.
D: What do you think of these new rules now that you're playing with them?
S: We were really nervous. We didn't know how it was going to work out. We were really nervous that there was going to be a lot more penalties, but it seemed like it was pretty even. It seemed like people weren't going to the box every other jam. I like the no minors, and I haven't really seen anything working against us on that, so I'm okay with those. I like the no cutting. If you give the jammer a reason to cut around somebody it will change the flow of the game. By making that an automatic major and going to the box, it's really making the jammers work a lot harder. The smarter teams, and the smarter walls are having a bit of an advantage now, because they know the jammers just can't cut them. It's becoming more of a defensive game. Your jammers have to be very agile, they have to be quick to get back in.
D: What do you think gave your team the edge tonight, compared to how the team did in the championship bout?
S: We definitely came into this game really well prepared. We knew what we were going up against. I think the biggest thing that changed was that were confident. We knew we had a good team, we knew we had a good dynamic. We've been working so hard on the rules, and on what we knew we had to fix, that we just felt ready this time. Last year it was like we were going up against the big bad monster that was beating everybody up. This time we went into it fresh, and we went right at it, and we never stopped. So I definitely think that changed our game, instead of waiting and seeing what they were going to do.
I'm always fortunate when I can get a captain and co-captain together at the same time to get their reflections on the bout:
Detroit Area Dork: What are you thinking right now about this bout?
Co-captain Kraken Whips: I'm thinking we did not prepare hard enough. I think a lot of us got a little complacent. A lot of us were on the travel team in the summer. That can be a good thing and a bad thing, because a lot GPM players were on the travel team as well. They've been working on stuff, and we wanted to start back in the basics, because we're missing a lot players. We're missing Freakin' [Rican] right now, and Brewsie's gone for the season. Even our manager had something going on for tonight, so she couldn't be here. It's a snowball effect.
D: Why was Freakin' out this game?
K: During the travel team season, they were playing Dutchland in the hangover bout, when we played Steel City, and she was walled up, a jammer came through, and broke her arm. She can't do contact. She can skate just fine, but she can't fall, because she's got nerve damage. It was really bad, it was hard.
D: They only time you led the whole bout was at the end of the last jam in the first half. So you must have ended that half feeling pretty good. What happened after that?
K: It must be a Pistoff tradition, because last season in our first bout we got ahead just before the half, and then we came back and we lost in the last jam. So maybe it's a tradition.
Captain Cookie Rumble: We lost steam. They kept going the whole time, and that happens. We definitely got into penalty trouble, making silly mistakes, just from being tired. It is what it is. That's when we go back to the drawing board and fix what we can fix in order to come back even stronger against D-Funk.
D: What do you think about these new rules that you've played under them?
C: I like them, but obviously we all need to get acclimated to them. It's still kind of weird. A little forearm to move someone out of the way used to be a minor, now it's not. Honestly, I thought we were going to be in the box a whole lot more. I was actually betting that I was going to be kicked out of the game.
K: We almost made her a cake.
C: "Way to suck" cake.
D: What do you think the team needs to work on?
C: It's really just a matter of skating with each other again. A lot of people are on the travel teams, MCDL and the Wreckers, so they were used to playing with other people over the summer. Just getting back in the groove with the Pistoffs. Getting our walls up, our defense up, stuff that we're really good at. Just practicing, working on our conditioning, our strength, our endurance.
D: Did GPM feel like a different team than they were in the championship bout?
C: It's not so much that they were different, but boy did they want it. They wanted it, they were intense. They kept it up the whole time. You could tell they were out for blood. They worked hard for it, and they got it. They deserved it.
All photos by Dan Bachorik
This written post by:
I'm a dork, I live in the Detroit area, and sometimes I take blurry photos on an outdated camera