[onoxxxregretso]

Me and some guys I have played pick-up with/men's league with put a team together to play in the 2012 Adirondack Ice Bowl. It's the 4th year (I believe) of the ice bowl and it was an amazing time.

There was no cell service where we were playing so it was nice to get away for a weekend seemingly cut off from the rest of the world only being able to communicate with your teammates and other players you knew who were playing. If you lined up ten people in a row I would have known eight of them so it was fun being surrounded by teammates, guys from pick-up hockey, or just guys who I play against all in one place.

Here are some photo's from the weekend. I could go into a lot more detail about the whole thing, but since it's off topic I'll just leave it as is and post some photos!

Unfortunately there aren't many pictures of my team playing. The captain of the team and me took some photos while we were standing at the bench, but we were playing under the lights due to a eight and a half hour delay on the first day so they didn't come out well.

Enjoy!

My team "Bud Light Bombers" was sponsored by a local beer delivery company who handles Anheuser Busch products. The jerseys are custom. We designed the logo and the captain picked the jerseys and had them screen printed for us. Even let us keep them!


The beer was supplied for free from our sponsor
The blue bottles is a product that hasn't been released yet. It comes out the 30th. Bud Light Platinum 6.0% ABV. Actually a very tasty light beer.
We built a "beeramid" in our cabin as we did a lot of drinking during the delay on Friday morning/afternoon.


Picture of me. I'm a goalie so it was very fun getting the chance to play out. I haven't been able to do so since 2004 and that was only for 6-8 games in Midgets because we rotated through our three goalies.


Here are some pictures I took Saturday during the day of teammates/friends/guys from pick-up/opponents in leagues who I am close with.




My best bud






Not only was it a great experience overall, but to make it even better each player got three free beer tickets, they had a player only dinner that was buffet style for $20. Each player got a bag of swag. It was sponsored by Labatt Blue (ironic that we were the Bud Light Bombers walking around with Labatt Blue hats/shirts on). We all got a free winter hat, long sleeve shirt, towel, beer coozie, and a keychain bottle opener in the shape of a hockey glove.

We are already looking forward to next year. Any questions/comments about the tournament are welcome!

[rayeates]

Awesome story, Mike! Fantastic pictures! It's always nice to hear and see great times that the Community has away from the hobby. Thanks for sharing with us!

Randi

[dark crawler88]

Awesome story, thanks for sharing.

[onoxxxregretso]

A few more pics I found on Facebook from other people who were up there that I know.

Friday morning. Delayed because of rain. there was about 3-4 inches of water on the ice.



Guys I play with on Wednesday nights. White jerseys are from the Open Division. Red jerseys are the 40+ division. It was so cold Friday night when we finally got to play. Mainly because of the wind. The snow was almost completely horizontal due to the wind.

[dam1057]

It looks like you has a lot of fun, even with the wind.

[Merovius]

Awesome pics. Adirondack Ice Bowl huh, where was this, what lake were you on? Looks like upstate NY.

I played in the US Pond Hockey Championships here in Minneapolis on Lake Nokomis just last weekend, was a great time, got a bunch of pics as well.

Nothin like old school pond hockey, keep the spirit alive!

[onoxxxregretso]

Awesome pics. Adirondack Ice Bowl huh, where was this, what lake were you on? Looks like upstate NY.

I played in the US Pond Hockey Championships here in Minneapolis on Lake Nokomis just last weekend, was a great time, got a bunch of pics as well.

Nothin like old school pond hockey, keep the spirit alive!

Upstate NY indeed. It was on fourth lake in Inlet, NY. Inlet is just north of Old Forge, about an hour and 15 minutes North of Utica, near my town.

It would be a dream come true to get out to Eagle River, WI for the USA Pond Hockey Tournament out there. That looks like a hell of a lot of fun!

Also, for those interested our captain brought a GoPro helmet cam with him! He edited all the videos together and posted to YouTube last night. It's 25 minutes long, but here is the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz33a-HAP...ture=share

We were in the lowest division because our team sucked, but we weren't going to win. We just wanted to have fun, play some outdoor hockey, and drink a lot of beer.

[bonnev659]

pretty cool

forgot about INLET hosting that

and yea the US Pond Hockey Champs is amazing 1 of my buddies that lives in Mass was going up this year

[Merovius]

Upstate NY indeed. It was on fourth lake in Inlet, NY. Inlet is just north of Old Forge, about an hour and 15 minutes North of Utica, near my town.

It would be a dream come true to get out to Eagle River, WI for the USA Pond Hockey Tournament out there. That looks like a hell of a lot of fun!

Also, for those interested our captain brought a GoPro helmet cam with him! He edited all the videos together and posted to YouTube last night. It's 25 minutes long, but here is the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz33a-HAP...ture=share

We were in the lowest division because our team sucked, but we weren't going to win. We just wanted to have fun, play some outdoor hockey, and drink a lot of beer.

Right on, Im from Albany, lived in Lake Placid for a few years and played a ton of youth hockey in Utica with Schenectady.

Lol that black team you played was totally goal tending, illegal!

[onoxxxregretso]

Right on, Im from Albany, lived in Lake Placid for a few years and played a ton of youth hockey in Utica with Schenectady.

Lol that black team you played was totally goal tending, illegal!

I played Schenectady many times back in my youth hockey days and have visited Lake Placid a ton. I actually live and played in Clinton, but I say I'm from Utica because no one has ever heard of Clinton lol. Played hockey a few times up there too. Haven't played at the Olympic Center at all though When I played for MVCC we played North Country CC in Saranac Lake.

You are right, they were goaltending the entire game. They got called for it three times, two of which the ref counted as a goal for them instead of for US. We officially lost that game 7-6, but if the ref did it right we actually would have won 8-5.

I assume you are familiar with the "stuffing" or "slamming" rule where you can't score unless you are at least three feet out from the goal. Well in our first game we were winning 5-4 and they scored on a stuff. We looked over at the ref and he had his back turned talking to someone. Our opponents went over and said they scored. He counted the goal and we ended up losing 6-5 in OT.

We were kind of upset that we should have been 2-1 not 0-3, but we had other chances to score and didn't, plus we still had an amazing time.