Spring Season - Week Fourteen - May 4th

CHAMPIONSHIP NIGHT - 9:00 PM

We started this journey back on January 26th, 2018 and now we have arrived at Championship Night. If there is one day you want to have your best game of the season it would be today. If you are playing today, regardless of what has happened to date, this is the one day in the season where the I-Slam Cup will be in the building. It does not stay at the rink for long… The cup is just waiting to see who is worthy of being its owners for the next couple of months. Ridha comes into this contest up 1-0 in the series. They have their goaltender Ali Khwaja to thank for that. The rest of his team played like dogs getting out-shot 26-5 with Emaan having possession of the ball for most of the game. When you have a goalie who is white-hot they can help cover up a team’s glaring weaknesses long and give them a shot at winning the game. This is exactly how things unfolded, as Arif Bijabhai scored a goal from center (hey man any shot that makes it towards the net has a chance!) and Imran Lakhanpal getting the game winner off a rebound.

So what happens tonight? At this point you got to think Emaan’s net-minder, Kaunain Saiyed expects more from himself and knows he can perform better. He is going to have to forget about his Game One let down and refocus his efforts on being solid for Emaan and backstopping them to the championship. He should be ready to face more shots (and higher quality) as rumours are circulating that Shaukat "Baba" Khan who did not play in Game One will be back in the lineup for this game. Khan will be a welcomed addition to his team and his team will definitely get more than five shots on net this game. If this helps get Ridha the first goal then they will be the 2018 I-slam Hockey Champions. However, if Emaan is able to repeat their Game One performance but just making subtle changes such as shooting the ball quicker and crashing the net then there is a good chance this game is going to overtime/shootout. 

If we get there, the next question becomes which team better manages the pressure?