A little night trash-talking.

Two scenes of our team in action: above, Dennis (#11) goes in for a goal while some idiot tries to trip him up; below, Dave (#10), our captain, guards the back end while our power forwards, Dennis and Shogo (#8), try to make something happen.

19 March 2002—It was a stupid name then. It’s even more moronic now. It’s been nearly two years since we had to deal with the insanity of an unchecked power company run amok, or what Pacific Gas & Electric called “rolling blackouts.”

In two nights we’ll have to deal once again with rolling blackouts. Except in this case it’s the Rolling Blackouts, the roller hockey team.

It’s the league championship, us against the Rolling Blackouts.

Did I mention what a dumb-ass name they have?

The Blue Streak logo. Guess who designed it?

OK, not that the name of our team, Blue Streak, is so brilliant; it was essentially a last-minute idea our captain had while standing around with his brother, who was enjoying some of his last moments of youthful, uh, exuberance before he becomes a corporate attorney. He had a blue streak going through his bleached hair.

Roller hockey team names tend toward the idiotic. It’s difficult not to. To wit, some of the names of teams I play on, have played on, or played against: The Puckers, South Puck, Puckheads, The Flying Jalipas, Thumper, Black and Blue, The Dirty Dozen, The Breakfast Club, Asphalt Assault, The Blaahst, and Humongous Fungus.

Though I would say Rolling Blackouts is somewhere near the bottom of the list. OK, sure, it’s a pun on roller hockey, and I can’t really fault puns too much, since I commit them all the time myself. But still. It was such a temporary thing, the actual rolling blackouts. The team name was almost dated from the start. If they called themselves the Rolling Pins it might have had a little more lasting reference point. Hey, I still use rolling pins sometimes.

Of course I’m trash-talking because we’ve never beaten them. Hell, it’s amazing we’ve even made it to the final round, as we’ve never made it past the first round of the playoffs before now.

So the Vegas odds are probably a bit against us. We don’t care. We have a strategy, and we’re not afraid to use it.

If you want to see it live and in person, come on down Thursday night. We’ll be at the Bladium in Alameda. Game time is 7pm. It’s free, and if you come down, damn, introduce yourself — I’ll be the one in jersey #27. I’ll even buy you the beverage of your choice.

Then you can watch us beat the crap out of the Rolling Blackouts and win the championship of the copper (read: lowest) league at Bladium, both for the first time ever. How can you pass that up?

Above: Team Blue Streak circa November 2001. A few of the players have changed, but this is our most recent team photo. Top row, left to right: Hank, Dennis, Shogo, Matt, Dave, Nao. Bottom row: Mike, Erik, Pat, Paul, me.

All photos courtesy of Hank, official team historian and play-by-play analyst.

Postscript: we got spanked, 10-5. Details forthcoming.