Guess Who's Back?

Well after last season's disappointing elimination in the first round of the play-offs and the accumulated off-rinque drama it was questionable if the Shockers would make any sort of attempt for a comeback. The head honcho, Alain Godard, had been frustrated enough to even put the 'C' on the line after last season.

After a couple of weeks of work, some of the key Shocker members had been working behind the scenes to put together a team for the upcoming winter season. There has been some pretty big changes in the line-up, most notably is the offense that has received a rather big face-lift.

For starters, the Shockers have signed new-comers, Steve Towell and Donald Toohey who are friends of defensive phenom, Gary McDermott, and are supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread when paired up on the same line. Each of these boys are supposed to have a howitzer of a shot and hands that can only be comparable to the smoothness of triple-ply Cottonelle toilet paper (you thought I was going to say butter didn't you?).

Also making a comeback are the Diabo brothers. Steve and Chris are the last of the Mohicans of the NABHL. Quick, precise, smart and harder shots than a night of Jager Bombs. Together they combined for 19 points in just a handful of games in the regular season...so theoretically speaking if they sign on for a full season, they should combine for about 66 points this upcoming season (yeah, I did the math).

Last season's number one line of Andrew Stevens, Ben Ducharme and Alain Godard will make a comeback but the certainty of the line remaining together this season is questionable due to the lack of centers on the team. Stevens had been rumored that he has offered his services as center after a decent faceoff win percentage last season. Although it is true that the team lacks centers, they have confirmed that they will not be signing anymore players for the next season and did mention that they are aware of the situation but do expect players to not be able to make all the games and having an excess of one player assures them of not running around last minute for a spare.

As for the back end, there aren't any major changes except for Dwayne Pilon acknowledged to team management that he would not be able to sign-on for a full season so the team acquired Chris Disensi to fill in the gap. Disensi combines hockey sense and grit and should be a big help to setup the plays from the defensive end, watch out for this kid to make a big impression. The rest of the defense squad is jam packed of familiar faces including the likes of Marc "The Claw" Boucher, Francois Hamelin and Jeff Jasmin.

In nets we will get to oogle at the boyish good looks of Giancarlo "Hollywood Pepe" Capaz. Baby Face will returning to the Shockers after dropping out at the last quarter of the season and handed over the reigns to Marco D'ambrosi. D'ambrosi will tag along as Capaz's backup but Capaz assures his fans that Capaz is here to stay. Shockers is where his heart is...enough so that he even vote himself as captain during the captaincy elections.

Godard did briefly comment on his expectations for this upcoming season:

"We're aiming at making it up there in the standings and hopefully we'll get over the 500 mark this season. We'll be working on less goal against and more goals for. We added some firepower so hopefully it should be a well-rounded campaign this season. ROCK OUT!"

Inspiring words from the returning captain.

This upcoming season kicks off Monday, the 16th @ 8:30 against the returning Chiefs. This should be a good warm-up game for the Shockers as the Chiefs are slotted to be even with the Shockers (comparing last season stats).

More info to be posted in the coming days.