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Correlieu Floor Hockey League season about to begin

Quesnel high school students and staff will play 36 games this season
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Floor hockey fans show their love for their favourite players in the Correlieu Secondary School gym last year. Fans and players are eager to start another season, beginning Jan. 28. (Photo submitted)

Rob Biller

Observer Contributor

Well, it’s that time again at CSS: time to drop the ball on another season of floor hockey.

This year, we turn the final page in the storied career of original league organizer and Nordiques all-time leading scorer, Fred L. (as in “Light the Lamp”) Rogger. As our intrepid leader takes his victory lap around the floor, our thoughts inevitably drift back to the literally hundreds of students and staff who’ve made floor hockey the greatest game in town for most of the 21st century. Even as student numbers in our high schools have dipped over the years, the league remained as strong and vital as ever through it all. We all owe a great debt of thanks for this continued excellence to the great organizer: Fred “The Fixer” Rogger. Well done old shoe, well done indeed.

This year will see nine teams vying for the Correlieu Cup. We’re again proud to feature two women’s teams — the Lucky Pucks and the NHL Rejects — battling it out for the ladies’ championship at season’s end. Both teams are sprinkled with veterans from last year’s epic ladies final and an assortment of plucky newcomers. Game on gals! Last year’s final was a beauty, and we’re hungry for more of that great action … no pressure though.

The staff Nordiques team scoured the world, from the Federal League to the Hanseatic League and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to find men and women closer to their athletic prime than to the lavish discounts found on the Denny’s Senior Menu. To those ends, we’ve turned up the likes of Liam “Dirty Mike” Grogan from the Burnaby International League and new ‘tender Jay “Glam Chowder” McDowell from the Chilliwack Ice Dance Academy. “Suitcase’s” goaltending carriage turned full pumpkin in the offseason, leaving him to re-invent himself as the stay-at-home (euphemism for lazy) defending “Fresh Prince of Bill-Air.” We were disappointed to discover that Ogie Ogelthorpe no longer has a valid teaching certificate and that Reggie Dunlop was just a character from a movie.

With the core of the Tolitas squad that terrorized the league for many years moving on, we enter the season with no prohibitive favourite among the all-dude and co-ed teams. Pre-season trash talk has any number of teams hoisting the big trophy at season’s end, but — as they say — talk is cheap. The pre-season power rankings see the Narwhals captained by Brock “Rhymes with Block” Weightman as a narrow favourite, just ahead of Damon “Geddy” Lee’s Mighty Pucks and Kaden “Nothing Rhymes With” Ekstrom’s Benchwarmers. Not far behind in the rankings, we find Riley Hanson “and Gretel” and his uninspiringly named Riley’s Team and Shawn “of the Dead” Fisher’s Left Overs, featuring sniperette Brynn Broadfoot. The wildcard in the preseason rankings is also the world’s easiest anagram: the PCKU, captained by Casey “and Finnegan” Fisher. Lurking on this deceptively good co-ed roster are the likes of league standouts Lief “the Lucky” Scott and Justin “Coho” Salmons.

Nothing better than putting power rankings based on idle talk to rest, so it’s on to game No. 1 of our 36-game regular season featuring the Nordiques versus the NHL rejects on Tuesday, Jan. 28.

Thanks to all the staff and students signed up to play and a big thanks to the Observer for giving us this space for flockey-based hyperbole.

READ MORE: Stick Breakers win inaugural women’s floor hockey final



editor@quesnelobserver.com

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