The Devil Dollies defeated the Suicidal Saucies 235-123 in the QCRG Playoffs on Saturday May 21st before an enthusiastic Buffalo Riverworks crowd who enjoyed the cool river breezes and the hot energy from the action on track.
The Dollies now move on to face the first place Alley Kats in the 2016 QCRG Championship game on June 10.
The statistic that tells much of the game is jammer penalties. The Saucies took 5 jammer penalties in the first period and 4 in the second period. 9 jammer penalties in a game is high, but usually not enough to bury a team. Generally speaking though, both teams take jammer penalties. This time the Dollies didn’t. They had a big fat zero jammer penalties.
That is no easy task. The Dollies jammed Double Barryl, McCreadie, Erin Go Braless, Nic Nugget and Jules Burns. Not one jammer penalty in either period between them.
Jammers were a big topic on the Saucies side too (unconnected to the number of penalties). Two of their anchor jammers: Rosi (who also jammed for the Lake Effect Furies in the recent Beaver Fever Tournament) and Sigourney Cleaver were both absent for this game. The Saucies picked up recent junior derby graduate (and Subzero Siren) Veggy Cowgirl to jam along with regulars Flame ThrowHer and Chet Upstandup. They also jammed Legs Luther who has spent most of her derby tenure as a blocker.
So far this season, Veggy has skated on every team except the Lake Effect Furies.
The Dollies were missing their regular jammer Raspoutine, and McCreadie didn’t make it to the game until the end of the first period. They were down blockers SlamUwell Jackson, May Bringdowndahaus and Cinister as well and pulled up recent transfer from the Finger Lake Lunachicks Silver Assasin to fill out their blocking roster.
The first period was a defensive battle. The Saucies held top scorer Double Barryl to only 30 points in that frame. Nic Nugget, normally a pivot/blocker for the Dollies, wore the star for 5 jams in the first and scored 28 of the 87 total points. The Saucies also managed to hold the Dollies scoreless in half of the jams in the first period.
The teams went into the half with the Dollies at a comfortable lead 87-46 but the game was far from over.
The blocking cores of both teams made each jammer work hard for each and every point. A combination of Chickadeemolish, Lip Service, Bully Holiday, L’Batt Bruise, Nic Nugget, and Silver Assasin made up the core of every single blocking line for the Dollies with the other blocking rookies playing key support roles.
With the exception of Skarpinski and Chet UpStandUp, all of the remaining Saucies were veterans. They were the team with the most number of combined years of experience after the redraft at the beginning of this season.
The second period was quite different than the first. The Dollies scored 148 points in the second period with Double Barryl leading the charge with 57 of those (21 in one jam and 24 in another jam). McCreadie and Jules Burns grabbed the balance of the rest.
Chet UpStandUp was the only jammer to make serious headway during the second half, grabbing 26 points in one jam when the Dollies had all their blockers in the box, or heading to the box. At that point it was 116-87 and the Saucies were within reaching distance of the lead. But the Dollies were able to pull it together, tighten down their defense and they skated away with the win.
You can see the footage of the game here on the QCRG Youtube Channel.