All four teams suffered through a sleepless night at the Needham-Storey Funeral Home, with Holy Cross unable to find a replacement bus and Wisconsin discovering that theirs had been repossessed by Grant County tax collectors who mistook it for a drug lab. The leftover cafeteria food had been eaten by the cockroaches, so no one ate.
Championship Game – Alaska-Fairbanks vs St. Thomas
The Tommies were without a coach, later discovering that Rico Blasi had been mistaken for a corpse as the only person able to sleep at the funeral home. The Holy Cross staff discovered this when they attended the services with Rico in the casket as they waited for a replacement bus.
Both teams opted for athletic shoes rather than skates to start the title game, prompting the referee (who was wearing a full face shield and N95 mask) to issue penalties for illegal equipment. The Nanooks were incensed that none were called on St. Thomas, only on UAF. Unfortunately for the Tommies, their putrid power play units only managed one shot in almost 20 minutes of man advantage time in the first period, and that one hit Gustavs Grigals squarely in the mask.
In the very late second period, the Tommies got a superhuman effort from defenseman Kimball Johnson. Seeing a puck flying out of play, he reacted with almost clairvoyant awareness towards it. Jumping from off the top of the boards, he landed on the outside of his left thigh and slid across the glass for almost a third the length of the surface. When he came to a stop, Grigals had read the play and made a move to cut him down – but his push-off created a crack in the glass and trapped his foot behind him. With his back to goal Johnson picked up the puck, threw it in the air, and swung his stick back over his head in a reverse woodchopping motion. The resulting contact put the puck into the net, which was vehemently protested by Fairbanks for FIVE reasons:
A) Johnson had closed his hand on the puck to throw it
B) Johnson’s stick was well over his head
C) He was almost 25 feet offside
D) No player had left the game so St. Thomas had too many men
& E) Time had expired in the period almost 10 seconds earlier.
At this point the referee revealed his identity as none other than Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, who waved away all protests and gave his trademark smirk reserved for all the times he has tried to kill hockey in his state. 1-0 St. Thomas led after 40 minutes.
As the third period began, word started to circulate that due to the omicron variant the Canadian border would be closing in 14 hours to all except Canadian or US citizens. Knowing that more than half of the Fairbanks roster is composed of Eastern European players, coach Erik Largen saw his team score twice before he received confirmation that the rumor was true. Faced with the choice of staying to defend the lead or high-tailing it for the closest border crossing, Largen pulled his team with just over a minute to play. Even with no opponent, St. Thomas only managed to score twice – with the last and winning goal coming clearly after time had expired again. Dunleavy ruled it a legal goal anyway to give the Tommies the win, and took possession of the NoWinS Trophy (a broken glass toilet brush duct taped to half a wooden toilet seat) with the promise that he would deliver it to the Nanooks. True to his word, he ordered his state-sponsored private plane to swoop down over the dilapidated bus racing to Fairbanks and dropped it through a hole in the roof as he jetted back to Juneau.
Final Score – St. Thomas 3, Alaska-Fairbanks 2 (Fairbanks declared NoWinS Champions)
Epilogue – the Fairbanks bus was detained at the border by customs officials after not declaring the trophy. They have yet to be heard from.
