Through the Five Hole

Fun meta, Will! (forgot to complete the one from last week, but elated to be doing your puzzles again!)

Fun, thank you! That can't have been easy to make work. For a while I was sure it was going to be the HERNIA of the NHL senior tour.

Smooth solve, and a nice mechanism.

He shoots, he scores!

Had to Google the two that seem backwards. Nice construction and Happy New Year.

Very nice construction!

Thanks, Will - very cool mechanism!

Fun!

I got all caught up in the hockey nets formed by the black squares in the grid. I got relief but got a five-minute penalty for fighting. Thanks, Will.

WILD indeed! Luckily for this non-sportsing person, HURRICANE popped out at me and rang a dim bell. Thanks Will!

I went to a fight, and a hockey meta broke out (apologies to Rodney Dangerfield).

I know almost nothing about hockey except that I think it's often played on ice. I had to look up the teams and was amazed to find how many of them there are. And the list didn't even include the Pittsburgh Hornets and Hershey Bears of my youth. I could have solved it once I saw that there were four 5-holes by checking the list for 4-letter teams. But I went ahead and checked the crossing words (I think that's called a "cross check") to confirm. .

did it by "brute force", as you can tell.

Nice one, now to figure out why that's the answer.

He shoots—He scores!

I had a shallow rabbit hole when I thought I saw parts of TAMPA and TORONTO, but then I saw the five holes. I backsolved slightly when I was sure we were looking for a four-letter word, and I'm not sure that I would have successfully gone "through" the five holes if I didn't know that I needed to create a W somehow. Anyway, great puzzle!

Oof! and Wow! For a second I thought there was going to be even one more step because Haywire > 18A Out of control. But nothing else matched, I had WILD, so I wasn't about to go looking for trouble. I first guessed Kraken simply because there's a little goalie down in the SE; his 2arms are the T's in ETATS, and the puck (the N) is going right between his 2 legs (the E's in RENE. ) That'd be the last letter, that's the only team that ends in an N, and there's a preponderance of K's in the grid to pick from! :-) Thanks and Bear Hugs for this, Will!

NCSTATE crossing HURRICANE led me down a deep rabbit hole... other rabbit holes included seeing Star in STARR, seeing Sharks in one of the clues, and trying to interpret the Os in the grid as "holes"... i'm so happy i got a sports meta as i practically know nothing about hockey - thanks for making the puzzle pretty accessible... also liked the elegance of the missing letters from the teams to be the 5th letter - that's a very nice touch... very impressive construction

Fun, wild fun.

Nice. Churr was my last fill. I definitely had my eye on that for the meta and it paid off. I like having to work for the answer, this was fun.

Well, I was ALL over with this: Saw the 4 teams (but sadly without my Wings or Flyers) and tried those letters - NOTHING

Saw the other teams mentioned Shark, Knight, Star - NOTHING

Saw the cities where teams were from: NY, Vegas - NOTHING

Saw the other "almost" teams: ERASERS = SABRES. TORTONI = TORONTO - NOTHING

Asked Will for help, he told me to ignore what I found and look at the hole.

Saw ORGANISMS, HAYWIRE, MAILORDER, HUMDRUM

Looked for other answers: HAYWIRE = RAMPANT

ORGANISMS = ENOKI

MAILORDER = DATE

HUMDRUM = IDLE

Hmmm, maybe my wings ARE in there, gonna be hard to find the WNGS though...Oh, wait just use those new letters to spell WILD.

That's it, I'm throwing something on the ice!

The Whinlida’s. Sounds possible.

This is a time-release sort of puzzle for me -- no matter how long I stare at it the morning of, it takes me a night of sleep to then just "see" the solution the next day (or year, as the case may be). I like those very much. Well done, and happy 2024.

Great puzzle, thank you!

Saw Hay-W-ire and Hum-D-rum long before I saw the four NHL teams (any reason they were singular rather than plural?) Good fun, thanks Will!

Thanks, Will!

Tripped over the puck and needed an assist to score a goal. Nicely constructed.

Nice!

Too many shots wide of the goal before it finally clicked. Very nice!

That was a WHALE of a time, Will--right from the get-go misdirection in the 1-Across clue and continuing with the Down clue in that corner. I also like that the final answer is one of the select pro teams that doesn't end with an S (for plural players)!

Got part 1 on my own, getting the letters H,N,A,I, so I looked around and saw they appear in one entry and one entry only: HAVENOIDEA. And that’s where I spent most of the week! But great puzzle, Will, enjoyed it!

Clever puz. Thanks, WIll!