Supposedly, this was the time. This was the season that Selinsgrove might be vulnerable.

The feeling among some Heartland Athletic Conference Division I hockey coaches before the start of the season was that the Seals were beatable, even on the artificial turf at Harold L. Bolig Memorial Field.

Don't bet on it.

The Seals are off to a 5-0 start, which isn't unexpected. What is unexpected, and must be troubling to opposing coaches, is the ease with which Selinsgrove is winning.

Through those five games, the Seals have outscored opponents by a whopping 37-1. The victims have been Lackawanna Trail (5-0), Danville (10-0), Midd-West (7-0), and most recently, Nanticoke (7-1) and Line Mountain (8-0) in Selinsgrove's tournament on Saturday.

Granted, four of the five wins have come on the home turf at Bolig, for which the Seals are ideally suited. But that's also the point.

Selinsgrove is built around speed and depth, which allows coach Cathy Keiser to substitute freely without a dropoff in talent. The Seals can go full speed yet remain relatively fresh, a luxury few other teams enjoy.

As Line Mountain coach Marla Lahr remarked, "They just kept rotating players in. We couldn't keep up."

It would be one thing if the Seals were dominating and winning by scores of, say, 3-0 or 4-1. But their scores so far are downright scary.

It will be interesting when the Seals start playing road games against quality teams, such as Thursday's matchup at Shikellamy. Whether Selinsgrove is as dominant on grass as on turf remains to be seen.

But what they're already doing on the artificial surface is reason enough for some sleepless nights by opposing coaches.

AW, HECK: OK, perhaps it was a poor choice of words. I've certainly heard enough outrage from the fine folks of Snyder County to convince me of that.

For the uninitiated, my description of the Midd-West-Selinsgrove game last Thursday drew criticism due to the use of a four-letter word -- widely used in journalistic lexicon, but considered by some a profanity -- which I won't repeat here. Its origins lie in the biblical description of that nasty place of fire and brimstone to which sinners are condemned for eternity.

Over millennia, its definition has softened somewhat, to the point where I felt comfortable in using it to describe the unfortunate situation Midd-West found itself in last week. The Mustangs were playing their season opener, on the road, against a powerhouse team playing on its home turf. In addition, the Seals had already played two regular-season games, giving them the advantage in real-game experience.

So the use of this term was actually an expression of sympathy for Midd-West's predicament. The schedule is what it is, so there's nothing the Mustangs can do except play the games according to the script. Still, it seemed important to note the difficult situation Midd-West faced to open the season.