ECHL All Star Game

let me start by saying that anyone who can should watch the echl all star game when it reairs on OLN tonight if at all possible. it was an incredibly entertaining hockey game, particularly for me, and it took my mind of philadelphia's embarrassing loss to montreal last night (jan bulis scored 4 goals on robert esche! yikes!). however, i think that anyone who enjoys hockey would do well to watch this game and scout some of hockey's up and coming stars.

now that i've said that let me warn you that i am about to discuss this eventful game, so if you don't want to know what happened in the all star game, STOP READING NOW.

ok, i spent much of the all star game laughing my freaking ass off, but maybe it wasn't really funny. the majority of my laughter was at luke fulghum and his hat trick. oh yeah, that's right. pensacola's one and only all star player scored a hat trick for the american conference. crazy. absolutely crazy. i swear, i have never seen luke (jedi, chad's uncoordinated monkey) accept passes the way he did last night. my reaction to his 3rd goal went something like, "holy hell! there is no freakin' way i just saw that! you couldn't pay him to do that in pensacola! oh wait, they do pay him." he's pretty good at parking himself in a good place, he just misses the puck all the time instead of shooting it into an essentially wide open net. obviously, the boy's got skills. unfortunately, we don't really see them shine like that in pensacola, since he (along with the rest of the team, let's be fair) always finds some way to screw things up. seriously, we know he can shoot and score, so why the hell doesn't he do it more often? is he pissed off because he plays for a losing team? whatever. now i think it's going to piss me off even more when he flat out misses a great pass or doesn't shoot when he's got the chance.

anyway, the other surprise for me in the game was stockton's players. yeah. stockton. as in, the worst team in the league by a pretty wide margin. their goalie was the only one of the six who saw ice time to record a shutout for his period of play, and their other all star, mike lalonde, scored a goal for the national conference. so, why exactly do they suck so much?

the game was of course filled with familiar faces (well, names anyway), despite the lack of pensacola players. i recognized the guys from the south division, you know, the ones pensacola plays a ton. one of gwinnett's players, guillaume desbiens (whose name the PA announcer totally butchered, which was obvious from the way he shook his head and laughed when they announced him), missed the net on a great scoring chance at least once, but his teammate jeff campbell managed to put one in the net. of course, a florida everblade also had to score, so ernie hartlieb scored the first goal for the american conference. well, that was all well and good, but they still lost 7-6 (though it was 7-4 with only a couple of minutes left).

the other part of the game i really found funny was charlotte's goalie, jeff glass, and the way he got lit up in the third period. i was like, "there's the charlotte goalie we know and love!" i found it even funnier since the funny OLN announcer guy kept talking about how his contract is with damn ottawa. 4 goals on 8 shots. that's not so spiffy, eh? maybe i should have felt a little bad for him, but no. didn't happen. i thought it was funny.

anyway, even if i've totally ruined things for you, go watch the game. like i said, it was highly entertaining.