At Least They Made A Game Of It

i find it oh so sad that i take comfort in the fact that at least last night's ice pilots game was close. they could have gotten completely blown out by gwinnett, but they really made a game of it and managed to only lose by one goal. maybe that should make it worse since they at least had a chance to win and couldn't pull it out. oh well. braff finally scored a goal, so at least it was a happy night for someone. we can all finally see that all of the recent changes to the team haven't really helped. at least the flyers won yesterday afternoon... finally broke that losing trend. esche looked really good in his first outing since reaggravating the groin injury. i still think that he and niittymaki are going to have to duke it out for the #1 goalie position, though. in my humble, niittymaki loving opinion, the rookie has had a much better track record and looked much better overall than esche this season, and he has proven himself worthy of the #1 position. i'm going to be pissed if hitchcock doesn't at least rotate them. not that i don't like robert esche or have confidence in his abilities. it's just that he's been having kind of an... off sort of season. maybe he will continue to put on performances reminiscent of yesterday, and the flyers will finally have two really solid goaltenders.

as for my plans for this week, i have a presentation on wednesday for my plant physiological ecology class, so i have to finish the power point for (and practice) that before turning my attention to the 35-40 minute presentation i will be giving shortly after valentine's day in my seminar. i'm not sure yet whether i'm going to use it as a basis for the outline of my prospectus or as an excuse to finally delve into the wide world of indirect chemical defenses in preparation for the paper i'm working on with anne and her doctoral advisor. i also have to write a review of the paper i'll be discussing in wednesday's presentation, but that shouldn't take too long. i also have the usual lab stuff and readings for classes. the department chair is giving a guest lecture in my fisheries oceanography class since the prof is in alaska this week, and the three papers he assigned for discussion are all his. i'd better read carefully and really pay attention since he of course knows them inside and out, being one of the authors and all. aside from all the work, it will also be a hockey-filled week since either the flyers or the lightning play every day monday-thursday, there's the echl all-star game wednesday in addition to the flyers game, the ice pilots play friday and saturday night, and the flyers and lightning play each other saturday afternoon. whew. so many games, so little time...