Looking Forward

so, most of you know that the ice pilots are no more, which is very sad. boo. so what the hell are chad and i going to do to get out of the house this fall? and how are we going to get our hockey fix? well, our original plan was to visit atlanta when the flyers are in town. we will still do this for the game sunday feb 8. but the first flyers game @ atlanta is october 28. which is VERY close to what is going to be our Big Hockey Trip. this trip was, at first, designed to allow me to attend my friend kelly's wedding in durham, nc.

see, chad's parents go to tennessee every year and stay in a cabin at some park in pigeon forge. and they always want us to go with them. but we are so not mountain people. chad told them the only way we'd go is if they stop over in nashville first so we can see an nhl game there. but this year, i wanted to go so that we could make the drive over to durham so i can go to kelly's wedding. chad only wants to go to the wedding if we can catch a game in raleigh, which as it turns out, we can. ottawa is playing at carolina the night before the wedding. convenient, right?

so now we just had to see if nashville had a home game earlier in the week so that we could plan our trip. well, nashville has one home game exactly one week before the wedding (they're playing florida, whom we've already seen but it will be a new nhl arena for us), which makes for quite an epic road trip (9 days) with the in-laws and what will then be a 9 month old baby. that game is our only opportunity to catch a predators game during the trip, since they head out west after that for two weeks. but i think we're going to go to the game anyway.

thus, our Big Hockey Trip. we'll stay a couple of nights in nashville, catch a game and do some sight seeing, head over to the cabin in pigeon forge for 4 or 5 days, stay in durham for two nights, catch a game in raleigh one of those nights and go to the wedding the other, then head home. it should be quite a trip. and bonus - i don't have to leave max for a long period of time, but i also don't have to worry about taking him to the games because he can stay with chad's parents while chad and i get our nhl fix and check out some new arenas. woo!

Philadelphia goaltender stops 54 shots in victory

so, why doesn't antero niittymaki get more starts in net for the flyers when he has games like this? i'm sure you all know how i feel about this guy (i pretty much love him), but for some reason martin biron has been getting all the love this season, even after playing rather poorly in several consecutive games at times. with the two absolutely phenomenal games niitty has played in his last two starts, i'm wondering if he'll be playing in atlanta on tuesday. after all, his career stats against the thrashers are leaps and bounds better than biron's, and he's playing amazing hockey these days. i guess we shall see.

The World Is Full of Surprises

wow. this has been a very surprising weekend, hockey-wise. first, the ice pilots really made a game of it against the league-leading texas wildcatters friday night (though the 4-1 loss wouldn't suggest that), managed to pull out an overtime win against florida last night in a very exciting game, and lost by just one goal tonight, taking a really crappy game after two periods and making it exciting in the end. overall, this weekend was the best i've seen them play all year (we missed their most phenomenal game of the season wednesday night against mississippi)... and this crappy team has won 3 of their last 5 games. impressive for them. and i'm really digging the new guy, jason bloomingburg. and the not-so-new-anymore guy, bryan esner. i was really stoked when we got him from south carolina, and that trade seems to be paying off. both of these guys are very small in stature (don't let that 5' 11" claim by bloomingburg fool you - he might be 5' 8"... but boy did he kick dan collins's much larger ass in their fight tonight), but they have really great energy.

so after spending much of the weekend in pensacola, i came home tonight to this headline on at&t's hockey page. i never thought i would see 'hatcher leads flyers past' anyone. he is SO NOT a scorer (as his diminutive 80 goals in 1,022 career games will attest)... and he's not that awesome a defenseman, either, if you ask me. but i am quite glad that the flyers pulled out the win over florida. i am also happy to see antero niittymaki finally getting some love - and that he posted a shutout. he should really get more playing time than he does, even if martin biron has established himself as the no. 1 goalie in philadelphia.

I <3 Daniel Briere

he is SO my new hockey crush. i pretty much love him. he's worth the ridiculous amount of money the flyers are paying him. obviously i watched the flyers' game against calgary thursday night (the season opener for both teams), and daniel briere was pretty much amazing. which i sort of knew already, but now he's a flyer, so it's better. he scored the game's first goal (thanks to some fancy footwork in front of the net to help him control the puck) and the game's last goal (the game winner - a beauty of a goal off a sweet pass by simon gagne). so yeah, briere is pretty much my new favorite flyer. i am not at all ashamed to say that i like him much better between gagne and knuble than i ever liked forsberg. that's gonna be SUCH an awesome line this season.


overall, the flyers look about a zillion times better than they did last year, which is a good start. they sort of let the game get away from them in the second half, but thanks to my boy danny briere (with some help from the always impressive simon gagne) they pulled off the win. the team still has some work to do to achieve perfection (the penalty kill left much to be desired - who thinks it's a good idea to stand still and not even move their sticks when killing off a penalty?), but i was really pleased with their performance as a whole. i think this season will be much better for the flyers than the last one.

oh, and just a note - i've been keeping an eye on my blood pressure at home, and it's been absolutely fine. i actually thought i did something wrong in the measurement this morning because it was really low. but i took it again, and it was still low (111/67). the highest it's been since i've been home is 135/79, which was right after i got home from the lab. so things are looking good on that front. hopefully, it will still be ok when i go to the doctor on wednesday.

Cheerleaders?!

ok. i've been a little out of touch with the echl world lately (because i've been spending so much time in the field), and i've just been checking up on happenings around the league and with the ice pilots (who, btw, have not really been sending out their email updates to my satisfaction). so when i just cruised around icepilots.com, i was quite surprised to learn that the team is planning to start up a cheerleading squad. wtf? cheerleaders? in hockey? pretty much the only time cheerleaders would have anything to do during a game is at intermission when there is nothing to cheer for. there are no sidelines from which to cheer the team on, and spreading out in the crowd is really ineffective (i know this from experience, as that was basically my job when i worked for the mobile wizards, mobile's complete failure of an af2 team. we put on stupid purple crushed velvet outfits - no room for body perception issues in those - and spread out in the 'crowd' trying to pump people up and doing the ymca and chicken dance in spotlights whenever those songs were played).

i know that a handful of nhl teams have cheerleaders (the carolina hurricanes come to mind), but i have always thought that cheerleaders at hockey games is a pretty ridiculous concept. it works for things like football and basketball, where those peppy people can stand on the sidelines and cheer on the team, and baseball could probably use some cheerleaders just to give people something to watch during all that down time. but in hockey? i just don't see the point.

on a different note, i also looked at the official list of players to whom the pilots extended qualifying offers. most of them, i was ok with. i think pretty much everyone knows that i kind of scoff every time i think about the fact that the team insists on keeping steward around, but i think the same thing about byfuglien. seriously? i mean, i like making fun of his name, and he did have the occasional moment of adequacy last season, but for the most part, his qualifying offer rates another 'wtf?'. i hate to say this, but i would rather have seen metcalf get a qualifying offer. i also hate to say that 'the calf' was really showing signs of improvement and made me go 'wtf?' and 'dammit, metcalf!' pretty rarely as last season progressed. were they just trying to fill up space and extend qualifying offers to the maximum number of players? because i don't think anyone would have minded just keeping four or five of those guys around and trying to build a new team around them.