Wanna get to know me? you know you do.

Where you're from, what you do - basic things.

I’m originally from small town Yamhill, Oregon. I got a job in northeast Oregon, just south of Walla Walla, Washington. It puts me about an hour away from the WHL’s Tri-City Americans to which I have season tickets. Me and my posse of the Maple Leaf Mafia (see, McPhizzle) love to watch the games, laugh a lot, and discuss hockey in general.

2. Your team and why you like them.
As mentioned, I watch the Tri-City Americans, I love me some junior hockey!


Since I have no geographic ties to any NHL team, I tend to watch teams that have players that I like watching. Add to this the free agency stuff with the CBA and I got players moving around. I like watching teams win so sometimes I’m a bit of a bandwagon fan, except for teams I just don’t seem to care about (Chicago, St. Louis)

I would say my favorite NHL team is the Carolina Hurricanes. I really like watching them play, Eric Staal is an amazing talent, Cam Ward is almost-amazing (and I saw him play junior so some ties there). Mostly I love Peter Laviolette’s coaching style, that very aggressive forecheck which, when it works (see, cup-winning year), it’s just amazing. When it doesn’t work, they allow too many-odd man rushes the other way and that leaves Ward vulnerable (see 06-07 season). Also, watching teams in the WHL, I have seen lots o' Carolina prospect Drayson Bowman. I may or may not have a gi-normous love-fest for him

My other favorite is Toronto Maple Leafs and that is only because my favorite player in the universe is Tomas Kaberle. I’m a sucker for a defenceman.

3. Your least favourite team and why?

Detroit Red Wings. Couldn’t tell you exactly why, I just do. They think they’re all that and a bag of chips when I believe it’s because they are in such a weak division. And I don’t like Hasek.

4. Your favourite player of all time & now?

all-time would be a couple obvious choices, Bobby Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Maurice Richard. Now: TOMAS KABERLE, Dion Phaneuf, Eric Staal, Carey Price,

5. If you had to punch one hockey player or member of the NHL organisation, who and why?

I have some anger issues so the list is long, but if I have to choose one, it would be Daniel Briere, because he creeps me out. And those Sedins. ***shudder***

6 What you'll be looking forward in this group blog.

having a place to talk hockey with other women who also love the sport. Making hockey connections with other women and bloggers

7. What you don't like in general?

whining, hot temperatures, vegetables, using the “shift” key when I type, doing laundry, mean people, know-it-all blowhards (even though I probably am one sometimes)

8. What role do female fans play in keeping the game alive?

I think female fans are just as important as male fans to the game, after all, we’re buying the stuff too, supporting the team. I think it’s also important for women to show that we are just as knowledgeable about the game as anyone. As female fans I think we can influence the males in our lives to enjoy the sport. Since I’m in the States I see a definite lack of interest in the sport so I invite people to come watch a game, seeing a hockey game live? Nothing like it on earth. We can also get our kids involved in activities including hockey.

9. What role do female fans play in picking heroes for the community?

I think women are better able to recognize and appreciate when the guys are nice to fans, contribute to the community and are great guys. We also recognize when they are asshats and are ok with severing ties. If they are representing the sport, or themselves for that matter, in a positive way I think women are more receptive to that sort of charisma and what it means to the fans and to the team. If team members are willing to meet with fans and are generally good with the public are the bee’s knees.

10. Hockey wouldn’t be the same without…

Don Cherry. And my posse, the MLM.

11. If you were on a deserted island, which player would you pick to stay with you?

Tomas Kaberle. Drayson Bowman

12. Crosby, Ovechkin or Phaneuf (hey he tried!)?

Phaneuf. Told ya, I’m a sucker for a defenceman. Also watched him play junior—I have an attachment to players I have watched personally come up through the system.

13. The player you'd like to take for a grand night out/a movie/a boring event

Grand night out: Erik Staal or Dion Phaneuf. They look so good dressed up.
Movie: Alex Burrows. If the movie sucks I would just look at him. If the movie doesn’t suck, I wouldn’t know it because I would still be looking at him.
Boring event: Matt Swaby. I know he’s not in the NHL, but he plays in the WHL (Edmonton Oil Kings) and he’s a flipping riot. If you need photo evidence, I can provide it.

14. If you could make your own team, regardless of whatever players, what would it be called and where will it be/how would it be like?

I admit, this question has stumped me a bit. I’ve spent a long time thinking about it. With help from the fabulous McPhizzle I think I got something. She suggested the M-F (where I live, not like JMFJ) Eyebrows and stock it full of beautiful defencemen with nice eyebrows. I love this idea. Though I would name the team something like the Ice Frogs. This is because the town I live in had the brilliant (that’s sarcasm) plan to have the town “mascot” be frogs (no reason, not like there’s a lot of frogs here) and there are frog “statues” everywhere. Plus it makes sorta fun of what my sister and I consider a silly mascot name, the Ice Dogs. I don’t know why we think it’s funny or silly, but it seems there’s an Ice Dogs team in every league anywhere you go. Even my boss’ 5-year-old’s team is the Snow Pups. Close enough. And it still makes me giggle. But I digress

My favorite colours are red white and blue so jerseys would be those colors, although thinking about it as I type, if they’re the Ice Frogs I suppose they would have to be green of some sort.
And finally, the team would be mostly defencemen. Hell, anyone can play forward, but teaching guys to help keep the puck OUT of the net is much harder. And I love defencemen. In case I hadn’t mentioned that already...

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Once in a while, you gotta SQUEE.

Not only did the Bears managed to clinch a playoff spot yesterday AND have a line brawl involving my favorite backup goalie......

I got Andrew Gordon to sign my jersey. And managed to keep my eyes open in the picture. :-)

He also says he's going for the Mike-Green-As-A-Bear-Originated Playoff Mohawk as of next week, which just amuses me to no end.

(And video of said Line Brawl where you get Cheezer(Daren Machesney, the goalie) in Triumphant Agitator mode...)


Sadly, I didn't get any Stalkercam 8000 pictures of it, as it was down the glass in the corner on the same side I was on, but you can bet I was screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and teaching the kid next to me all sorts of words he didn't need to know until he got to middle school.

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I-95 Highlight Reel

Not for the weak of heart or short of time:-)



As IPB has already given us the heartfelt and intelligent version of the Hlog I-95 meetup, I'm going to go the "Best Of!" route, and I'm going to attempt to do it in chronological order. This may get ugly quickly.

All images used within can also be found at my Flikr site

Your blog for tonight will consist of:Pookie, Schnookie, CapsChick, Elly, Steph and Shmee. Your team will be the Washington Capitals. (or the Hershey Bears.)

Friday:
I arrived at Shmee's apartment. If parking was truly lighter than other days, DAMN, I am NEVER moving to D.C, as I went around a 6 block area for about 20 minutes looking for somewhere I could park Turco's ample posterior. (Turco is my 1997 green Subaru station wagon. Big. Slow. Green..... he sort of named himself.) After the pleasantries and introductions, we decided to go punish our livers in the rainbow district nearby.
Enter Gay Danny Briere. No joke. Little guy, button down shirt, dark hair cut into that awful shaggy-wedgy-wants to be a gymnast style, and I couldn't stop laughing. I believe there was a text message to the CapsChick/Steph party about him, but I was rather fermented at that point, and can't be sure. After soaking ourselves up in a little greasy fried stuff, we moseyed our way home, and crashed for the night.

Saturday:
We got going late, the Metro hung us up, and we stopped for Starbucks, so we didn't actually get to Kettler until around 10:40. Once there, it quickly devolved from "Get to know You" to "World's Loudest Hockey Fans Invade D.C. Mall, Details At 11." For whatever reason, one of the recurring weirdness of the weekend became Elly and my desire to make as many of the Caps as possible bastard love children of the Pens and to figure out their parentage. Our crowning glory was as follows:

This also allowed me to coin the phrase, "He's Maloney in the eyes."

Of course, later on we decided that all hockey players had a variation on one of about 12 heads, which is why so many of them look so similar... then every 20 years they bust up all the molds and make a new batch. But more on that later, when we get to Fluffy and BabyMalkin on Sunday.
It turns out that the Caps were also not the only team there. The Canucks had sent their forward scout, Comrie "Thorguld" Sedin. This poor guy got the dreadedly unsubtle 'turn and stare' from all of us, and was sufficiently creeped out enough to avoid making eye contact for the rest of the day. Of course, as far as weirdness levels go, Cape Dude was the hands down champion.

After the rookie scrimmage, (that's Scott Barney from Hershey) we wandered across the lobby en mass to the other ice rink, where we found the big boys doing drills. (and lost Elly to one of those dumb crane games.) It's ridiculously thrilling to me to be standing literally on the other side of the glass as two people attempt to shove one another through it, so I was having the time of my life. This was also the longest time we saw Ovechkin practice for the entire weekend. He and Semin seemed to have this idea that because they were the big names, they didn't really need ice time that badly.
Onwards, there was lunch (nachos and dip and chips and beer... some people had sandwiches), over which we discussed the role of the female fan, and how you couldn't really wear a Sidney Crosby jersey or and Ovechkin jersey and be taken seriously. Schnookie got the winning quote from that conversation when she brought it home with "We're sports fans...who objectify." I managed to challenge her quote supremacy later on the way back to Shmee's house, when we had to climb 2.5 stories on a dead escalator out of the Metro and nearing the top I whined "I'm getting Sidney Crosby butt from this!"
Shmee greeted us with a drink that went from being named "Rachael Ray's Spiked Pink Lemonade" to "Pink Drink of Firey Death" and the evening went downhill from there. Between Rocky-Horrorizing The Cutting Edge (we even had the SIDE PONYTAILS, come on) and Shmee recounting her adventures in supposedly skanky clothing, the evening could really only end with a field trip. And where else would one go on a field trip than to the Verizon Center?

Sunday:
Up and at it on time this time. Loaded into Turco, picked up the rest of the troops, and headed out the the rink again. This time, we settled in for the drills and actually watched what was going on, about three rows back from what we were guessing were Ovie's parents. Ovie and Olie were in rare form from the beginning, scrapping verbally during a shootout drill then each dancing when they managed to best the other. However, Olie's game disintegrated from there, and by the time they were done he had cracked his stick and wound up throwing it off the ice at one of the equipment people. CapsChick started edging away from us early this time, especially after Steph asked in true Steph loudvoice "Is Olie looking especially creaky today?" The rest of the first round players were in high spirits, however, and two of them wound up horsing around amusingly as well.
After a slight Zamboni break (and a chance for us to go raid the Caps store for the *right* team's stuff, we went back out to watch the prospies. Enter Fluffy, BabyMalkin, Backcountry Pyatt and NotMachesney. (in reality, Jay Beagle, Dan Kronick, Tyler Sloan(I think) and Kris Mayotte) interestingly enough, Alexander Semin was also lumped in with this second group, but spent more of it lounging on the boards and looking disinterested than he did actually playing. It was interesting to see the prospies go through the same drills that the big boys had just finished, because you could tell that these were the guys who were really WORKING to do well and make the team, not the guys that knew they were already there. Frederic Cassivi (Hershey's goalie) was down in the same net Olie had been in earlier, and wasn't doing much better. He seemed to be overcommitting to one side of the net and disregarding anyone not in his immediate line of sight. We debated getting him a flowerpot to improve the chi of that end of the rink, but decided that probably wasn't gonna be enough to help him. The other goalie, Kris Mayotte or NotMachesney, (as he was NOT Daren Machesney from Hershey the way we thought he was, but a potential Machesney backup, as Machesney broke himself at some point in the near past) was doing much better overall. After finding out that he was an import from the Arizona Sundogs, I really hope that they decide to keep him around and send him up here to Central PA to play with the Bears... not only was he showing some real promise, but he seemed to be meshing with all of the other prospies pretty darn well.
As all the prospies were packing it in for the day, we also got the treat of getting to watch Puck Handling 101, which was pretty downright amazing.

And of course, as we were leaving for lunch, we wandered into the other rink and watched the last period of a local hockey club's game, which was really much less GAME and much more FIGHT. I think I actually physically squee'd when the two dudes started pummeling each other directly in front of us, and I took way too many pictures, just proving my previously known goon slut tendencies.

All in all, I couldn't have come up with a better way to spend a weekend. Except maybe Pens camp, but even then, I wouldn't have wanted to spend it with a different group of people. I think the I-95 meetup may well become a half-yearly thing, and Elly and I are already plotting towards the Ice Bowl in Buffalo.


Oh, and when you thought it couldn't get much better? Hershey Bears open practices start Thursday.

I'll see you there!

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HLOG does the AIHL Finals

We’ve counted down and it’s finally here.
Positions have been set, opponents decided and enemies created.
Tickets have been bought, face paint chosen and pom poms shaken.
Tomorrow it begins!

The next two days shall feature the best of the best in the AIHL (Australian Ice Hockey League for the uneducated among you). Four teams are in the finals covering three states with teams coming from Newcastle (the Insinki North Stars) Sydney (the Penrith Bears), Adelaide (the Adelaide Avalanche) and Melbourne (THE MELBOURNEEEEEEEEEE ICE!).

My own team the Brisbane Bluetongues missed out by 3 points (one win) after suffering a crushing defeat by one goal in the final 5 minutes on Sunday.

But this weekend brings hope! (Go Ice, Go Bears)

Jordi and I shall be meeting bright and early tomorrow morning at 8 30 am (myself travelling down from Brisbane and her up from Melbourne) and the weekend shall be spent watching hockey, engaging in much merriment (there’s a team dinner to be attend and a pub with margarita jugs between our hotel and the rink) and good natured heckling.

And when we return! We shall report!

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HLOG Analog, or: IPB Leaves The House

Ahh, summer. The time when an HLOGer's fancy turns from thoughts of hockey (because there isn't any) to thoughts of meeting her fellow HLOGers in person. And that is exactly what IPB has been doing these last two weekends. In the spirit of the great Hamilton-area HLOG convention and the Australian HLOG skating deathmatch, we've ventured down and up the I-95 Corridor to meet up with CapsChick and Margee, respectively. Here, for everyone's enjoyment, is a report on both get-togethers:

1. CapsChick. Despite the fact that multiple IMs and email exchanges had convinced us that CapsChick has an -ookie-type brain and we'd all get along famously, we still approached her with no small trepidation. We were meeting at her parents' place in the Washington DC suburbs (where she was housesitting), and as we made the short drive there from where we were staying with our sister it suddenly dawned on us that meeting people you've only ever interacted with on the internet is a great way to get ax murdered. But when we noticed a lack of plastic sheeting or American Psycho-style ponchos when she greeted us at the door, we decided all was well. When she then filled our empty hands with cans of Diet Coke and agreed with us that it is the nectar of the gods, we knew that all was more than well -- it was, in fact, perfect.

What followed was an afternoon of non-stop chatter. We watched a chestnut of a Devils-Caps game from the google vaults on her computer, during which we marveled at the turnover stylings of Brian Rafalski (perhaps the phrase, "$6 million a year? Have fun with that, Detroit" was thrown around) and the ticky-tacky penalty-taking skills of Alexander Semin (CapsChick: "He's a huge hooker. Wait, that didn't come out right..."). We troved YouTube for highlights of Olaf Kolzig putting the fear of a mighty smackdown into Eddie Belfour. We pored over the tape of her interview with Ben Clymer to suss out every shred of subtext (he is clearly pining for her, and pretty blatantly invited her to stay with him next time she's in Minnesota during the off-season. It also sounded, on the tape, like as soon as she had turned away from him, he whipped out his cell phone and started feverishly punching random buttons on it, so mad with smitten-ness was he). And in the piece de resistance, we enjoyed a combat screening of The Cutting Edge, wherein we raced to be the first ones to blurt out lines before they came up in the movie. CapsChick has a formidable knowledge of every facet of that movie; in fact, we suspected if we'd been in her house she might have even been able to whip out some replica costumes (neon-colored, contour-striped bodysuit, anyone?) to match the clothing cues. When the Wiederman twin knee-slap/lederhosen tangling moment arrived, we almost needed hospitalization for how hard we were laughing.

We all had previous engagements for the evening, and were supposed to break up our party sometime around 4PM. And, um, we came pretty close to meeting that hard-stop. Give or take two hours. We had to dart out the door, mid-conversation, to race to make our dinner reservation, and as we headed out the door we promised to resume the conversation (at that point it was focusing on Ovechkin and his alleged proclivity for having eye sex with TV cameras) when we met again soon. Namely: at the I-95 Corridor HLOG Convention in September. East Coasters, be there or be square!

2. Margee. We were slightly less nervous about meeting Margee because we were doing so on neutral ground, at a restaurant in Manhattan. She would have to be pretty damn sneaky to be able to kill us in a public space, so we didn't fear for our lives. We arranged to meet outside the Houlihan's at Penn Station, and she was easy to spot for two reasons: first, her hair is, as described, enormous. She was knocking over tourists with that giant coif, and while she tried to explain away her roots with some story about waiting to get them done before her sister's wedding, they just seemed pretty normal for a Long Islander to us. Second, she was trailed everywhere by a handful of Islanders who were desperate for her to notice them. They were pretty unobtrusive during our walk to the restaurant, but once we got there it was a bit distracting to have to talk around Bruno Gervais, who insisted on being in her lap the whole time, and Pretty Ricky kept interrupting our lunch to offer us banana-coconut cream pie, which none of us really wanted to eat. But other than that, everything was delightful; despite being a vegan ("what, not even in a BLT?") she didn't seem to mind us eating dead animals, and the restaurant she picked, Vynl, not only had mosiacs of Nelly, Elvis, Dolly Parton and Cher in the bathrooms, but also served frozen margaritas and mojitos by the pint. After a few of those we could have been having lunch with a Rangers fan and would have been having a good time.

It should come as no surprise, though, that you don't have to be getting buzzed on pint glasses of slushy tequila deliciousness to be having a riotously good time with Margee. We kicked off our meal with a toast to the hoped-for failings of the Flyers and Rangers in the season to come, and went from there into an hours-long, free-wheeling conversation that ranged from our shared misery of suffering through the unbalanced schedule as Atlantic Division fans, to a parsing of the various styles of douchery offered up by the studio analysts and "behind the glass" reporters on various networks' hockey broadcasts (you know who you are, Pierre McGuire), to a particular goal celebration highlight by two Devils who will remain unnamed that was deemed "too homoerotic for TV", to our unironic admiration for the Beckhams, to trying to explain the irresistable magnetism of the Staals. Margee graciously listened to us reel off all our favorite jokes from SportSquee, and she encouraged us with our plans to expand IPB until it becomes the TWoP of hockey and the NHL (or its broadcasters) decide to pay us vast sums of money to buy us out (seriously, NHL, we're open to offers). And we committed a vast portion of our afternoon to psychoanalyzing Sid Crosby. And, of course, impersonating him. As the afternoon wore on, we enjoyed a couple rounds of shared margaritas, which we probably would have drunk all "Lady and the Tramp enjoying spaghetti" style, but for the fact that Pookie and Margee both had colds. And because Bruno Gervais kept getting in the way of sharing one glass. After lunch we were treated to a slightly buzzed tour of Margee's workplace (conclusion: her job is way, way cooler than ours), and she was even such a great hostess that she paid our subway fare. That's right, ladies -- Margee's not only funny as hell, she's generous almost to a fault.

Unlike the previous "HLOGers meeting in person" posts you've seen, we don't have cute pictures. Probably because our cute moments were almost too cute for film. Seriously, could anyone bear the adorableness of the scene when Pookie, Schnookie and CapsChick decided they were all too lazy to pick up the phone, which was sitting on the table in front of us, to call for pizza and instead ordered online? Or the sheer awesomeness of the three of us giving the Cutting Edge fist-salute to the television? And the interwebs just aren't ready for how charming a sight it is when Margee and the IPBers make their Sid faces in unison while doing his patented "Mm hm... mm hm... No" style of interview. Suffice to say, we were all adorable, especially after that third margarita.

In conclusion, we have this to say: HLOGers rock. And meeting them in person is just as much fun as you think it will be, especially when they're as hilarious and awesome as CapsChick and Margee!

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