Tonight, our reporters cover everything sports

...except hockey, probably.

Now, it's been said before: The NHL has problems getting good media in the world of sports. It seems the only time they are mentioned is either when a major record is broken, someone gets a significant suspension, or when a certain player forces the league to make a new rule. Or lacerates his spleen. Or dates another new starlet (I wonder where hockey gets more face time...Sports Illustrated or People).

Why this happens I do not know. But I began thinking about it after reading CKim's post and seeing this clip made by The Onion.


NHL Star Called Up To Big Leagues To Play For NFL Team

Ok, yes, I thought it was kind of funny, but it does bring up the big issue of why the NHL isn't as big as other sports, such as football, baseball, and basketball. So I made a list of why hockey is better than other sports/why people should like it more (not because any of you need convincing, more because people who refuse to acknowledge hockey bug me.)

1) It's much more exciting. I'm a baseball fan too and even I have problems sitting through the entire nine innings without feeling a slight bit bored. I can truthfully say I have never been bored at a hockey game.

2) The players don't get arrested as much. Yes, the NHL has it's thugs, and there are incidents every now and then, but it isn't even close to the number of times other leagues have had players arrested (I'm looking at you, Cincinnati Bengals - I'm not positive but it was something like 12 arrests in one year by one team). We even have players who save people from a neo-Nazi attack.

3) From my experience, and from what I have heard from multiple media members, hockey players are the kindest, humblest, and easiest to deal with out of all professional athletes. This makes me very glad, because I find personality/attitude as important as I find skill.

So, that's my (very brief) list...thoughts?

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Silent Bob Speaks!

Surprisingly, you don't even have to know and love your very own snuggly Hlogger to be a pro-feminism hockey fan.... as the one and only Silent Bob proves.

In his NHL.com blog, Devils fan Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) calls for action from within Rangers Nation, saying
"In an effort to diminish a team they despise, some Rangers’ fans’ idea of an insult is to call the Devils women. It’s as if the worst slander they can imagine is equating the black and red with the distaff. Ladies, I don’t know about you, but I (and every Devils fan) find that notion repugnant beyond words."

He then goes on to request that the women of Rangers fandom withhold sex until this "rampant hate-speech" is curbed.

If there was ever a candidate for a male Hlogger, I think we've found him.

(Original article found at Kukla's Korner)

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Hockey-versary to me....

I don't admit this out loud to many people, so listen carefully, and listen quickly.
Exactly one year ago today, Haviva and Katelyn sat me down in front of the Stanley Cup quarterfinals on the giant TV in the Cellar pizza shop of the University of Puget Sound.


How are we sure it was today, April 15? Well, the Penguins were playing the Senators, appropriately enough, and I didn't have a favorite player, let alone a favorite team.

Then this happened. Third game of the series, 10:58 in the third period:

In that moment, Colby Armstrong jumped up, grabbed my little bruiser roller derby girl heart, and sort of ran off with it. Mostly in that moment it was a "WHAT THE HELL YOU CAN DO THAT IN THIS SPORT I LOVE THAT GUY" response, but as I found out more and more about Army and the Penguins and hockey in general, the more I loved all of it. I'll argue until the day I die that it was a legal hit, no elbow involved, and Eaves needed to be looking where he was going.

Fittingly enough, though, neither Army or Eaves is left on their respective teams, fighting it out in this Pens/Sens series. Army's on the golf course somewhere now, the Atlanta Thrashers having not made the playoffs. Eaves, now with the Carolina Hurricanes, has also started his off-season earlier than he would have wished.

Today I'm sitting in Hershey, waiting for the Bears to start their playoff run, reveling in the fact that the Penguins are kicking some Senator butt, hoping that the Caps can, in fact shut down the Flyers. I can now talk to you about PIM and +/-, the use of a good backcheck and who's going to make the big team next year. I've watched NHL games, AHL games, WHL games, college games, I've been to Mellon and Verizon and the Wachovia, I've developed a hatred for cheap shots and a love of the grinders and checkers and even to some extent the agitators, as long as they can back up their words with actions. I own two jerseys, one outdated, one autographed, one sweatshirt, three hats and two t-shirts. I've learned who to trust on a breakaway and who's going to choke every time. I've seen a live goalie fight, and I've bargained with the higher powers for the sake of my team.

A year in, I think I can own the title proudly now.

My name is Teka, and I am a hockey fan.

(Also, the construction guy from Clean House is totally wearing a USA hockey shirt.)

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Don Cherry does love Minnesota after all!

Minnesota got TWO, count 'em TWO shoutouts from Grapes himself tonight. The first was concerning Derek Boogaard and how much he likes him, and the second was about Doug Risebrough's decision to sign Foster for next season so he doesn't have to worry while he is rehabbing. I'm not generally a big fan of Risebrough, but right now I think this is a classy move. WAIT, THREE shoutouts! (I'm watching HNIC right now in case you didn't notice, so I'm updating. It's Scott and Kelly now, so I'm done I promise.) He just said that if the Wild play the Ducks in the playoffs, that Minnesota will destroy them. I love you, Don Cherry.

Grapes just told Joe Thornton he needs to keep clean shaven. I forgive him for everything he's ever said to make me mad.

One other not completely hockey note: David Suzuki, my hero of life, talked about Earth Hour on Hockey Night in Canada, and told us all we can keep our TVs on to catch the end of the game. He's so cool.

Cassie Campbell just said "tearing it up". She's my female hero of life. I'm so happy she's still in hockey.

PS, was that post too long for just the regular posting style?

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This dude for the win.

(If you don't get it, this is the original. It's been making the rounds.)

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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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My good news!

(cross posted to my blog)

Now that I posted it to the general forum I'm going to scream it out to the roof tops.

In one week my beloved Isles forum which I took over as the owner years ago will be known as THE official Isles forum, linked off their website and everything.

Although I've known for a month and hinted at it for a while I didn't want to say anything earlier because I'm superstitious. I'm the type of person who won't tell anyone outside my family that I'm pregnant until the 1st trimester is over too.

Anyway, I'm so excited and nervous at the same time. Wish me luck! :)

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Loooooooooo

Some of you who watched the Ducks vs Canucks Game 5 might have noticed that Roberto Luongo didn't start in goal for the Canucks during the first overtime. The Ducks fans probably thought Luongo has thrown in the towel. Some Canucks fans probably thought the same, especially after that display of effort shown by the team in front of him. Some believed that it was indeed an equipment problem.

Others thought he had diarrhea.

Others were probably right.

Roberto Luongo revealed during the Canucks' locker room clean up that it wasn't an equipment problem that kept him from the beginning of the first overtime period. "It was an illness and nothing serious," he said. When asked if this illness involved using the bathroom, he replied by laughing a bit and saying "I don't know."

I guess "LOOOOOOOOOOO" is the new "LUUUUUUUUUUU".

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Reason #348348923 Hockey is Awesome

You welcome, I think we just saved hockey.

You know what's maddening about this is of course the fact that I was this close to attending this game.

Thanks to Battle of Ontario here is the brilliance that was tonight's Ottawa vs. Buffalo's game. The first is the initial Drury hit from Neil and the one after is the melee that ensued:






Hockey's awesome! Rest of America, you have no idea what you're missing!

I'm betting Brian McGrattan spit out his beer from the press box and had to be restrained by the security people from jumping out onto the ice when all of this happened.

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