dirtystylus

Catching Up

Lots of stuff on the burner. Finishing a big project at work, so I’ve been quiet on this space for a bit longer than I anticipated.

Evan brought me along to see the Kings/Rangers game last week, which proves what a great guy he is – burning one of his season-ticket shares on a last-place west-coast team is a lot to ask, and going into the game I hoped that the Kings would just do me a solid and at least make things interesting. Somehow they managed to sneak away with a 4-2 win, with Frolov playing a whale of a game against the surprisingly sluggish Rangers. Sean Avery was running around early in the game, perhaps trying to show up the Kings for trading him exactly a year ago. It was great to see the kids like Kopitar and Boyle score. Given how horribly the Kings’ season has gone this year, at least there’s plenty of young talent to look forward to.

Visited Mom in fair Belchertown, MA a few weekends ago. My (newly-engaged) brother and his fiancée Kristen made the trip out from Boston and joined me for a weekend of skating on the backyard rink. Check the recent flickr stuff for a few shots of us out on the ice. Dad expanded things to 60 by 40 feet this year, and it was nice to fly around and build up speed out there. However, all that work didn’t save me from getting laid out multiple times in the Sled Dogs’ last game, a 5-3 loss to the Hotshots.

Other recent distractions: a new Pioneer flat panel. After five years, my trusty Samsung CRT HDTV will be getting a new home with Joseph and Kristen. I will say that the Samsung is no slouch compared to the new panel, proving once again that it’s hard to beat CRTs for picture quality. That said, having the extra screen real estate is nice. Bluray discs and upscaled DVDs from the PS3 look fantastic – I have a feeling I’ll be loading up the Netflix queue again. The Pioneer also came just in time for new episodes of LOST. I’m not listening to the haters – last year’s finale got me back on the Oceanic 815 bandwagon and so far things haven’t disappointed.

I’m also playing Uncharted, and I’ve switched over to Nullriver’s MediaLink software to pipe my music, photos, and videos from my Mac to the PS3.

Somewhere in there I also upgraded to Leopard, which I’ll pay a compliment by saying that it hasn’t gotten in my way at all.

A Tale of Two Games

The Sled Dogs just completed a back-to-back series against the Tigers, and the games couldn’t have been any more different. The Jan. 12th game was a 7-5 barnburner where we were up 5-1 early in the second, only to start a parade to the penalty box that saw the game tied early in the third. A late goal and an empty-netter let us escape with a 7-5 win, but it was a lesson learned in closing out a game. I tallied a goal (a one-timer from the slot from a nice pass by Bryan coming down the left side) and an assist on one of Tom’s goals where I carried the puck wide on the left side, curled around the back of the net, and sent it in front where Tom hammered it home. We had just missed earlier in the game in almost the exact same situation, so it was nice to connect. Alex centered our line and whenever the three of us were out there with Bryan on D we were flying on the ice and the passing was connecting. Hopefully I’ll end up on a line with them again this season.

The most recent game was a 1-0 game that brought me back the the NHL in the mid-90s. All defense, with a few sparks of offense. The odd-man rushes were at a minimum, so we got the feeling whichever team scored first would take it. Fortunately for us Harry tallied one in the second period, and our goalkeeper Nigel kept the scoreboard clean the rest of the way. I went down hard in the first, so my right hip was bothering me most of the game, but I did have some good shifts with the scramble of players that we had on the forward lines.

During both games I played on right wing, where I’m not usually comfortable, but I think I played ok. I may be getting more used to the speed of games, since I felt like I had enough time to keep my head up and make the right pass, instead of concentrating so hard on not losing the puck and making blind passes. We’ll see how that holds up in the upcoming games.

I’ll be heading up to my parents’ place this weekend and hopefully I’ll get some time on the rink just to work on my shot, which is the weakest part of my game.

Tally it up

Scrimmaged with some of my team and some D7 players on Wednesday. That was a lot of fun – up and down the ice, playing with guys who could skate and stickhandle pretty well. I managed to eke out a goal and an assist, but I missed two clear chances on net.

Last night was my first game in a long while, and I was still recovering from being sick most of Friday. Most of us finally got our jerseys, so we look more like a real team rather than a collection of ringers. I now wear number 30 (the Sled Dogs have a D7 team as well, so the numbers are scattered through the divisions). Added bonus: my name is actually spelled correctly on my jersey.

We played the Hotshots, who are currently atop the D8 league standings. I guess everyone was feeling a lot of New Year cheer, because it was probably the chippiest game I’ve every played in. Bryan got tossed midway through the 2nd period (in his defense he was just retaliating after being hacked and slashed the entire first period). Darrell got his skates spat upon by a charming gentleman after a little bit of yapping back-and-forth. I think we were on the penalty kill three times during the game. Still, it was 1-1 at the end and after a scoreless overtime Andy won it for us in the shootout.

No points for me (I had a clean breakaway chance in the third that the goalie stopped) but I did rack up quite a few other stats: I took a puck off my inside thigh (where there’s minimal padding) while stepping in front of a shot. My right ankle got crunched when someone sat on it in a scrum. I caught the follow-through on a guy’s clearing attempt right on the cage (the world on mute for about 2 seconds). And, finally, a bruised knee after I swiped a puck off a guy’s stick and then fell awkwardly to the ice. Thankfully we won, otherwise getting up this morning would’ve been a lot harder.

Sled Dogs 3, Hotshots 4 (OT)

Tough loss two weekends ago to the Hotshots. We were down 3-1 and tied it up, only to lose in OT. We face the Rockets this weekend, which should be a nice way to get back in sync.

I have to work on faceoffs if I’m going to continue playing center – I think I won only two draws cleanly against the Hotshots. Luckily one of those faceoff wins went right to Bryan on D, who scored one of his two goals by rushing the puck in himself.

The Lost Art of the Backhand

Saturday was all about hockey, hockey, and more hockey. Jordan goes out of town for Caroline’s bridal shower, and look what happens. First Evan dropped by for a Stanley-cup series between the Kings and Rangers on NHL 08, before heading out to attend a baby shower somewhere in the bowels of Brooklyn. Then, much later on (11:30 pm start times are killer) the Sled Dogs notched a 6-0 win over the Rockets. I picked up my first two goals of the season, along with two assists. I was on LW this time, skating with Harry on RW and a rotation of centers (we had 4 instead of the usual 3). Joseph had been giving me advice over the phone during the last month, telling me to go to the backhand more often, since goalies at all levels have trouble reading it, and it paid off with my first-ever goal. We were up 1-0 when Kris (who was one of my classmates at the Wednesday instructional) made a nice hold at left point and sent it back down to the corner, where I made one move to get around a defenseman before throwing it to the net on the backhand. I actually thought that the goalie had stopped it and the ref’s whistle was just for a faceoff, so I was already skating off for a shift change when harry looked at me and said, “Hey – that actually went in!”. More…