I got soap today! Pucks of soap! Soap and chocolate! And chocolate soap! I'm so confused, I may accidentally bathe with the chocolate and eat the chocolate soap. And now I have a puck of pear berry deodorizing my hockey closet. Woo-hoo! Used some of my xmas money to order up a couple things to put in my hockey closet too, I ordered up an AkBars Kazan (Kazan Snow Leopards) jersey and a Moscow Polar Bears jersey, both in big-ass size 60 to fit over my goalie gear. Should be here sometime in February, they're coming from Russia. Good clean fun. They'll go well with the other jerseys in my regular on-ice rotation (Macon Whoopee, Lada Togliatti, 1972 CCCP/Tretiak, and an old UVM practice jersey). And now I have soap to keep it all smelling pear-y! Thanks, hockey friend!
According to the kids at TD Banknorth Garden, season tickets in Loge are $3066-$3570, and Balcony are $798-$2520 (those $798 one are the crappy back rows in the corners). Row 1 in Loge (the $176 seat) isn't available as a season ticket. Those prices represent a bit of savings over face value, something like $10 off a $70 ticket. Oooh. It's still ridiculously expensive. You don't attract new fans or make casual fans into hardcore fans by making it punitively expensive to actually see the team. Just plain silly.
People used to go to Blues games. They are currently dead last in attendance, as the team has collapsed into irrelevance since the lockout. In the four seasons prior to the lockout, they were consistently in the top five in the league in attendance, averaging 18500 - 19500 a game, at or near capacity. It's amazing how sharply they've dropped off, it's worse than anyone else in the league. Of course in the years leading up to the lockout, they were consistently a top team, posting 100pt seasons and making decent runs in the playoffs (although never quite getting over the top). I'm willing to give the Blues one more chance to turn it around, if they can get the team to stop sucking, then I think they'll get the crowds back. But I'm only giving them four years, that's it. Columbus, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. Maybe move them up to Minnesota, too. Imagine that, rival teams in Minneapolis and St Paul, wouldn't that be something. Scary part is I bet both teams would sell out all their games.
I do think the Ducks should be punished for their new uniforms. I have no problem with getting rid of the "Mighty", and I have no problem with getting rid of the cartoon duck thing either. But the third jerseys they had in the past few years, the black, purple, and gray one, I kinda liked that. Don't much care for the new black, gold, and orange look. Nope.
According to wikipedia, Saskatchewan sends more players per capita to the NHL than any other province or state. Unfortunately, Saskatoon, the largest city in Saskatchewan, is only the 17th largest city in Canada, with a population not much larger than Manchester NH. The biggest city in western Canada without a hockey team is Winnipeg at about 620K, which makes it larger than Vancouver and almost as large as Edmonton (although that's just a technicality of municipal borders, if you throw in the suburbs, Vancouver is huge). And yet the NHL walked away for the disaster in the desert. Go figure. I still say the NHL is badly under-represented in the Canadian Maritimes, with no team east of Montreal. That leaves Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfie, and PEI without a team to call their own. Put a team in Halifax, that would be fun. Decent size little city, unofficial capital of Atlantic Canada, plus they could have bagpipers at the games. Good fun.
My hockey world has hit the crapper of late. Ugh. Since a nice xmas, my Bruins have apparently completely forgotten how to play hockey. For three straight games now, they just flat-out have not shown up. At all. 10-2 to Toronto, ugh. As the Boston Herald put it, Timmy wasn't spectacular, but he wasn't *that* bad, but the whole team in front of him sucked sucked sucked. They asked Timmy if he thought they bottomed out. He said he hoped so. Meanwhile, they sent Miss Finland (Hannu) down to Providence again to get somemore AHL action. Putting all that behind me, I had high hopes for my Catamounts tonight against UNH. Of course that didn't work out. They absolutely stank out the building. Just awful. From the opening face-off to the final whistle, they were out-worked, out-played, out-everythinged. As Coach Sneddon put it after the game, they were bad from the net out, not a single player had a good game. Starting goalie got pulled midway thru the first, then put back in after the second when the back-up was even worse. It's been several years since I've seen them play this bad. They get to do it all over again Saturday night against UNH, they'd better do a bit better this time. Couldn't do worse. But hey, as tonight's free give-away, I got my 9,000th free UVM t-shirt (always good to wear to the gym) and yellow "rally towel" (which are handy to throw in the hockey bag, I use them to wipe down my blades after games). So it wasn't a total loss. Plus I got to see Ray Bourque again (he comes up from time to time to press the flesh for TD Banknorth). He is surprisingly short when you meet him in person...
-Ricardo
