Penguins-Red Wings action shot, late 1960s

to commemorate the Detroit Red Wings @ Pittsburgh Penguins game on NBC today that got a little bit of hype (but all the Maple Leafs trade news this morning wiped it out as a discussion topic on Twitter!), one of my very favorite shots from the 1969 book Hockey:

 

 

Linesman Willard Norris hangs on for dear life as Pittsburgh and Detroit battle along the boards.

it's Hockey Day in Canada!

...as opposed to the other 364 days a year, which of course are all about curling? well, anyway, all 6 Canadian NHL teams are matched up today in exciting Canadian-on-Canadian action...er, if that includes the Oilers-Flames game. Oilers have lost 12 in a row, Flames 9, which means the province of Alberta has had one winning NHL game in 2010 so far. unless there's some way for both teams to lose, it goes up to 2 tonight.

oh, and it's also Hockey Weekend in America, but this post is all-Canada, starring scans from booklets I picked up at a fantastic used bookstore in the charming college town of Champaign, IL, this month. I hadn't been to the Jane Addams Book Shop before. the place is so huge I didn't even notice the 3rd floor till an hour before my bus home. they had a sale on everything, so I picked up a few of my usual faves (vintage recipe booklets and railroad stuff), and browsed the impressive Canada section.

 

Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1961

"the most powerful team"? Blackhawks blogger notes this was published in 1961, laughs, then quickly falls into existential despair

there are lots of skiing photos, but I like this better:

enough Quebec/Montreal. let's go west!

Natural Color Productions, Ltd. & a bunch of other credits but no date (mid-1980s?)

 

great transit photo, but figuring out what it is is more work than I'd thought. it's not light rail, exactly. according to Wikipedia Vancouver uses the SkyTrain, the first line of which opened in 1985, and uses fully automated trains, the longest automated rapid transit system in the world. but this isn't called SkyTrain? my last trip to Canada was actually my first trip to Vancouver, in 2001. I wondered why the transit system seemed unfamiliar, then remembered there was a transit strike during my visit (luckily I was visiting with people who had cars).

  

this was easier to figure out--BC Place, opened in 1983, built in part to attract a major league baseball team (oops), used for football and soccer. GM Place, the arena opened in 1995, is nearby. 

can't say I enjoy this type of stadium (based on one Minnesota Twins game I went to in the Metrodome) but they can make for nice photos

now: Toronto!

 

well, I didn't find anything sports-related, but I got this survey by the Toronto Public Library from 1960. one more actual hockey photo, and this is again from the 1969 book, Hockey:

The 1920 Winnipeg Falcons. Hockey rinks were beginning to come into their own. Note high rafters, long stands to the left.

I like the rink, and the sweaters with Canada, and (unlike the NHL) didn't want to leave Winnipeg out...

recent NHL fights, late January

here's some miscellaneous hockey fight material I'm finally getting around to posting (all in one post so any imaginary readers who really don't like hockey fights can skip it). on Friday night, not to look like I'm ripping off the Friday Night Fight feature at Hockeenight. ...since the last fight post, first Anaheim and then Philadelphia reached 50 fights for the season, and Calgary is the only team averaging more than a fight per game (right now they've lost 9 games in a row, so the fights obviously aren't sparking any wins...). Zenon Konopka reached 20 fights this season (21 tonight). once again I admit I'm strangely and mildly obsessed with the guy, and this great piece from the Tampa Tribune just adds to it--funny and sad stories about his family and childhood in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. one of the best player profile pieces I've seen this season.

I'll just link a few of these to the hockeyfights.com pages, in case anyone missed them:

Jan. 21 Blue Jackets-Bruins game, here's Jared Boll vs Milan Lucic, Lucic's first fight since returning after injury (Jan. 29 was his first goal since then!)

in the Jan. 21 Rangers-Flyers game with four fights, Marian Gaborik vs Daniel Carcillo was the most surprising and debated

in the Jan. 27 Flames-Stars game, Eric Nystrom vs Mark Fistric, there was controversy over Fistric hitting with his helmet--accidental or not? he received an "attempt to injure" and Nystrom got an unsportsmanlike conduct

except for a terrific night out at the Whirlaway bar in Chicago's Logan Square watching it with a bunch of other hockey bloggers and Twitterers, last Saturday's Blackhawks @ Canucks game was pretty miserable, one of the 5-1 games I referred to in a previous post. (oh, and the infamous partying by the team after the game...I'll post about it [finally] this weekend.) every Canucks game seems to produce another player for Hawks fans to loathe. this time...Ryan Kesler! vs Andrew Ladd, who has about a fight per season. those of us in the bar were stunned by Kesler's ridiculous wrestling move. I'm not the hockey fight expert but...that seems like something you just don't do (and of course Kesler made it worse by calling Ladd a "coward" in the media later. WTF?). maybe he had legitimate gripes about Ladd's past behavior, maybe not, but again--what the hell is this?



the most surprising fight, though, is the Predators' Steve Sullivan vs the Avalanche's Wojtek Wolski. it's the second NHL fight for Sullivan--his last was 1997--and the first NHL fight for Wolski. I will definitely make a habit of posting first NHL fights when I see them.



the blog View from My Seats posted a survey, 1/18, for Least Likely to Fight on each NHL team. but just since then, Gaborik, Sullivan, and Wolski, all of who seemed unlikely, all got in fights. so who knows?

also of note, a 1/27 Denver Post piece by Adrian Dater about enforcers. and this week on Twitter, @RealDenverSport (who I follow, and who writes the Real Denver Sports blog) was debating @VicLombardi of Denver's CBS-4 about hockey fights--apparently Lombardi isn't a fan and CBS-4 wasn't in the habit of showing fights in their stories about the Avalanche. the site now has a commentary up about changing the policy, looks like...

glad I don't have to write sports headlines #11 etc.

from a couple nights ago, not too bad but still...

but! more interesting than puns, is that the Blackhawks @ Sharks game tonight, heavily hyped with 2 of the 5 featured stories earlier in the day previewing the game, had this headline minutes after the game, referencing Troy Brouwer's game-winning goal:

and I don't think even an hour later, it'd changed to this (I came back to the site when I knew the standings would all be updated. note all the titles at the bottom are the same):

I know things might change on the site as they go from breaking news to a full game recap with highlights, but it's unusual to change like that. regardless...a terrific win for the Hawks.

another hockey hat: Cincinnati Cyclones

well, there are serious things to discuss...or at least a bunch of story links and fight videos to post, but when I was ready to write several blog posts last night, my Internet quit working (it was connected, but running at approximately a dial-up in 1994 speed) and after several fruitless hours of restarting it I gave up. so, for now, just something to pander to the "Girls in Minor League Hockey Hats" fetishists out there. in this case, Girls in Minor League Hockey Hats with Hilariously Awful Logos--I refer you to this review at the Bush League Factor.

I bought this at my Monday night game--seeing the Johnstown Chiefs play the Cincinnati Cyclones. of course I'll have pictures of the arena/a fuller review "later" like all my other game recaps...for now let me sum it up:

OMG how does a team have 5 shots on goal in the FIRST FORTY SECONDS and 14 SOG before the VISITING TEAM EVEN GETS ONE and they're one of the TOP TEAMS IN THE LEAGUE and have a good home record AND they're playing the ABSOLUTE WORST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE and yet they manage to lose to the WORST TEAM by a SCORE OF 5-1? FUCKING HELL, HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?! HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT HAPPEN?!!

still, it was entertaining, especially because of the fight/brawl that happened with 23 seconds left on the clock, and the fact that I was sitting close enough to the Chiefs' bench to heckle them if I wanted to (I didn't, but I heard other people). it was a lot of entertainment for $12. and I did want a hat in part because it's such a silly logo, and because I'm from Iowa State Cyclones country and hey, it's another team with the same colors called the Cyclones! why not?

glad I don't have to write sports headlines, #10 in an ongoing series

eh...okay. Shane Doan definitely deserved a headline, though, after the spectacular Coyotes win against the Red Wings tonight, coming from 2-4 with about 90 seconds left in the 3rd to tie it, then winning in overtime. I had this on, it ended just after the Blackhawks game was starting. originally I'd thought I might even go to Detroit today and finally take a friend who moved there to her first game at the Joe, but that'll be later. this would have been a terrific one to see.

5-1, 5-1, 5-1...

so, the last two games played by the two NHL teams I follow both ended with a 5-1 score, and the last two hockey games I attended (AHL on Sunday, and my first ECHL game on Monday--no ECHL teams very close to Chicago, hence my brief absence) both ended 5-1. only one of these games turned out the way I wanted it to, though. the trip back from the ECHL city was quite an ordeal, and I've got stuff to do, but hopefully I'll have some of my own content up soon, before the (late) Blackhawks game tonight. meanwhile, a couple entertaining recent reads:

the always-enjoyable Third String Goalie, to commemorate Paul Newman's birthday, has a  Charlestown Chiefs Reg Dunlop jersey and detailed feature on Slap Shot

from NHL.com Going inside the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick”:

"I'd never heard of it until I'd had quite a few of them," said [Brendan] Shanahan, whose NHL career began in 1987. "It didn't get media attention until four or five years ago. They started counting in my 10th year. One list had me at nine and then they went back and counted and found more. No teammate ever mentioned it to me until my last one.

"All of a sudden, someone would print these lists every time Gordie had a birthday. By then, I was too old to get more. Players might be more aware of it now. If you get two of the three, someone might say, 'Hey, all you need is a goal.' I think it happens more if you have a fight and one of those two other things. Nobody ever says, 'Hey, you've got a goal and an assist, go get in a fight.'"

*****
it's true! I believe one of the Hawks games I went to this season, Ben Eager had a fight and a goal, and Marian Hossa had a goal and an assist, and I was a little more confident in Eager getting an assist than Hossa fighting...

more from Hockey (1969):

Power. The one-word nickname for Detroit's great Gordie Howe says a lot, but hardly enough. Howe has played almost 25 seasons, has scored well over 1.500 points and 700 career goals.

HOCKEY, "man's most brutal sport"

another great find from a used bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., on my recent trip. from 1969, so lots of good material from when the NHL was 12 teams.

 

more of a newsy post later tonight, I hope--right now I'm going to the first Chicago Wolves game I've been to in nearly two months

goalies gone wild!

if the most wonderful thing that can happen in NHL hockey is winning some sort of giant shiny trophy, then the second most wonderful is...a goalie fight. even better than a hat trick or thrilling overtime victory--I mean, c'mon, those happen pretty often (well, for some teams). best of all is of course goalies fighting each other, but any sort of goalie-related scuffle is exciting. here's two (neither of which are technically fights, so I had to find non-hockeyfights.com video)...

the one that got a lot of attention was this, Wednesday night in St. Louis Blues @ Montreal Canadiens (Blues won the game):



but thanks to this post at Sportress of Blogitude I found out Monday night in the Minnesota Wild @ Dallas Stars game (I was watching a different game, and I think I never found a live broadcast of this one), the Wild's backup goaltender Josh Harding battled the Stars'  Steve Ott:



Harding had fought a goalie in the minor leagues, according to a linked article. Wild lost 4-3.

in other hockey news, some sort of giant shiny trophy was briefly "lost" this week. OOPS.

BREAKING NEWS: the Blackhawks are somewhat attractive

*exasperated sigh* ...so, the Tribune's Thursday "Play" section (entertainment/lifestyle stuff) had several pieces on the Blackhawks. there's a lot of embarrassing content (and some that's okay), but let's take a look at this Cosmo-esque piece...yikes. there are actually many things in sports and sports fandom that bother me more than nonsense like this, so I can't work myself up to a rant about it--but it was discussed in a lively manner in the Second City Hockey post I linked to in the previous entry.

it's not just that it's silly, it's that it had an obvious major omission:

hmm, I've posted a very similar image here before, but that one is from Thursday's game...
when I first saw this piece online I had a brief Twitter discussion in which I mentioned a couple names left out. Hjalmarsson, above--sure. but my other choice raised eyebrows:

I'm sure I can find better photos (and I will) but that's also from Thursday's game broadcast. what can I say? Finnish goalies! (I kept quiet on this one because I didn't want to get this mixed up with the tedious debates about Huet vs. Niemi.) have I mentioned he has the same birthday as---OH, OKAY, I'll be back to serious blogging in a few hours, sheesh...

someone finally gets it!

uh, the name of the blog. this was in a discussion on Second City Hockey today about bandwagon fans--because of a whole bunch of stuff in the Chicago Tribune today for new fans. (more in another post, watching game online now, can't scan anything) anyway, not sure whether I should be more bothered that someone's sort of calling me a whore, or impressed that someone knows the non-sports definition of "chippy." I assume this was all in good fun...

apologies for relative lack of posting. I was in Indianapolis Tuesday and Champaign, IL Wednesday, and just lazy in general. the stats and screenshots and fight videos are piling up!

stupid Ottawa. arrghhh

I don't have anything much more profound than that to say now. I was in Indianapolis briefly today (weird, I saw lots of people wearing jerseys for a sport that isn't hockey!) and then tonight was discouraging for many reasons, including the Blackhawks' one game vs. the Senators this season (sadly, the first away Hawks game for a Chicagoan I've met through a blog). I could discuss it but this sums it up:

 

yes, I've used this EXACT SAME bit before...the other time this came up onscreen in a Hawks game this season, that was a painful loss too. anyway, Blackhawks lost 4-1. the lone Hawks goal was by former Senator Marian Hossa (hey, at least I think he didn't get booed in this city, unlike Pittsburgh and Detroit) when they were down 2-0.

this was the 3rd game on an 8-game trip, and I figured they'd lose some. but they played so badly tonight. AND it probably bothered me a lot more because the Senators beat the OTHER team I follow, 5-1, yesterday in Boston. possibly the only good thing about that one was this girl who did a fine job singing both national anthems.

maybe some other game notes later. I've also accumulated quite a few links to share, and they're not even all about hockey...

January 18, 1958

damn, I meant to post when this showed up on Twitter this morning, but the day got away from me. I knew about Willie O'Ree and had favorited the clipping below on Flickr a long time ago, from the photostream (actually stream of tons of cool scanned vintage stuff, with a focus on African-American history) of vieilles_annonces. but I didn't realize that O'Ree's debut in the NHL (becoming the first black player in league history) was on January 18, 1958, with the Bruins in a game against the Montreal Canadiens.

here's his Wikipedia entry. when I learned Boston had the first black player in the NHL I'd already read Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, which tells how the Red Sox were the last MLB team to have a black player. I don't downplay the racial problems Boston has had at all, but feel the city has been an easy target as a racially troubled Northern city when Chicago and many other cities hardly have a better history. this is getting off-topic for this blog I suppose, but I highly recommend Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (and a lot of other books if you see my Goodreads link on the blogroll).

also, Kat of Kat's Stupid Hockey Sketches blog had a post today (I liked her explanation/disclaimer). (I've had the urge to get back into visual art due to my hockey obsession. I can barely draw, so I've got some much more abstract ideas...)

the hit by Patrice Cormier

you'll be hearing a lot about this. I wrote that last post about fights, made some soup from scratch (I have a habit of cooking late at night), and kept Twitter open on the screen and a hockey-related retweet with these words showed up: "Tam is conscious in hospital. The trauma is described as somewhere between severe concussion and death..." obviously, it's been a week of extremely disturbing news far beyond the world of sports (and in sports, the sudden death of a Bears player Sunday morning)...

this explains it a bit more (of course it's a screenshot so these aren't actual links. and I didn't feel like watching the video yet.) I'm not sure I'll have anything to add to the debate, but I hope for the best for Mikael Tam, victim of a hit by juniors Team Canada captain Patrice Cormier. earlier this evening I'd been reading a very disturbing book about junior hockey in Canada (getting into some stuff that's far heavier than what I address on this blog, though I may discuss it), and...well, I should just go to bed.

the Flames make it to 50! (and beyond)

no, not points this season, though I guess they reached that mark relatively recently. I mean, Calgary was the first team to rack up 50 fighting majors in the 2009-10 season. the next closest was Anaheim Ducks with 43. then the teams played each other tonight and added two fights in the first period (Ducks won 5-4). Flames' previous game was vs. Nashville Predators, who have the fewest FM--a mere 13, one of which was from the McGrattan-Belak fight in that game (Preds won 1-0).

I thought the impressive stat was that Flames have 14 players with fighting majors so far this year. then I noticed Blackhawks have 11--more than I'd have guessed, but some are players who virtually never fight and some are Rockford IceHogs who got called up a few times. ...and I noticed Flames' next game is against the Sharks Monday night. I'll try to actually tune in at the start unlike all their recent games.

continuing my cataloging of recent multi-fight NHL games (then abandoning it after this post):

Canadiens @ Rangers: 2 fights, 2nd period (but one involved Sean Avery)
Bruins @ Kings: 2 fights, 1st period
Devils @ Avalanche: 3 fights, involving 6 different players
Leafs @ Capitals: 2 fights, 3rd period
Ducks @ Kings, 3 fights
Senators @ Rangers, 2 Carkner-Brashear fights in the 1st period

I certainly haven't watched all those, so I'll just include (and thanks for the advice on how to resize these) the only fight that really matters from recent games: a Blackhawks-Red Wings fight from Sunday! I'm pretty sure there are more fights between fans of these teams than between the players...and Versteeg hasn't had a fight since Dec. 2008. right at the end of the first, it's brief and a little bloody, and the WGN 720 announcers (of course here you get the TV ones...NBC! both games NBC has shown live this year had fights) liked this a lot.

back from Columbus...

...and my first trip to Nationwide Arena, to see the Blackhawks narrowly win yesterday vs. the Blue Jackets. who knows when I'll get to a game description/photos...but below is a screenshot from a highlight video. I'm glad the Hawks won, because if they hadn't, I'd have had to be happy with the warmup photos I got of Hjalmarsson and Sharp. (believe me, I would have been, but a win is great)

I would like to point out I've seen the Blackhawks 17 times in just over a year--and now, in 4 different cities (home and Pittsburgh, Boston, Columbus), and they've WON EVERY ONE. shouldn't I be waking up to a phone call from the Blackhawks office saying I get free tickets to all those home games I can't afford? or, failing that, getting a wakeup from a Blackhawks player? I'm off to look up recipes for lingonberry pancakes...er, actually, to have coffee and the Timbits (never tried these before) I brought back...as you can see below, you can find those in Columbus. I answered comments on the last few posts and I might try a new post while I watch the morning game vs. Red Wings today.

were you looking for a Brett Favre cake?

Yup, that's a Brett Favre cake
Originally uploaded by katherine of chicago

the followup to my previous post on Flickr search results. "Brett Favre cake" actually came up in results a while back...probably several times. and here's a photo I got of one at the Milwaukee Art Museum late May 2008, for a wedding (not one I was invited to, I was just visiting from Chicago for the day). obviously he was with a different team at the time...I wonder if it's too late to send this to Cake Wrecks or Deadspin or something.

posted because I think there's still football going on this weekend. but I'll be in Columbus for the Blackhawks game tomorrow, and back Sunday. have a great (start of the) weekend!

if you click on it you can access my Milwaukee photo set, and there's some cool stuff in there including my friend (who almost played pro hockey) in a Hartford Whalers hoodie...again with the Whalers references!

fun with search terms, and hats

so Ken at Hockey Gone Wild noticed that people had found his blog via a search for "fun winter hockey hats," and put up an enjoyable hat-related post, with a surprise link in it (I'll ruin the surprise at the bottom of this post). it made me think how I really need to see what search terms people use to find this blog ("panty jackpot" maybe? look it up in the tags), but it looks like I have to actually install something, it's not automatically in Blogger. so, since I can't do that yet, a little fun with Google and Google Images searches of my main Flickr account, where I have a lot of sports-related photos posted. well, ballpark and arena photos, not so much action shots.

most of the searches make sense; they're for specific places, and I get hits because I have pictures of those places. but I get odder ones (all examples from the past couple days): "bleak bedrooms," "funny students," "making friends on amtrak," "$2.89," "pictures of poignantly," "drunk people falling down." that last one may very well led someone to a Wrigley Field or United Center photo.

sports ones included:  "chicago wolves arena with fans," "mall of america field," "joe louis arena," "jerry uht park" (that's Erie, PA--I must be one of the only people with photos of Erie online, because it turns up a lot in searches), "buffalo memorial auditorium demolition," "secret stadium sauce" (I think that was Miller Park).

my Blackhawks home game photos, though I'm now about 10 games behind in posting them, are getting results: "united center blackhawks," "united center madhouse on madison," "united center lemonhead," "united center empty."

oh, and right before I started to belatedly write this post, a new post on Google Analytics at Hockey Night in Buffalo showed up, how about that? I promise to install that soon so I can give you something more entertaining. I also wanted a new Blackhawks winter hat to have a more fun photo than the one below, but either the style I want doesn't exist or they were out of it at the Blackhawks store this week...

glad I don't have to write sports headlines, #9 in an ongoing series

I'm sleepy. I watched a lot of games, or tried to. the 3 teams I try to follow all won, though I haven't been following the Leafs close enough to know who the guy above is. but he had a great first NHL goal! and even better, the wonderful capture above shows he could very well compete with Jonathan Toews for funny faces. you know...Toewsface. and Boston has Sturmface, which now has its own Tumblr blog. goodnight, more later.

"Holy guacamole, what a fight!"

okay, it's late, and I'm tired, and finishing the giant can of Molson I bought at the Albany-Renssalaer train station (but couldn't drink on the Amtrak back, unfortunately) feels like a chore at this point, as does blogging tonight...but I've gotta put up a couple fight videos, it's been a while. and it's been a busy week for NHL fights. checking hockeyfights.com for games just since Saturday, I noticed a high number of games with more than one fight. let's see:

Flames @ Canucks: 2 fights (I was watching this on a friend's computer on my trip, but only saw the 3rd, fightless period. quite an impressive Prust-Rypien battle)
Blues @ Kings: 3 fights
Avalanche @ Flames: 3, all in the 1st 4 minutes, including one only 20 seconds in! (forgot the start time on this one and missed them). this fight got a very high rating...the announcers are rather entertaining: "Holy guacamole, what a fight!" ...but you can find a more subdued feed with different announcers, one who uses the delightful phrase "haymaker city!"



Senators @ Thrashers: 2 fights
Blue Jackets @ Blues: 4, all in the 1st period
Canucks @ Wild: 3, all in the 3rd period
Bruins @ Ducks: 2, both in the 1st period
Capitals @ Lightning: 2, both in the 3rd period. one was (OF COURSE) Zenon Konopka, who actually got a win

and THIS one, where Ovechkin (!) moves to fight Downie (despite what the idiot announcers say about him not answering the bell) and Bradley hilariously jumps in. lots of debating about this one...I don't have strong feelings about these teams so I'm not going to offer much of an opinion (but I kind of wish Eager had done this for Toews in that Blues game the other week)


 
I finally noticed that not only is the Western Conference leading the NHL standings, but it looks to be leading in fights, too. not that there's a direct correlation; both the Sharks and Blues are in the top 10 of fighting majors, and they're having very different seasons. I know people keep stats on fights, but does anyone calculate those against other hockey stats? this all bears further investigation...maybe even by me.

(successfully resized these videos after the original post had them too large--thanks for the help)

How to Tend Goal: Better Ice Hockey for Boys, 1965

so last week I posted the Dit Clapper cigarette ad from 1941 and called it one of the greatest things I've ever seen. this is another. I first saw this book in Rodney's Bookstore in Cambridge, MA when my friend showed me the store last year. it's an amazing 6000 sf, 2-story used bookstore. just the baseball section is as big as the entire sports section in most used bookstores. I looked at the hockey books last time and thought this one was cute, but didn't buy it then because I wasn't really into hockey. this time I knew what nearly all the (mostly hard-to-find, out-of-print) hockey books were about, so I bought a few. I'll share them with you, but first my favorite part of Better Ice Hockey for Boys:

love this guy! I'm tempted to use his photo as my icon on SB Nation, at least until someone asks if it's a childhood photo of myself (I'm kind of gender-neutral when posting there). maybe more resemblance than I'd like *cries*

anyway, here's the rest of the goaltending section; of course you'll want to click on these to view large and get all the advice (I never try to resize these, so it shows up way too big when you do that)

 

 

the book is by George Sullivan, a freelance writer and WWII Navy veteran born in Lowell, Massachusetts. the goalie pictured above is named in the credits and I tried searching his name online...

Blackhawks @ Goodwill & other notes

I'm working on getting some goodies from my trip posted, plus there's recent hockey fights to discuss, but a few quick items...first, a typo I'm sure has been made many times before:

...but after that Milan Lucic Total Temperature Control commercial, all I can think of is Zenon Konopka doing an ad for a lighting store!

 

well, it's Goodwill, so what if all the letters aren't in "Wednesday"--at that price, does it matter? now theoretically I could go to this tomorrow, I do like Arlington Heights (a northwest suburb near O'Hare) but I'd have to figure out how to get there, and I've never actually met any hockey players or put much thought into what I'd say to them if I did (okay, I dream of running into athletes at some random place, but not where I'd have to wait in line)--just that hey, they're doing a great job (and sotto voce hint that Fraser should leave the fighting to someone else).

I mentioned the lights-out game the other night. the other oddity was the laser at a Flames-Canucks game from some creep in the audience, and a big fight in the KHL. both those link to Deadspin pieces because as always there's some amusing comments. in the case of the laser story, there's also a bit about the questionable goal at the Flyers-Penguins game, and that brought out something I rarely see in Deadspin comments--people who like different teams arguing and mudslinging. (strange that something that ruins comments sections on almost any other popular sports site is so rare there--of course they do have a stricter policy for commenting which I've never tried to figure out, mostly because I don't think I have anything funny to add.)

glad I don't have to write sports headlines, #8 in an ongoing series

well, I'm BACK from my fairly brief New England sports (and bookstores and diners) trip. I haven't unpacked or tried to upload my 1300+ photos, my apartment still isn't heated back to normal, I've still got over 2000 items of the nearly 2500 in my Bloglines to read...but here's a quick post because I can't believe there were THREE whole days at ALC without any new posts. it's as preposterous as imagining the Blackhawks could lose two consecutive games, and to low-ranked teams. fortunately, that wouldn't happen, would it?

I checked NHL.com a few times (and watched parts of a few games) on my host's computer, and saw this one:

well, guess it was inevitable (though I'm also guessing they've used that one before; there's a few Ricks in the NHL). the next two aren't terrible, they just make me wonder if the NHL Official Guide has a section on ways to work every player's name into common phrases or turn them into puns or whatever...

unrelated to headlines: now this is a game I wish I'd been watching online when the excitement happened. although the odds that I'd have been tuned in to see Lightning vs. Devils are...well, not that high.

there's a lot to catch up on here, and it won't even all be about hockey. see you later...

Blackhawks-Bruins, part 2: Hawks win 5-2

hey, that's not a bad headline (and bonus points for "Could it be
Satan?," regardless of how that name is actually pronounced). this was an exciting game to be at, though very different from Bruins @ Blackhawks last month. since it'll be a few days before I'm at my own computer, no real recap/photos yet. but I will say this: my Boston-area friend (who got me into hockey in the first place), who is also a Bruins & Blackhawks fan, wore his Duncan Keith jersey tonight (Keith is his favorite NHL player) (and loaned me a Hawks away jersey I wore for a while tonight), and I wore my Keith shirt (because I haven't saved up for any jersey yet), and damn if Keith didn't score TWO goals (only his second 2-goal game; the first was 2006) AND get an assist AND become #1 star of the game. (along with Kane and Toews, which just felt like rubbing it in to Boston--"hey, look, ALL our big-stars-with-new-contracts!") I'm not sure he's even scored in a while...but he did it for us! oh, and Blackhawks had to continue their streak of always winning when I see them--every Chicago game, plus Pittsburgh and Boston. (sadly, Boston has lost every game I've seen them play, but two were against the Hawks.) I wanted the Blackhawks to win (though I'd have felt fine if the Bruins won), but didn't want to see the B's lose that badly. as a nice Midwestern girl (uh...) I feel a little guilty.

oh hey, you should read this post at Hockey Gone Wild since it mentions me! and you should read the other posts there because I enjoy that blog quite a bit; if I hadn't ended up a Bruins fan due to the friend mentioned above (and past family connections to the Boston area), HGW might have been enough to convince me...

Bruins Captain Dit Clapper recommends Camels in 1941

OMG, this is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I was looking through my vintage recipe booklets and found a Feb. 1941 copy of Popular Science Monthly. I decided to look through it later but checked out the back cover and was amazed to find this. I didn't know I had anything hockey-related in my collection of vintage stuff. and that it's the Bruins (well, not like there were many teams to choose from back then)? wow! click to view large, of course!

yes, whether dressing for the game or dressed up at a restaurant, Camel cigarettes provide the "extras!" ah, the good old days when hockey players advertised cigarettes, but didn't wear masks or helmets! I hope I haven't messed with anyone's New Year's resolution to stop smoking by posting this...hell, it makes me want to start! (...kidding)

when I'm back home from my trip (posting this as a prelude to seeing my first Bruins game IN Boston tonight) I'll get in touch with the various hockey history sites and see if they know of this ad or others like it...

a quick note

(edited later: strangely, I've heard Ovie referred to as GR8 many times since I posted this, but I swear I'd hardly noticed it before, so this wasn't really a silly headline at all, and I feel silly posting it. but I want to leave the rest of the post, and it's a slightly creepy picture, so I'll leave this up.)

I am blogging this from lovely Cambridge, MA! it's a short trip so I'll try not to spend much of it on my friend's computer...but since I'm up watching the Blues @ Sharks game (chippy, plus a 90 second long Janssen-Shelley fight. to any non-hockey watchers--that's a LONG fight) I figured I should get in a quick post.

news roundup, mostly World Juniors and Blackhawks

first off: I'll be in Boston for the Blackhawks-Bruins game this Thursday. see the 5-day preview I did for the Hawks-B's game here (I know, still haven't posted a recap/photos), I guess it applies again! I'll be at the Providence game Fri., possibly the Worcester game Sat. but right now I have an Amtrak ticket to leave before then.

I only caught a little of the World Junior championship until the big USA vs. Canada gold medal game tonight. I found both US and Canadian online feeds and had them both going, while also keeping an eye on the Hawks and Bruins (and also the Maple Leafs), all of who won tonight. I wish I could have paid closer attention, it was very exciting, back and forth goals, then US finally had a real lead (5-3) then Canada tied it at the end. overtime didn't go on for too long, as I noticed the Americans were hugging each other, so I realized they'd scored and won. the most fun of it all was watching on Twitter. first Canada was a trending topic, then #WJC, then #WJC and USA when they won. so USA was trending when Canada wasn't--I was surprised. I was amused but also a little sad at how despondent and desperate the Canadian tweets were during the game. hopefully no riots are going on.

the championship is in Buffalo next year, and I'm seriously interested in going. (I like Buffalo, and no passport issues!) oh, and this piece at The Two-Line Pass, Suck It Canada, It's Our Game Now, cracked me up so much I had to edit this post to add it late. oh boy, what are things going to be like around Olympics time?

this is a sad and frustrating one...and I'll admit being on Twitter (and checking in on it a lot, if not necessarily posting) is useful to get breaking news. so I heard about the Chris Chelios DUI arrest (which actually happened 12/28, but just got out now?). obviously we'll be hearing a lot more about this.

kind of silly, but, wow, a game thread on Second City Hockey reached 1000 comments tonight, despite being a regular season game against a team people aren't that excited about (Minnesota Wild) and don't have a huge rivalry with. and not that much happened in the game, and it's a weeknight. WJC commentary was a large part of this, but I'm still amazed. (for the uninitiated, all 30 NHL teams have blogs on SB Nation and some have much busier game threads than others. Chicago is lucky to get in the 300-400 comment range.) I contributed, if you can call it that.

something very different on SCH: The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend, a personal story that was also posted on the St. Louis Blues blog on SBN, and you'll see why if you haven't read this yet. just read it...

as I first saw on Kukla's Korner, the Blackhawks have hired an official team historian. I'd love to help...

and check out this piece in New York Times on the oldest hockey arena in the U.S. (actually, the world's oldest indoor hockey arena still in use), Matthews Arena in Boston.

I wish I'd caught that mistake (uh, it was actually Wild vs Blackhawks), but Puck the Media noticed the above. not sure why Versus showed TWO Wild-Hawks games this season...

 

but hey, I found this one with mistakes in it by myself. I know they were in a hurry to post this, and I'm happy for how fast things show up on NHL.com, despite the occasional typo...