Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A Few Much Less Serious Thoughts

To balance out my somewhat wandering ramble about rule standardization, discretionary enforcement, and the drawbacks of a volunteer organization, I present a brief roundup of my last few weeks.  Relevant publication links included.

ECHL:
The South Carolina Stingrays have had a fantastic road trip, sweeping the last six of seven games over a ten day period.  I had the chance to catch them up in Reading, and it was well worth the drive.  It was great to see the guys play in person, and it's amazing what spending 4 hours editing photos can do for facial recognition (sadly, this was after-the-fact, so I still ended up asking Joe Pereira if he'd seen any of the Caps prospects wandering around while having no idea who he was).

Reading hosted a small crowd, as I'm lead to believe is the norm.  It's the smallest arena I've been in for a professional event to date, but I had a good time everything was very well run given what they had to work with.

I also had a chance to speak with their coach, Spencer Carbery, and was very impressed with what he had to say about the domino effect in minor league hockey (article on the subject will be going up on Capitals Outsider eventually, but it could be a while).

In short, my affection for the ECHL has grown, and I'm just incredibly glad I could swing the Monday trip.  For articles over at CO regarding the 'Rays, click here

AHL:
The Hershey Bears are also continuing to have a good stretch, leading up to the AHL's All Star Game.  They've been winning since they lost the Outdoor Classic in OT, and this Friday night's game will be their first back in action since a win last Saturday in Binghamton.  My plans just got thrown into flux due to a death in the family, but I'm slated to be in Hershey for both Saturday and Sunday's games against Manchester at the moment.

For recent articles over at CO regarding the Bears, click here.

Life:
Has been busy, between the day job at the rink and the occasional bouts of press work.  I'm finding that the older I get, the less well I tolerate cold, although it could just be a side-effect of ending up on the rink with wet hair regularly.

Women's league has been solid, albeit my natural talent for injuries seems to be shining through again.  Have a likely bruised bone, and some soft-tissue damage that amounts to "I didn't break my butt, I just busted it."  Suffice it to say, it's been a fun week.

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