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.

Getting Into the Spirit

Happy Hockey Season, Folks!  It's been (almost exactly) a month since my last post over here.

It's a really good thing that a solid portion of the content over here to date is just me thinking aloud and/or posting data for my own edification, or I might worry about my pageviews.  That will be changing a bit with this fall, regular posts and less abstract rambling, but I'll save the off-the-wall flash for Caps Outsider.

The Burden of Protection - Head Trauma from the Far Side

First, the prerequisite link:  New post over at Capitals Outsider today - The Lesser-Known Caps in the System [2/2].

Today's post was originally going to be on the topic of the NHL's summer R&D camp, but that's been pushed back a few days.  Instead, since a large portion of the hockey community is debating how soon is too soon to use Wade Belak's death as the launching point for a Fighting Discussion, I'll be touching on the last great source of public outcry: Head Trauma.  And because this blog looks at hockey with an emphasis on the officials involved, I'll be focusing on the role of on-ice officials in the rule changes that have been rolled out over the last year.

All About the Angles (Spectator's Edition)

As is to be expected, given that the thing with Something's Bruin is a go (did I mention I'm ridiculously excited about that?  No?  Right, moving on), I've started paying a lot more attention to referees-who-are-not-me.  It should be a simple thing, right?  Organize the schedule, log some dedicated hours watching televised games, pay attention to what's going on on the ice when I'm at work.

As I'm sure we all know, it's never actually that easy.  For one thing, when they televise NHL games, the cameras follow that little matte black dot known as a puck.  This means that, at any given time, you're lucky to catch sight of one member of the four man crew.  It makes tracking referee movement difficult, to put it nicely.

Does anyone know how the streamed AHL games stack up?  I suspect they're not better than the NHL in terms of full-rink/larger picture aspects, but the low budget might actually work in my favour on this one.

Spending five days a week in the scorekeeper's box should help the situation.  It does.  And if you haven't spent time in the scorekeeper's box, it probably looks like a great view of the ice.  It is.  Right up until you try to see what's going on along the near-side boards anywhere outside of the Neutral Zone.  At that point, you can kiss your view (and the muscles in your neck) goodbye.

Granted, when it comes to refwork analysis, the games I work (both on and off the ice) tend to be two man crews, so they're useful for very different reasons.

Next project, getting caught up on writing assignments and tracking down an operating budget for the NHL.

Hit the Road. It Hit Back. Story of My Life.

Took a quick road trip up to Boston over the weekend for a Winter Classic viewing party and some socializing.  I had a blast, as I expected to, and had the surprisingly genuine pleasure of watching the game with a Pens fan who shares my approach to hockey fandom (Hockey First, Team Second, and remember that everyone's human, eh?).

While up in New England, I also caught the Manchester Monarchs/Providence Bruins game, and I'm shooting to have a write-up on the reffing involved done in the next few days for Something's Bruin (no idea if they'll use it, but if they don't, expect it to show up over here).

Today I played catch-up from the 20 hours of driving and 16 hours of drinking that were necessitated by the event (or, let's be honest, 16 hours of socializing and about 2 hours of drinking - my liver's just not that above-average).  Tomorrow I'm back to classes (winter session First Responder training, because I don't know how to take time off, apparently), and also back to the rink.

There's been a management shift over the holiday break regarding the scorekeepers that makes me a bit uncomfortable, but we'll see how things shake out.  I'm currently in the process of making it clear just how much they failed to train me initially, and the problems that Pointstreak manifests when one is dealing with a sketchy internet connection, so I may or may not suddenly be the new supervisor's least favorite person in a hurry.  Worst case, I end up swapping the majority of my hours to my other rink if things don't go well, but that would be a shame.

It's 2011, everyone.  Welcome back to the grind!