Monday, May 19, 2008
Different Kind of Ice Dragon
How about this for a new team mascot:
Posted @ 1:09 AM by Egger, Markus (markus@code-magazine.com) - Comments
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Going to the Hockey Hall of Fame...
...just to visit it, of course. Here is a re-post from my personal Travel Blog:
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Since I am in Toronto this week, I took advantage of the opportunity and visited the Hockey Hall of Fame! :-)
This was actually much cooler than I expected. At first, I wasn't even sure whether I wanted to go. To be honest, I only decided to go because Ellen had suggested it, and I thought "well... it will give me something to blog about". And now I am really glad I went. It was well worth seeing. I even found the building cool, which says "Temple du Hockey" on the outside:
Inside, you can see a whole bunch of stuff. Anything from display cases dedicated to individual "hall-of-famers" (like the one for Wayne Gretzky below) to just cool gear, videos, and even an area where you can shoot the puck or try your luck as a goalie.
Even my home country of Austria has a small appearance there, but only in the form of a few jerseys:
Well, maybe Thomas Vanek (Buffalo Sabres, and former "Zeller Eisbaeren" player... the club where I played as a kid) will be a hall-of-famer one day.
Anyway: The coolest display is the Stanley Cup. This is the closest I will ever get to it, unless the Ice Dragons go on a heck of a winning streak:
It was quite impressive in a way to see this thing up close. I actually didn't realize that the cup looked different before, with quite a few of its pieces cut off and put on a wall. I guess that makes sense considering that they have been doing this for over 100 years now. (Every winning player's name gets engraved on the cup, so they keep running out of room).
Of course they also have a gift-shop there. I considered buying a jersey or two, but holy-moly! Anywhere between $130 and $200 for a stupid jersey?!? They gotta be kidding. And that isn't even with a number or personalized or anything! (So I ended up going on NHL.com later, buying a personalized jersey with my name and number, which I can wear at some of my hobby games...for less than $100).
Anyway: This was a cool experience. If you are a hockey fan, I recommend you check this out if you ever have the chance...
Posted @ 11:01 PM by Egger, Markus (markus@code-magazine.com) - Comments
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Great Season
OK, that's it! The season came to an end last night with a referee-less scrimmage. Earlier last night, the North Stars defeated the Gunners 2:1 in overtime for the championship! Gunners lead up until a few minutes before the end. Then, the North Stars managed to tie it up and ended up winning in overtime. Pretty cool.
I think we had a pretty awesome season. We came out well ahead as #1 after the regular season. We took a tough loss against the Gunners in the semifinals. Really, we only came up 1 goal short for the whole season. Bummer! I think we finished #3 as far as the playoffs are concerned. I expected we'd have a real game against the Thunders for third place, but that didn't happen, so I am assuming that we are #3 as the highest ranking eliminated team after the regular season.
The scrimmage last night was good too. We had a few people play with us that hadn't played with us before, and we played an awesome game. Probably the best we ever played. Great passing, great control. We completely dominated the Vipers in this scrimmage. They hardly ever made it past the red line. At some point Zach sat in the goal with his gloves off waiting for something to happen. I was concerned he might get hemorrhoids before the night was over. (No, I haven't heard any more details about that one way or another, and I don't want to :-) ). I think if we always played the way we played last night, we would even be competitive in the Sunday league. It looked a bit like an A team playing a D team.
Anyway: We have a break now. The next season starts up on June 7th, since there is Memorial Day in between and a bunch of other stuff going on apparently. We will make more details available as soon as we get them...
Posted @ 3:29 PM by Egger, Markus (markus@code-magazine.com) - Comments
Friday, May 09, 2008
Game Over
Well, that's it! Eliminated in the semifinals. I am really disappointed, but in some ways, it wasn't all that surprising. We have been having trouble with lower-ranked teams all season. Not sure what it is, but we can't seem to get our game together when we think the team isn't all that strong. We didn't play horrible, but it sure wasn't a good game. The Gunners on the other hand played pretty good for their standards and deserved to move on. The game was still very close. We had tons of shots in the general direction of the goal, but we were off target too much.
There was an upset in the other semifinals game too. The North Stars beat the Thunders. I would have bet against that too. The Thunders told me they had been looking forward to playing us in the finals, and now we are both out. Oh, the irony! What really surprises me is that we do not play Thunders this weekend. I would have assumed that there is a consolation game for third place, but instead, it looks like there are only scrimmages. Well, I will still go. Should be a fun skate...
Posted @ 12:53 PM by Egger, Markus (markus@code-magazine.com) - Comments