A Kick Save and a Beauty

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Thoughts on a Career in Hockey..

October 14th, 2009 · Personal Hockey

When I returned from Washington, I was questioning everything I had previously thought, about wanting to work in hockey. Sure I’d had an amazing time, but was working in hockey, having to move half way across the world what i really wanted to do. A lot of the people weren’t as crazy passionate about hockey as I was, and to them, like many people, it was just a really damn cool job.

I came to the conclusion not long after my return that I could do something better with my life, my time and my brains than working in hockey. Something that wouldn’t require 30 years of fighting to get people to look past my Australianess and boobs.

Now,  I’m starting to question that outlook. Who am I to say that there was something “better”, more illustrious than this. Who am I to make it sound like, working in hockey was beneath me, because in hindsight that’s what it sounds like.

Hockey is my life. As much as my mother wishes it wasn’t and that I didn’t, I live and breath hockey in every way imaginable. The sport of hockey permeates my life, from being on the ice myself to helping develop teams and leagues for others, helping organise league championships, state and national tournaments and promote the sport within our community. Hockey is like a lifeblood to me.

I’ve always said I won’t work in hockey because I can do bigger and better things. Maybe, just maybe, hockey is that bigger and better thing. Maybe what I want to do, what I will do will be bigger and better things with the sport of hockey, for the sport of the hockey.

Hockey is what I love, what I care about more than just about anything, my passion, my life.. What’s so wrong with using my creativity, my ingenuity and my big ideas to do bigger and better things in it?

Nothing, I’ve realised.

So I’m Sasky Stewart, your future first female Commissioner of the NHL. Tell Gary B I’m on my way.

(I dream big)

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An Open Letter to the Toronto Maple Leaf

October 11th, 2009 · NHL Hockey

Dear Toronto Maple Leafs,

Our love affair has been an ongoing one. Besides the Mighty Ducks and Red Wings (loves which occured through accident and peer pressure), you were one of my first hockey loves. You were there for me as a scrawny 15 year old, yelling at the inanimate  box score as Philadelphia dispatched you from the playoffs in the second round, in what turns out to be the last time we saw you there.

Now Brian Burke’s taken the helm and the HMAS Leafs seems to be finding its way back on course, or so it seemed.

The pre-season brought glimpses of hope to Leafs Nation.  Several come from behind victories and victories in their own rights, dominating displays of pugnaciousness and truculence as Burke had promised and fans actually started to believe it’d all turn around.

Count me as one of those people. This “new” version of the Toronto Maple Leafs had me excited, eager even for the new season.

Turns out? Let down. Complete and utter let down and failure. So far atleast.

However, being a doomsayer less than 5 games in is totally naff a fact that the TSN staff don’t seem to understand. In fact, the TSN staff were already asking if the Maple leafs defence were overhyped 20 minutes into the first game of the season, and within two games, had already created a full blown goaltending controversey.

So you haven’t won a game yet. So you’re sitting in absolute last place in the league. So your fans are already once again alternately calling for a lynch mob or like you, pinning their hopes on a scruffy, monosyllabic painfully shy Wisconsin kid (FYI that’s Phil Kessel if you live under a rock, and haven’t ever witnessed him give an interivew).

Find a goalie who can keep it together. Get your defence to remember what defence is. Find some forwards (maybe that College should get a go again).

And really?

It’ll all be okay Toronto. It’ll all be okay.

And if it isn’t? Well… what’s new?

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Hockey Fashion: It’s the NHL meets Cyndi Lauper

October 7th, 2009 · NHL Hockey

CapitalsHockeyLauperI’m always looking for new and improved ways to wear my hockey t-shirts (which make up a massive portion of my wardrobe) in a way without loosing some semblence of style.  I admit to being a bit of (understatement there) a clotheshorse some days, and t-shirts with jeans are mostly not my style.

I’ve a tendency to wear my baseball jerseys with cardigans, wide belts and pearls, the same  with my hockey shirts, layered under pencil skirts and button ups for a bit of self satisfactions and so on.

My latest look is hockey shirts with a ridiculous black layered taffeta ruffle skirt from Supre (it’s french for “slut” is the saying we use for the store ). I’ve a feeling I’ll be rocking this look (regardless of how 80′s it is) for a few weeks, and with a few Heartbreak Hockey shirts, atleast.

How do you wear your hockey pride?

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Dot Points – 7th October

October 7th, 2009 · NHL Hockey

  • At this time, Matty Stajan is one of the NHL Top 10 League Scorers. This is probably never going to happen again, despite the fact he seems to be getting his Matty Stajan --> Top 10shit together this season and looks like he might actually be living up to the potential I, as a blindly misguided often fangirl believed he had,  and looks like he might actually get a shot to center Kessel when he’s right to go later in the season.  He’s a player that’s grown up through the Leafs organisation, making the jump straight to them our of juniors, and it’s good to see him finally stepping into a semblance of what they had hoped he could be when they gave him his latest contract.
  • I’m a fan of the retina burning Calgary uniforms. There’s something about the vintage uniform, throw backs to yesteryear when men were men, fights were a lot rougher and jerseys still had laces. God I love a good lace on a jersey. I’d love to have a pre-season original 6 tournment with all the vintage jerseys and some old school canada getting it on.
  • Dear Vancouver Canucks fans. The world is not ending and if it was? Andrew Raycroft is not your saviour (see. Boston, Toronto, Colorado).
  • Dear San Jose Sharks. Seriously guys? Is that what this season’s going to be like? I”m not getting the blowtorch out yet, that’s saved for atleast 10 games in, but this whole bipolar hockey team thing, is totally not cool. Your powerplay however looks completely lethal and rather terrifyingly dangerous.
  • The fact no one remembers Brad Boyes gets on my nerves. The most recent rage enducing moment? Daylife has pages for TJ Oshie, Brad Winchester, Brayden Schenn but no page for 40 + goal scorer Brad Boyes. At the point of realisaiton I started to rage at the computer and actually rang a friend to complain. She  Laughed
  • Dear TSN. CBC and HNIC’s montages kick your montages ass. They don’t need sweeping environment shots coupled with overblown assessments of the nature of the game of hockey and its relationship to Canadians and  some hammering into your skull. Take an amazing song, match it with some phenomenal editing and you’ll get a true look at the moments that make up hockey. Most HNIC montages give me shivers. My favourites so far have been the Season Finale (Sleeping Sickness by City and Colour) and the Season Opener (Human by The Killers)

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The Penguins and Taylor Swift Edition..

October 5th, 2009 · Slightly Awkward Photographs involving Hockey Players

Penguins and Taylor Swift

I’m not sure where to begin here.

Just a quick FYI Pittsburgh Penguins. Taylor Swift premiered the new Nashville 3rd jersey at her concert. Don’t think she’s going to be a fan of you guys anytime soon.

  • Tyler Kennedy looks like some scary creeper over in that corner, and I’m actually not sure if it’s a bird or the snitch from Harry Potter tattooed on his arm. I’m wondering really which;d really be better. I’m leaning towards the snitch, because then it’d atleast establish the boy can read well enough to have gotten through the Harry Potter books (or atleast Book 1).
  • I admit, I’m not entirely sure who that is between Kennedy and Swifty there and my desire to google is lacking, but I do know it’s not Eric Tangradi. Mr Tangradi seemed upset on his twitter account about the fact he’d actually missed out attending the concert. I’m hoping he was sad because he missed out on getting to hit on Ms Swift rather than the fact he missed her music because well whilst it’s totally cool for 20 year old girl me to love herself some Taylor Swift, I”m not sure how good it’s for a pro hocky player’s rep. Then again, maybe I should have had this conversation with  Jonathan Tavares and PK Subban before they told all of Canada about their love of Mariah Carey.
  • Taylor Swift. Keep on being awesome, being a token hockey loving musician and writing songs I can sing embarrassingly loud in my car. I’m such a girl for an ice hockey player.
  • Jordan Staal. Yeah.. So you look kind of awkward but having seen you grow up from first breaking into the league I”m reasonably satisfied by the fact you don’t look completely lost as to what’s actually going on. The shirts kind of cute in an low-level ironic way and I”m pleased to see it doesn’t involve kellogs cartoon characters and there’s no yellow gongshow lid beign worn. Small fashion victories.
  • Max Talbot. That….. shirt. I mean really Max. We love you because you’re quirky and funny and honestly brash and it’s all rather endearing, but i’m not interly sure that shirts ironed let alone buttoned right, and it tends to be the only thing in the picture. I mean who’s eyes aren’t going Penguin.. That Shirt. Oh look it’s Tayl… What is with that shirt?

All in all? I’d still take atleast three members of that photo home with me. + 3.

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Enabling the Hockey Addicted..

October 4th, 2009 · NHL Hockey

If I’m a hockey addict, then Saturday’s NHL FaceOff was a high-quality high-quantity drugs dealt to me by the NHL. Unlike pre-season hockey, it didn’t slowly build me back into my bad habits, giving me a handful of games to choose from. Instead it gave me more options than I could handle and left me juggling score sheets, dodgy video feeds and attempting to get my parents out of the house faster so I could wallow in hockey in the air-conditioning in peace.

Toronto v Washington

I felt pretty bad for Luke Schenn, watching the kid suffer the fate many far more experienced defenceman have suffered at the hands of Alex Ovechkin. Still, getting caught flat footed with your stick adrift doesn’t really help anyone. A really great fantasy move on my behalf (if it pans out) in drafting both Ovechkin and his set up man in Nicklas Backstrom. I kind of had to draft Backstrom, I did call the team Backstrom’s Back.

San Jose v Anaheim

I’m pretty sure the San Jose Sharks don’t like the Ducks. If they did, I’d be pretty pissed with them too, because someone unleashes the utter humiliation the ducks did last season in the playoffs and you still liked them, well you don’t have enough of anything that I care to have on my team.

There was some nice highlights of the cheap stuff Corey Perry has indulged in over the past season. Most don’t phase me too much, because really, we’re all a little cheap with a hockey stick at heart. That was until I watched him hack at the face off a Shark face down on the ice near the beds. Corey Perry? That shit ain’t cool. I hope he learnt his lesson though. Rob Blake will eat his soul next time.

Patrick Marleau, with that geeky smile and those thick eyebrows and all that Saskatchewan farm-boy-ness will always be my captain. I however, am a big fan of your subtle screw you I can lead in other ways to the Sharks organisation with those three goals in two games. I’m so Team Marleau.

Todd McLellan is a Bad Marriage Counsellor

That’s going to be my husband in a decade or so. When I let someone marry me.

Hey Correy Perry? I still don’t like you. Even if you’re on my fantasy team. But I didn’t pick you. My computer froze and autodrafted. So it’s not willing.

Chicago v Florida

Seriously, the Chicago Blackhawks are the most retardedly hilarious NHL team out there. I’m pretty sure they’re about as mature as most NHL teams, but most NHL teams don’t give Patrick Sharp are camera and tell him to film his 12 year old team mates and their adventures. More on that at a later date. If you haven’t seen them though check out Blackhawks TV.

Boston v Carolina

I love watching Milan Lucic make people bleed. Ridiculously unexplainable but a guilty pleasure of mine.

Not much in the way of witty insight tonight, we’re barely a game per team into the season and anything so far that could be considered a controversy worth discussion is entirely media created (excluding the goalie controversy created by Vesa Toskala’s completely lack of ability to save his own job). On that front, I’m going to sprawl out on my bed, watch the rest of the Hawks v Panthers game out and crash out.

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Far from Frozen

October 3rd, 2009 · Personal Hockey

For several years, intermittently and even then that’s far to strong a word, I’ve blogged about what’s going on in my life, and my love of the game of hockey. Finally, however, I decided that a) I should blog more (despite the fact another blogger is the last thing the world needs) and b) if I’m going to talk so damn much about hockey I should probably take it elsewhere.

So this is that elsewhere,  A Kick Save and a Beauty, a title I felt both appropriate on a geeky hockey quote level, on a 7 year goaltender level and a girly girl fashion lover level. I also figured, what better day to start this than the first official day of the season.  That was yesterday and as I failed to do that, what better day to start than today! The second day of the season

So where do I start? Maybe with today’s games or the love I’ve refound for the Leafs. What about my latest girl crushes on Brian Burke, Matt Duchene or Brent Seabrook’s hair (really anything to do with the Blackhawks and their dysfunctional trip to Europe)?

No. I figured the best place to start this all was at the very start. The very start So here it is, the story of how a teenage Australian girl found hockey.

It’s not the longest story but it started whilst growing up in Australia in a rural town. Having seen an ad for inline hockey on TV, my brother signed up and after a few weeks of him playing, my father dragged me along (albeit kicking and screaming, most undignified for a 13 year old). Within minutes of seeing it I had fallen in love and signed up to play.

At that time, our court was a basketball court with wooden boards and nets that the club had built (and over the next few seasons, I was involved in moving again and again and our club was small, no more than 30 of us who played each other week after week, it was a great place.

On a Wednesday afternoon in June 2003, I turned the tv on, passing the time before hockey only to find Ice Hockey. Paul Kariya skated up the ice, the Duck emblazoned on his chest, and committed what I soon learnt to be one of the cardinal sins of hockey. His head down, Kariya crossed the red line and whilst watching his pass slide to a teammate he was knocked unconscious by Scott Stevens. After regaining consciousness, breath fogging his visor and being helped from the rink, Kariya returned, scoring the game winning goal.

By the time the puck fluttered over Brodeur’s shoulder, the red light went on, I had fallen in love with the sport. 6 years later, I still am.

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