I found this lovely photo at Flickr -- on a page devoted to pond hockey. It was taken by Davo McDougall somewhere in Ontario, Canada.
Between this photo and the news yesterday that it was snowing in Mammoth, I sometimes wonder what the hell I'm doing living in So Cal. I love it here -- but how awesome would it be to play hockey with some friends outside on a Sunday morning?
--Steve Hymon
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Move over Florida Panthers -- Chicago Blackhawks suck, too
I took a jab at the Panthers yesterday for losing to the sixth-place team in the Finnish hockey league.
Well, the Blackhawks -- who came within a series of reaching the Stanley Cup Finals last season -- took it on the chin yesterday, losing to the ZCS Lions of Zurich. The Lions are not even the best team in Switzerland. Davos won the Swiss title last year. Here's a good story in the NYT.
The Blackhawks were without their new free agent stud Marian Hossa. But if they are truly this wretched -- let's face it, it's only September -- that could be good news for conference rivals the Ducks and the Kings.
--Steve Hymon
Well, the Blackhawks -- who came within a series of reaching the Stanley Cup Finals last season -- took it on the chin yesterday, losing to the ZCS Lions of Zurich. The Lions are not even the best team in Switzerland. Davos won the Swiss title last year. Here's a good story in the NYT.
The Blackhawks were without their new free agent stud Marian Hossa. But if they are truly this wretched -- let's face it, it's only September -- that could be good news for conference rivals the Ducks and the Kings.
--Steve Hymon
Even my dog can steal the puck from me!
That's Teddy, the rescue dog. He's a scrappy little hellion that would surely serve well on some team's fourth line.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Puck Boy contemplates first half-marathon with dread
I ran a half-marathon Monday night. It was 13.1-mile training run that almost threatened to leave me laying face down in the parking lot of a Honey Baked Ham store with a bad hamstring (the irony!) about a mile from the finish line. Instead, I limped across Sierra Madre Boulevard, yelling "motherfucker" to no one in particular, avoiding arrest (we're very civil here in Pasadena) and ending my little jog.
The good news: I ran my course through the mean streets of Pasadena, San Marino, South Pasadena and back to East Pasadena in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 36 seconds. And I did it without losing control of any bodily functions or having my nipples bleed. Nor did I get hit by a car -- a major accomplishment in an area that boasts some of the most untalented and assholic drivers on the planet.
I mean, really, what kind of spacehead drives with their brights on at 7:30 p.m. on a street with street lights? The kind, apparently, that wants to blind joggers trying not to fall on uneven, unlit sidewalks. This is what happens when you populate an entire city with 110 year old people and send them to Denny's for the early-bird special dinner at the same time. By 7:30, they're nearly comatose and I resemble Big Pussy in 'The Sopranos' -- a big, fat target.
What does any of this have to do with hockey?
Well, about the same time that I decided it was imperative that I learn to play hockey, a friend of mine and I signed up for a 5K race in late March in Pasadena. I barely trained and went on a ski trip the week before the race. And then I ran a terrible race. I'm not going to publish the time it's so embarrassing. Mothers pushing two-ton strollers filled with quintuplets were beating me.
The good news: I ran my course through the mean streets of Pasadena, San Marino, South Pasadena and back to East Pasadena in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 36 seconds. And I did it without losing control of any bodily functions or having my nipples bleed. Nor did I get hit by a car -- a major accomplishment in an area that boasts some of the most untalented and assholic drivers on the planet.
I mean, really, what kind of spacehead drives with their brights on at 7:30 p.m. on a street with street lights? The kind, apparently, that wants to blind joggers trying not to fall on uneven, unlit sidewalks. This is what happens when you populate an entire city with 110 year old people and send them to Denny's for the early-bird special dinner at the same time. By 7:30, they're nearly comatose and I resemble Big Pussy in 'The Sopranos' -- a big, fat target.
What does any of this have to do with hockey?
Well, about the same time that I decided it was imperative that I learn to play hockey, a friend of mine and I signed up for a 5K race in late March in Pasadena. I barely trained and went on a ski trip the week before the race. And then I ran a terrible race. I'm not going to publish the time it's so embarrassing. Mothers pushing two-ton strollers filled with quintuplets were beating me.
The perfect cure for work: Tuesday's hockey timewasters
ESPN's first power rankings of the season puts the Ducks at No. 9 in the NHL and the Kings at No. 14. I'd pay to see a Ducks-Kings playoff matchup but I think the police would be well-advised to do weapons searches before each game -- I mean for the players, not the fans. ESPN
Looks like Sega figured out a way to ruin good ol' air hockey by superimposing graphics and other nasty visual crap on the table. This is a good example of fixing something that wasn't broken. Geek.com
The Florida Panthers managed to lose to a team that finished in sixth place in Finland's hockey league. Ouch! NYT Slapshot
If you're one of those nutcases that likes to dress your pet in human clothes, USA Hockey is having a pet-in-hockey-gear contest--that's my favorite entry above. This is probably how both myself and my dogs will spend the afternoon. USA Hockey
Fantasy Sports Girl weighs in on goalie prospects for your team while wearing shirt that appears it remained in the dryer a few minutes too long. YouTube
Ever do so much drugs you couldn't help but wonder what would happen if you put three hockey pucks in a blender? Maybe you didn't, but Tom Dickson did. YouTube
Check out this facility -- Shoot2Score -- that is in San Clemente and is dedicated solely to training hockey players. The downside, of course, is that it's in the OC hinterlands and the lessons are pricey. Shoot2Score
--Steve Hymon
photo: USA Hockey
Looks like Sega figured out a way to ruin good ol' air hockey by superimposing graphics and other nasty visual crap on the table. This is a good example of fixing something that wasn't broken. Geek.com
The Florida Panthers managed to lose to a team that finished in sixth place in Finland's hockey league. Ouch! NYT Slapshot
Fantasy Sports Girl weighs in on goalie prospects for your team while wearing shirt that appears it remained in the dryer a few minutes too long. YouTube
Ever do so much drugs you couldn't help but wonder what would happen if you put three hockey pucks in a blender? Maybe you didn't, but Tom Dickson did. YouTube
Check out this facility -- Shoot2Score -- that is in San Clemente and is dedicated solely to training hockey players. The downside, of course, is that it's in the OC hinterlands and the lessons are pricey. Shoot2Score
--Steve Hymon
photo: USA Hockey
Monday, September 28, 2009
Kings get some love in the NYT!
The Kings' smart decision to hire Rich Hammond as a writer received coverage in the New York Times on Sunday.
The most salient part of the short story was a reference to the Cincinnati Bengals decision to hire a sportswriter, Geoff Hobson, to cover them a decade ago -- at the time a pioneering move.
Some fans, of course, say that Hobson sold out. But I've found his coverage of the team on the Bengals' website to be fairly even-handed over the years. He certainly isn't afraid to criticize the team. Although I think he has very occasionally soft-pedaled the Bengals' ineptness, the vast majority of the time I find his reporting fair and informative.
I'm a Bengals fan (it's not my fault I was born in Cincinnati!) and I recently mentioned the hiring of Hobson during a job interview with a government agency. My point then, and now, remains the same: if the media isn't going to cover your team or your business or your agency, then it's up to you to try to provide the most honest coverage you can muster.
--Steve Hymon
The most salient part of the short story was a reference to the Cincinnati Bengals decision to hire a sportswriter, Geoff Hobson, to cover them a decade ago -- at the time a pioneering move.
Some fans, of course, say that Hobson sold out. But I've found his coverage of the team on the Bengals' website to be fairly even-handed over the years. He certainly isn't afraid to criticize the team. Although I think he has very occasionally soft-pedaled the Bengals' ineptness, the vast majority of the time I find his reporting fair and informative.
I'm a Bengals fan (it's not my fault I was born in Cincinnati!) and I recently mentioned the hiring of Hobson during a job interview with a government agency. My point then, and now, remains the same: if the media isn't going to cover your team or your business or your agency, then it's up to you to try to provide the most honest coverage you can muster.
--Steve Hymon
At least the rink is photogenic
Here's a photo of exciting adult rec league action Sunday afternoon at the dumpy Pasadena rink -- although those windows definitely provide some ambiance. I was at the rink for some stick time -- where members of my Wednesday night class spontaneously started practicing drills we kind of fucked up last week before enjoying a little three-on-three pickup.
Interesting thing about the game was that one of the team's lacked a goalie. So they played with a screen over that team's goal. The screen had small openings in the corner and a hole in the middle. Apparently the openings were still too large because the team opted to lose the screen and instead play with a sixth man after giving up a bunch of goals in the first period.
I'd provide the teams' names and final score except the website that keeps track of the league is presently down.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Puck Boy discovers new, most excellent hockey clinic
It's probably extremely normal for a 43-year-old adult male to wake up at 4 a.m., too excited to sleep because of an adult hockey clinic later that morning. If so, I'm pleased to be part of the bell curve!
That was me on Saturday morning, laying wide awake and staring at the ceiling at such an unseemly hour. As it turns out, my excitement was warranted: the hockey 101 class I participated in Saturday morning at Burbank's Pickwick Ice Center was most excellent, an intimate little affair on a full NHL-sized rink.
And, get this: I finally put together some cross-overs while dribbling the puck. That may not be something you veteran hockey players drop trou and whack the stick over. But for me, Mr. Beginning Hockey Player, it was totally whack-worthy.
Pickwick has an in-house coach -- I'll call him T (I rarely use names of fellow players to protect their privacy and innocence) -- who is often seen giving private skating lessons during public sessions. The dude just floats on his skates and apparently clocked some time with the Chinese national team.
That was me on Saturday morning, laying wide awake and staring at the ceiling at such an unseemly hour. As it turns out, my excitement was warranted: the hockey 101 class I participated in Saturday morning at Burbank's Pickwick Ice Center was most excellent, an intimate little affair on a full NHL-sized rink.
And, get this: I finally put together some cross-overs while dribbling the puck. That may not be something you veteran hockey players drop trou and whack the stick over. But for me, Mr. Beginning Hockey Player, it was totally whack-worthy.
Pickwick has an in-house coach -- I'll call him T (I rarely use names of fellow players to protect their privacy and innocence) -- who is often seen giving private skating lessons during public sessions. The dude just floats on his skates and apparently clocked some time with the Chinese national team.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Kings do the smart thing and hire their own beat writer
As Kings fans likely know by now, longtime Daily News beat writer Rich Hammond announced this week that he will soon be covering the team -- with the team as his new employer.
This is a good move, both for Hammond personally and the Kings. As bad as things are at the Newspaper Whose Name I Shall Not Speak (my former employer), they're even worse at the sinking ship that is the Daily News. So Hammond is smart to jump now rather than be pushed later.
As for the Kings, they've seen their media coverage shrink. Some of it is self-inflicted, of course, owing to the fact they haven't been in the playoffs since 2002 in a market that boasts a lot of other pro or pro-like teams (i.e. USC football). But it's also true that the media treats hockey as a second-tier sport for a variety of reasons -- including, in my view, the bias of editors toward baseball, football, the Lakers and USC.
The sad result was that too often the Kings were going uncovered last season. No area newspapers sent reporters on the road with the team and instead relied on Associated Press coverage. And some of the Kings games in Canada weren't even televised.
So the team did the smart thing -- something Major League Baseball and other pro teams began doing a few years ago. They hired a beat writer to cover them and, according to Hammond, gave him editorial freedom to write what he wants.
Yes, there's always the danger of self-censorship -- i.e. someone not writing something because they don't want to anger their employer. I tend to think that's mostly an aesthetic argument. My view is that on balance hockey fans will gain a lot more than they lose. Hammond is now freed up on a full-time basis to write about the team and travel with them. Being on the road will also help give him a league-wide perspective.
I'm writing about this issue because it hits home for yours truly. In recent years, I covered City Hall and the transportation beats at the newspaper where I worked. Now I'm working for some of those folks and one of those jobs will involve writing for a government agency that, like the Kings, isn't happy that the media doesn't cover them much anymore.
Is it an ideal situation? Yes and no. Like pretty much everyone, I'd like to see a free press pursue coverage of all the many things that make the world interesting, including sports and government.
That said, for many years now government hasn't been very effective explaining what it does because they relied on the press to do it for them. As someone who spent much of the past 20 years working in journalism, it's my firm conviction that the press is hardly perfect. Things go uncovered that should be written about, things are covered only because they're easy to cover and context is often missing or exaggerated to please the whims of editors -- who may or may not know what they're talking about.
So, all in all, this is a good solution for the Kings and, if anything, Hammond will find himself in the same position of the team he's now covering. Fans will expect him to deliver and will likely hold him accountable if he does not (in other words, he'll be tried and sentenced on other blog sites). But I doubt that will be an issue. Hammond has done a fine job over the years and it's hard to imagine him doing anything less this season.
--Steve Hymon
This is a good move, both for Hammond personally and the Kings. As bad as things are at the Newspaper Whose Name I Shall Not Speak (my former employer), they're even worse at the sinking ship that is the Daily News. So Hammond is smart to jump now rather than be pushed later.
As for the Kings, they've seen their media coverage shrink. Some of it is self-inflicted, of course, owing to the fact they haven't been in the playoffs since 2002 in a market that boasts a lot of other pro or pro-like teams (i.e. USC football). But it's also true that the media treats hockey as a second-tier sport for a variety of reasons -- including, in my view, the bias of editors toward baseball, football, the Lakers and USC.
The sad result was that too often the Kings were going uncovered last season. No area newspapers sent reporters on the road with the team and instead relied on Associated Press coverage. And some of the Kings games in Canada weren't even televised.
So the team did the smart thing -- something Major League Baseball and other pro teams began doing a few years ago. They hired a beat writer to cover them and, according to Hammond, gave him editorial freedom to write what he wants.
Yes, there's always the danger of self-censorship -- i.e. someone not writing something because they don't want to anger their employer. I tend to think that's mostly an aesthetic argument. My view is that on balance hockey fans will gain a lot more than they lose. Hammond is now freed up on a full-time basis to write about the team and travel with them. Being on the road will also help give him a league-wide perspective.
I'm writing about this issue because it hits home for yours truly. In recent years, I covered City Hall and the transportation beats at the newspaper where I worked. Now I'm working for some of those folks and one of those jobs will involve writing for a government agency that, like the Kings, isn't happy that the media doesn't cover them much anymore.
Is it an ideal situation? Yes and no. Like pretty much everyone, I'd like to see a free press pursue coverage of all the many things that make the world interesting, including sports and government.
That said, for many years now government hasn't been very effective explaining what it does because they relied on the press to do it for them. As someone who spent much of the past 20 years working in journalism, it's my firm conviction that the press is hardly perfect. Things go uncovered that should be written about, things are covered only because they're easy to cover and context is often missing or exaggerated to please the whims of editors -- who may or may not know what they're talking about.
So, all in all, this is a good solution for the Kings and, if anything, Hammond will find himself in the same position of the team he's now covering. Fans will expect him to deliver and will likely hold him accountable if he does not (in other words, he'll be tried and sentenced on other blog sites). But I doubt that will be an issue. Hammond has done a fine job over the years and it's hard to imagine him doing anything less this season.
--Steve Hymon
Adult hockey even better than Fight Club -- too bad no one knows about it
I received word yesterday that the Wednesday night adult clinics at the Valley Ice Center in Panorama City were being canceled because too few people where showing up.
That's a shame. The world, in my humble view, needs more adult hockey classes -- not less.
I'm heading to Burbank tomorrow morning for one of their adult clinics. I met the coach during a public skate last weekend and he invited me to come out -- also mentioning that attendance recently has been sparse.
In no way am I picking on any particular rink, but I do think there's a larger problem out there in hockey-land: the skating industry is not going a particularly good job of getting more people involved in the sport, at least here in Southern California.
It's peculiar, because in my view the thing missing from the life of many adult men and women is ice hockey. They may not know it's missing yet -- at this time last year I was among the uninformed. But if they had a chance to try to the sport they may soon realize a few hours of fun playing hockey each week goes a long way to erasing a lot of the drudgery and bullshit of everyday life between ice sessions.
I'm not exactly what the cure is, but I have a few ideas. Hockey is kind of like skiing in that the perception among many people is that the barrier to entry is high in terms of cost and equipment. Plus, I'm betting many adults don't realize that most recreational leagues are non-checking and don't tolerate or encourage fighting, as does the NHL.
At present, each rink markets its own hockey programs and information is oftenhard to come by. There is no standard and no one organization charged with figuring out how to grow the sport (or at least keep it from shrinking) in the region.
If there is one group that may have the reach to turn the tide, it may be the L.A. Kings, as they're the hockey club with the most visibility and the team seems to be on the cusp of being pretty good. The Kings, plus the area's minor league teams, could organize beginner adult clinics around the area and then market them at games and through their telecasts.
It would likely be a royal pain and pricey to organize, but I think there are plenty of adults willing to give hockey a try with a little shove and if they knew there were adult beginner programs. I also think a Kings-led program would help rebuild the fan base, as there's no better way to create a fan than to give them a chance to play the game.
--Steve Hymon
That's a shame. The world, in my humble view, needs more adult hockey classes -- not less.
I'm heading to Burbank tomorrow morning for one of their adult clinics. I met the coach during a public skate last weekend and he invited me to come out -- also mentioning that attendance recently has been sparse.
In no way am I picking on any particular rink, but I do think there's a larger problem out there in hockey-land: the skating industry is not going a particularly good job of getting more people involved in the sport, at least here in Southern California.
It's peculiar, because in my view the thing missing from the life of many adult men and women is ice hockey. They may not know it's missing yet -- at this time last year I was among the uninformed. But if they had a chance to try to the sport they may soon realize a few hours of fun playing hockey each week goes a long way to erasing a lot of the drudgery and bullshit of everyday life between ice sessions.
I'm not exactly what the cure is, but I have a few ideas. Hockey is kind of like skiing in that the perception among many people is that the barrier to entry is high in terms of cost and equipment. Plus, I'm betting many adults don't realize that most recreational leagues are non-checking and don't tolerate or encourage fighting, as does the NHL.
At present, each rink markets its own hockey programs and information is oftenhard to come by. There is no standard and no one organization charged with figuring out how to grow the sport (or at least keep it from shrinking) in the region.
If there is one group that may have the reach to turn the tide, it may be the L.A. Kings, as they're the hockey club with the most visibility and the team seems to be on the cusp of being pretty good. The Kings, plus the area's minor league teams, could organize beginner adult clinics around the area and then market them at games and through their telecasts.
It would likely be a royal pain and pricey to organize, but I think there are plenty of adults willing to give hockey a try with a little shove and if they knew there were adult beginner programs. I also think a Kings-led program would help rebuild the fan base, as there's no better way to create a fan than to give them a chance to play the game.
--Steve Hymon
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