Thursday, January 26, 2012

\m/

This is an actual conversation that took place at my house tonight. Note for the record that Nicky is 9 and has been playing the guitar for about a year and a half.

Me: Nicky, can you practice your guitar please?
Nicky: I can't find my song sheet. It's not in my book.

We searched his room and the office for a while, no luck.

Nicky: Can we look on the internet for the music and print another one?
Me: Sure.

<Fires up the browser, heads to google.ca>

Me: What's the name of the song?
Nicky: Master of Puppets.
Me: O_O

Nicky and some friends, when his hair was longer.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

In Lax We Trust archive

I was part of the inlaxwetrust.com writing staff for almost five months, and wrote 23 articles in that time. Here are links to all of them. I'm not posting this because I expect you, dear reader, to read any of them. This article is mainly an archive for my own use so that if I want to link to one of them, I can easily find the link here.

However if you do want to read one or two, the Salaries of Lacrosse Players one was very popular (especially among lacrosse players!), and the entry draft one too. My personal favourites tended to be the funny ones – I had fun writing the "looking forward" one (more satire than comedy; let me know in the comments (here – comments on that article are closed) if you're one of the few that got the "price is right" joke) and the one about lacrosse movies. For more analysis and less comedy, I also liked the NLL Awards article.

 

Update: In June 2012, In Lax We Trust changed hosting companies and became inlacrossewetrust.com. When that happened all of the archives were lost, and so none of the links below will work. I wish I had saved copies of the articles before this happened but I didn't. As far as I know, all of these articles are gone forever. <sad>

Title Description
NLL Season Preview: Philadelphia Wings I investigate the personnel changes and preview the offense, defense, and goaltending of the Wings in the (then-upcoming) 2012 season.
Other Stories from the NLL Hold Out List There was a lot of talk about the NLL Hold-out list because of the drama surrounding Anthony Cosmo, so I made up some other stories. Teddy Jenner didn't like this one.
Salaries of Lacrosse Players Probably my most popular ILWT article – several NLL players retweeted the link to this one. I compare the salaries that NLL players make with those of other pro athletes.
Teachers and Firefighters in the NLL Almost all NLL players have jobs outside of playing lacrosse, but it seems that a lot of them are either firefighters or teachers.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Colorado Mammoth Review of the changes made by the Mammoth after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Buffalo Bandits Review of the changes made by the Bandit after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Calgary Roughnecks Review of the changes made by the Roughnecks after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Washington Stealth Review of the changes made by the Stealth after the 2011 season.
Upcoming Lacrosse Movies Some ideas for movies that could be made involving lacrosse. Another fun one.
NLL expansion: Just say no Another writer suggested that the time might be right for the NLL to expand. I disagreed.
A look back: Looking forward to 2002 Satirical article on how the future of the NLL might have looked in 2002.
Trivia contest answers Former NLL player and current radio host Teddy Jenner won the contest.
In Lax We Trust Trivia Contest A year or two ago I won a lacrosse shaft in a contest, so I came up with some trivia questions to give it away.
Renaming the NLL Awards If the league were to rename its MVP, Rookie, Goalie, etc. awards after people like the NHL and others have done, who would they be?
Behind the scenes at the NLL entry draft I enjoyed writing this mock conversation among the GMs at the entry draft.
Parity in the NLL: Who do we make fun of now? Which team do we make fun of as the laughing stock of the league? There really isn't one.
The biggest surprises from the dispersal draft Some surprising picks from the Blazers dispersal draft.
Farewell to the Blazers Kind of a post-mortem on the Boston Blazers.
More New Rules Being Considered by the MLL The MLL announced that they were considering using lacrosse sticks with heads that lit up to indicate who has the ball. This was such a silly idea that I came up with some other potential silly rules the MLL might think about.
Last year's NLL blockbusters: John Grant and Matt Vinc Analysis of the trade that sent John Grant to Colorado and Matt Vinc to Rochester.
Last year's NLL blockbusters: Tracey Kelusky Analysis of the trade that sent Tracey Kelusky to Buffalo.
Last year's NLL Blockbusters: Josh Sanderson Analysis of the trade that sent Josh Sanderson from Calgary to Boston.
Lax Links 8/5/11 My first article for ILWT. Marisa used to do a daily list of links to stories from around the lacrosse world, and she asked me to put the list together on that day.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Hockey Hall of Fmae

Considering I've lived in or near Toronto almost my entire life, and have been a hockey fan for that entire time as well, it's somewhat surprising that I have only been to the Hockey Hall of Fame twice. The first time was in the summer of 1991, and I have a short story about that visit. The second time was this past weekend, and I have a few things to say about that as well.

Overall, if you're a hockey fan the HHOF is a must-see, though I'm sure that statement surprises nobody. There are hundreds of pieces of memorabilia from over 100 years of the NHL and from around the world. Here's a picture of the stick and gloves Sidney Crosby used to score the "Golden Goal" in the Vancouver Olympics, as well as the puck itself:

The Golden Gloves

There's also this thing:

The Cup

Back in 1991, I visited the Hockey Hall of Fame when it was still located at the old Exhibition grounds. My friend Beth and I were at the CNE and decided to check out the Hall while we were there. When we got into the trophy room, the Stanley Cup was sitting in the middle of the room on a table similar to this one. There was no security anywhere to be seen; the closest thing was another table nearby where there were two teenaged girls siting. They had a Polaroid camera and would take your picture with the Cup for $10. I assume they worked for the Hall, but maybe they were just resourceful.

Beth and I walked around the Cup looking at the inscriptions, when one of the other visitors said aloud "I wonder how heavy it is". He put his arms around the Cup and lifted it. Beth and I took a step back to let the security guys through, and put our hands over our ears to protect ourselves from the wail of the sirens, except... nothing. No security guards, no alarms, nothing. The girls with the Polaroid didn't even look around. The guy who lifted it said something like "Huh! Not that heavy" and put it down again. Of course, I took the opportunity to do the same thing, something every Canadian kid dreams of doing: I hoisted the Stanley Cup. It's not that heavy.

When we were there last weekend, I did not attempt to lift it, as there was a security guard there. I asked the security guard how many replicas there were, and if this was one of them or if this was the real Cup. He gave me an interesting answer: there are two Cups and neither one is a replica. There's the "presentation Cup", which is the one the winning players raise on the ice, and the one they take back to their home town. And then there's the one in the Hall (he had a name for it other than "replica" but I don't remember it), which is an almost-exact, well, replica of the presentation Cup, though there are a few names spelled differently on each one. To me, this sounds like there's "The Cup" and "the replica", but the guy at the Hall said that both are officially "The Stanley Cup".

The Cup and the rest of the trophies are usually kept in a place called the Great Hall, but it's closed for the next couple of months for renovation. They moved the trophies elsewhere so we could see them, but it means we didn't see the complete list of Hall inductees. There were a number of displays for individual inductees like this one for Mario:

IMAG0220

There were stats and facts and a signature and jerseys and a stick and even a box of Corn Flakes with Mario on the front. There were similar displays for Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Denis Potvin, Luc Robitaille, Roger Neilson, Ace Bailey (which included one of his golf clubs (?)), Borje Salming, and a bunch of others. There was a computer listing just about every town in Canada; you could select a town and find out what NHL players were born there. Guess who's from Waterdown? Well, nobody. But I grew up in Pickering, Ontario, home of both Glenn Healy and... um, nobody else. OK, I guess I can admit it. I am from the same town as everyone's favourite hockey douchebag, Sean Avery. We even went to the same high school, though he would have started at least five years after I graduated.

There is also a large section of the Hall for international hockey, including the Canada Cup, the Summit Series, various IIHF tournaments, and the Olympics. There are jerseys from just about every country – did you know Ireland had a team? Greece? Mexico? South Africa? Canada won four hockey gold medals in a row at the Olympics from 1920 to 1932, but would you believe their streak was broken by none other than Great Britain in 1936 – the most recent of only two hockey medals Britain has ever won?

One thing that surprised me about my visit to the Hall is the number of mistakes I found. Canada didn't win any hockey gold medals from 1952 until 2002? That can't be right. Seriously though, thinking back to all the places I've visited including castles in the UK, various chateaux in France, museums and other touristy things in London, Edinburgh, Paris, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, and others, the number of mistakes I found was zero just about everywhere. I'm sure I've seen errors but I can't think of any offhand, and I'm sure I'd have remembered if there were more than one in the same place. At the HHOF, I found at least four in the couple of hours I was there.

In the same room as the Stanley Cup was a big timeline, listing all kinds of events relating to the NHL. The timeline included not only dates of NHL events, but birthdates of future NHL stars, like this one:

Ken Dryden error

Winning the Cup first and the Calder second is a pretty impressive feat, but doing them 55 years apart is even better. This next one contains two mistakes:

FoxTrax

The first mistake is not so much a factual error as one of punctuation ("it's" should be "its"). The second mistake was FoxTrax itself.

There was a display of the "lucky loonie" from the Salt Lake City Olympics, although in the middle of the description they spelled the word "looine". I'm sure my dad pointed another one out to me but I forget what it was.

On a somewhat related note, there are also the misspellings on the Stanley Cup itself – a number of players have their names spelled wrong, and there's even one team spelled wrong (Leafs is spelled "Leaes" in one place). Former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington famously put his father in the list of people to have their names engraved on the Cup, and when this was discovered his father's name was X'ed out.

Anyway, as I said the HHOF is a must-see for any hockey fan. There are the trophies and memorabilia and lots of information and stats, a couple of short movies, and some simulation games for the kids – two where you are taking shots on a net, one where you are standing in a net where real pucks are flying at you (similar to the commercial below), and one where you're standing in front of a virtual net trying to react to virtual pucks. There's even a section on collectibles and NHL branded products – hockey cards, toys, lunchboxes, bobbleheads, cereal boxes, stuff like that.

My dad and I spent two or three hours in the Hall. QA issues aside, it's quite the interesting place, and when combined with dinner at the Marché upstairs and a Rock game after that, made for a fun day.

HHOF TV commercial

Thursday, January 05, 2012

The best lacrosse writers in the world... and me

I announced back in August that I was joining In Lax We Trust as a writer, and ended up as co-manager and editor as well. I enjoyed my time at ILWT and wrote lots of articles. A few of them got lots of attention: one on lacrosse players' salaries from November is still getting talked about. Some I really liked and had fun writing: a satirical one about what the "future" of the NLL might have looked like in 2002, an imagined conversation among GMs at the entry draft, and some fictional movies about lacrosse.

In December I made the decision to strike out on my own, and created my own lacrosse blog, nllchatter.com. Around that time, I jokingly asked Teddy Jenner if they were hiring at ILIndoor.com, which is part of Inside Lacrosse magazine, and is pretty much the premiere indoor lacrosse blog anywhere. Rather than the expected "yeah, right", Teddy told me to email Bob Chavez. I don't know if Teddy was saying "That's a great idea! Email Bob!" or if it was Teddy's way of getting Bob to say "no" rather than doing it himself. I thought "what the hell, the worst they can do is say no", and emailed him. He got back to me with a proposal, and now I can announce that I will be joining the staff at ILIndoor.com and will be writing a weekly column called The Moneyballers this season. My column will run every Monday starting on January 16.

ILIndoor.com has some of best-known names in indoor lacrosse, including the aforementioned Teddy Jenner, a former player and current blogger, radio show host, and in-game announcer for the Washington Stealth; Ty Pilson, sports editor for the Calgary Sun and former Tom Borrelli winner (that's the NLL's award for the best writer of the year); Brian Shanahan, another former NLL player who has done colour for many lacrosse TV broadcasts (and yes, he's Brendan's brother); Marty O'Neill, the former GM of the Minnesota Swarm; and other great writers like Bob Chavez, Stephen Stamp and Casey Vock.

The Moneyballers will be a weekly look at the clutch players in the league from a statistical point of view. We have a system that assigns points to players for goals and assists that either tie a game or put their team ahead. Goals later in the game count for more than goals earlier, and OT goals count the most. Each week, I will tally up the points for that week's games, and keep track of the league leaders as the season goes on. Here's a link to last year's season-ending article.

I am very excited about this opportunity, but very nervous as well. The Moneyballers is a series that has been on ILIndoor.com for a few years, and up to this year, was written by another legendary lacrosse writer, Paul Tutka. Tutka won three straight Tom Borrelli awards, so that's a pretty tough act to follow. However, I am up to the challenge. But if you call me on a Sunday evening during NLL season, don't expect me to answer the phone.