The forecast is for stormy conditions today — snow, rain, freezing rain, etc. and the air just feels like it too.
I hope it doesn’t get too miserable — a lot of people will be on the road.
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Not the least of the people on the road will be the Buffalo Junior Sabres, traveling to Oakville to face the Blades in game five of their West division semi final. After five games the teams have a pretty good hate on for each other, which always happens when you play the same team over and over and over.
There are a couple of guys on their team who are not unlike my guy in many ways. Big. Strong. Smelly. Former lacrosse players. Etc.
We were talking last night and I told Pad he should remember that some of those guys would be friends of his under different circumstances and that while you want to play hard and do everything reasonable to win, it’s probably not healthy to demonize every opponent.
I mean, it’s not like it’s Georgetown.
If the weather is not too frightful tonight and you’re looking for a hockey game to watch, come to Sixteen Mile — 7:30p start and elimination games are usually close ones. A Blades win sends then to the division final.
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Chris and the minor midget Knights continued their improbable rebound last night, winning 7-5 with a late field goal. It was their third or fourth win in the last two weeks, and they also have a tie in there.
The boys will still need something just short of devine intervention to have any shot at making the final, but more importantly they’re having fun.
I have fun watching them, too.
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One of the things that happens in higher levels of hockey — junior, major junior, pro — is what I I’ll call, for want of a better term, the inspirational fight.
That’s when one team is losing and a player gets in a fight to “lift the team” as they say.
In the current Oakville vs Buffalo series it has happened a couple times, but more often we’ve seen guys (from both teams) looking for a guy to tangle with but not finding any willing takers.
I won’t mention names.
But there was an interesting piece in the New York Times recently on something most folks wouldn’t recognize and that’s that fighting in junior hockey is actually declining sharply and well on the way to disappearing.
I’m guessing the author hasn’t seen the movie Goon.
If you’re a hockey fan or parent, or someone who will be leaning on the glass tonight and pounding away looking for blood, then give it a read.
You’ll find it here.
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I told you yesterday about the young referee in New Brunswick who basically needed police protection after tossing an abusive coach from a game, and then tossing an abusive mother too (hard to believe a woman would behave badly at a hockey game, right?)
More support for the youth today.
Read about it here.
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Still in New Brunswick, where apparently they take their recreational hockey very seriously, police are investigating an incident from a gentlemen’s league game where an unprovoked cross check to the face left a 25 year old man with a broken jaw, missing teeth and a lot of pain.
I gave up beer league hockey years ago because I couldn’t hack the hours — playing at 11p at night and then having to get up for work the next morning was too much for my fragile system.
But I also got tired of the stupid stuff that went on — lesser versions of this attack, but still mindlessly stupid.
Some 35 year old never-was feeling like he has to slash, punch and spear his way to beer league greatness.
Um, no thanks.
Read more here.
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In my business we have a lot of archive material, and some of the most interesting and valuable content is found in the photo archives.
The story is no different at other news agencies and daily newspapers.
The place where the old hard-copy versions of the photos are stored is called The Morgue in the trade, a rather unromantic name for a place that, for me, is full of the romance of journalism and years gone by.
The New York Times has launched a social media site to allow the public a small glimpse into that world. They promise to rotate the content regularly, and they have a lot of content.
If you click through and take a look, take a minute to click on the thumbnails to the right of the actual photos. Here you will see the back of the originals — including the captions, old notations and editors’ notes and markings.
It’s interesting to me and maybe you too.
You can find the site here.
teamoakville 