The Sunjay Times

Hockey tape = $2.50

Beginner hockey skates = $69.99 (2 years ago, excluding depreciation)

Foiling 3 shots on goal from the opposing team by taking direct hits
on the same spot on the blade, causing it to break and thus giving you
a legitmate excuse to a new pair of skates = priceless

From last Friday’s midnight game: Teams Storm vs. Thunder @ SDIA. Final score: 5 (Storm) to 1 (Thunder)

I broke my blade at practice 2 weeks ago and was shopping around today for a new blade, finally settling on a Lindros P88 right hand composite blade. My team captain happened to be at the pro shop, helping me pick and gave me a crash course on the “science” behind picking a blade (wow, I didn’t know that there were _that_ variables). Mostly, I just pick a stick whose flex is in the 70′s range, with a decent blade curvature that I can see myself living with, and a stick with some cool hockey player’s name on it.

I thought the famous player’s name on the hockey stick is just to make it look cool, some marketing ploy. Today, I realized that those names actually mean something about the stick/blade that would actually affect my handling! Anyway, so I looked up Eric Lindros, and turns out .. he is quite a cool guy.

He checks (and fights) really well. In this video clip, he evens knocks the other guy down during a face-off!

His jersey number is 88; is that why the blade is a P88? I’m guessing 88 is probably _not_ the Morse code short hand for “love and kisses“. Ham radio operators usually sign off with “73″, which is a short for “best regards”. Random trivia for you who else mixes wireless radio transmissions+Morse code with hockey?

As a side rant, I had a match today .. and twice I had someone knock me over on ice and say, “Sorry man, you alright?”. Come on, it’s friggin ice hockey–not ice ballerina. No need to be polite. It wasn’t even a hard hit. This isn’t a “polite” sport (not to be confused with un-sportsmen-like conduct). Apologizing for little things like that annoys me more than it makes me happy. I got sent to the penalty box for 2 minutes, for “uhh, number 7, .. minor roughing”. Apparently I hit someone’s face on the ice while trying to get up from a pileup on ice. I didn’t notice. Okay, so I did apologize for that one .. but the minor stuff, please don’t apologize — I can so handle being pushed around.