Sunday Potpourri: Seawolves To Bite Back

For those unfamiliar readers this has been a damned interesting year for human/wildlife interaction in the city of Anchorage. This past Friday while cruising down Gambell St. (just past the Sullivan Arena and perhaps the more famous Cal Worthington Ford dealership) a man hit an 800lb, 13 year old Grizzly Bear with his truck. The collision gravely injured the bear but that didn't stop him from snarling and threatening the driver until a couple of minutes or so later when police arrived on the scene. They righteously terminated the poor suffering Yogi.

Humans 2, Grizzlies 0 -- because earlier in the week the ADF&G offed a sow that was the probable culprit in several close calls and two hardcore maulings on a trail in Bi-Centennial Park called Rover's Run. The first notice came when a 15 year old female mountain biker was torn from her bike in the early AM during a 24 hour endurance race. She spent quite a while in Intensive Care and is apparently doing better. Following that incident UAA Seawolf cross-country runner Auston Ellis outran (and outfoxed) perhaps the same marauding grizzly in the park. Then just a couple of weeks ago a woman with her dog was mauled at about the same place (she got out of the hospital last week). In both instances the victim was believed to have come between the sow and her cubs. The Fish and Game fellas were able to trap one of the offending sows progeny (which is now incarcerated at the Alaska Zoo before being shipped off to Indiana for a lifetime of gawking) but last I heard the other Boo Boo was still at large. The local paper and the city are all atwitter (<--- a link to ALL the "bear stories" in the Anchorage Daily News) with the ongoing drama. It's a lot of grizzly action which frankly is not necessarily the usual thing in the middle of this town. I dunno why those bears don't learn that we humans have opposable thumbs; and opposable thumbs can't be defeated.

With the word out that it's time to deal with this ongoing bear threat the UAA Seawolves hockey team will be conducting an unofficial and unannounced team building exercise in Bi-Centennial Park next Sunday August 31st at 8:00 PM. Word is that all drills will be conducted in full gear.

The strategy will be to put the 3 goalies on point immediately followed by the freshman class; with defensemen on the flanks and the forwards in the center. Head Coach Dave Shyiak explained,

"We wanted to give our goalies some experience with taking the fight to the enemy. During the season we'll be depending on these guys to keep the puck out of the net. So, it's defend defend defend for them. This will be the ultimate change of pace."

He added, "Obviously, we'll use last years leg pads." Associate Head Coach Campbell Blair added,

"By putting our fleet footed defensemen on the flank we can assure that an Ursus insurgency from any angle can be efficiently deflected. I'd dare any grizzly to bring a full charge toward any of our D guys. They're all just too quick and deadly with their sticks. And with some solid backchecking from the forwards that bear won't stand a chance."

Newly hired Assistant Coach Regg Simon has been quietly scouting the Rover's Run area for the last week and will continue to map out any grizzly movements so the team has the best opportunity to find a worthy encounter. Simon explained, "I've spent more time in the woods at twilight than I have at the rink since I got here but hey, I sure do see the benefit of this exercise." In his time coaching in the USHL Coach Simon became a renowned snipe spotter throughout Iowa. "I have the experience and the tools to help make this an excellent team building exercise. I know I can spot em a big one."

Several players (all freshman of course) seemed to question the sanity of this team building exercise but refused to go on the record for this story. But the majority of the players are reportedly psyched for it. Paul Crowder said,

"There was this 4 year vet when I played my first year of juniors and he showed me a wicked move to butt-end someone in the jaw. I'd never use it in a game so I'm looking forward to trying it out on the bear."

Jared Tuton added with a laugh,

"In Canada, bears stay in the woods. If it's up to us to send these bears back to the woods with their tails between their legs then we'll damn sure do it (psst ... don't tell my dad I said 'damn')."

Kevin Clark seemed especially keen on the idea,

"I hope I can line one up with a nice solid tree. Boarding? You think you've seen boarding before? That bear has a big surprise coming! I'll definitely be leaving my feet!"

FWIW, my money is on Jeremy Smith and Trevor Hunt combining for the first kill. After the meeting announcing the exercise, they both sat quietly with big evil grins on their faces. Mat Robinson and Kane Lafranchise talked about their plan to to make a supply of sharpened rocks which they could drop and then use their slap shots to impale the bear at 90mph. "I'm looking for that headshot," explained Robinson, "Boom! I'm pretty certain I can nail one right between the eyes!" Lafranchise followed up almost boastfully, "If that sucker opens his (or her) mouth for one of those intimidating growls, I'll plug that gullet with this here 3 ounces of rock!"

An unnamed player explained poignantly,

"We've got to protect our cross country running team. They don't have the benefit of using a stick in their sport. Since we do then it's only right that we go out after the bear that tried to eat one of them skinny dudes."

When questioned about the need for this specific team building event Athletic Director Steve Cobb said,

"We got a saying back home; if grasshoppers carried .45's then birds wouldn't mess with 'em. We're doing a service for the community. We'll teach them danged bears on which side o' the holler they're meant to tread."

He walked away adding,

"That might be a bigger cud than I can chew but these guys are all young men. I'm even sure there's a coupla Dan'l Boone's in thar. I just hope they remember that Alaska Department of Fish and Game regulations say that they must salvage the skull and hide."

As I understand it, the salvaging of the skull and hide will be a sort of initiation for the freshmen. So um ... good luck to the Seawolf hockey team. I look forward to seeing the survivors at the annual blueliner picnic in September.

Not The Senior Class Preview

I wanted to bring you the senior class preview I'd promised. But I couldn't bring myself to use last year's pictures as I've done in my early preview last season. So I'm going to wait until school gets started and they put new pics up on the website. So get set for a mostly contemporaneous recitation of what's on my mind. For my St. Cloud readers that means, "I'ma gunna just type whutevurr frum my head". Speaking of Jan Brady State ... I had a brief exchange with Adam Wodon recently (fruits of which are yet to ripen) when I informed him I'd be posting a petition regarding shootouts. Sign the petition here. He was helpful of course and when his reply included the relevant comparative text to illustrate the obsurdity of the "excitement argument" with regard to shootouts ...

"you could have flaming pylons on the ice at all times"

... I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to reply with ...

"Nah ... they already tried that "flaming pylons on the ice" any year that SCSU makes the NCAAs"

So the answer to the question that came into your mind when I busted SCSU's chops with my mocking translation is ... no. No I don't pass up an opportunity fling some shit at them.

This wouldn't be much of a ramble if I didn't say something about the upcoming season. I know there are at least 2 readers dying for me to come out and say that UAA is going to finish 5th this season. Truth is I doubt you could find any text that I've written on the internet within the last 4 seasons that would have me predicting UAA finishing in 5th place. If predictions were of any use other than to serve as a basis for someone to throw it in your face then I probably wouldn't have stopped from making them. Looking at this blog I think you'll find that I give my best analysis and also go back and review the things I said. It's trite and all to roll in here and give me the big noogie by asking when I'm going to make such a prediction ... but it isn't accurate. Not that I didn't (like dozens of others) make plenty of bad predictions when I participated at the USCHO fan forum. So now onto something actually about the upcoming season. My hopes are to see certain teams fail miserably. I'm not likely to gloat too much on anyone else's failed season but I have to admit that it wouldn't be unpleasant to see a couple or three teams really stink it up this year. But for now I'm just going to give you my general feel for which teams will be better, worse and/or unchanged with regard to last years final standings.

UAA: Better
Colorado College: Better
University of Denver: Unchanged
Michigan Tech: Worse
Minnesota: Better
Minnesota State: Unchanged
Minnesota-Duluth: Unchanged/Better
North Dakota: Worse
St. Cloud: Unchanged
Wisconsin: Better

There are lots of things "they" say about the WCHA. Amongst those are that every year seems to see at least one team do dramatically better than predicted and at least one team do dramatically worse than predicted. The Gophers were the best example of that last year. I have to defer though to the precept of "that's why they play the games" though for 08-09. Who knows who it will be. On the positive end of course I believe UAA will turn out to have the biggest rise in the standings. I wouldn't write (and you probably wouldn't read) here if that weren't the case almost every year.

The last thing on my mind was to write another Letter to Incoming Freshman akin to the one I wrote last year. But the one I wrote last year was pretty good. So I've just copied and pasted it below. Speaking of freshman, this Saturday Neil DeGrasse-Tyson will be givng the Freshman Convocation. Tyson is one of several talking head physicists frequently seen on TV. He host's the PBS Nova program called "NOVA ScienceNow". It's a good show and all. And Neil is great at talking about physics to the general populace. But I can't help wishing I could ask Neil why it is that that he and his peers continue to profess Big Bang physics when it is a falsified theorem. Listen to me now and believe me later when I tell you that some hybrid of the Wave Structure of Matter and Plasma Universe theories will become the Standard Model. Take that prediction to the bank.

Dear Incoming Recruits,
You're about to make a pretty big change in your life. You've chosen to advance your hockey career and get an education at the same time. And you're going to a fairly unique place that's a helluva long way from the rest of the world. There are some things it'll be useful for you to know that might help make it a success.

The Sullivan Arena won't be full. There are lots of reasons for it. The only thing you really need to know though, is that if you help the team win more games it will fill up during the season. And the folks that are there are as passionate as any group of fans you've ever played for. As fans we don't expect you to light up the league your first season. If you do, its a bonus. But we'll appreciate your play whatever the case.

There are 15 forwards on the team meaning 3 guys aren't dressing for each game. There's 9 defensemen. Oops ... 4 players ain't dressing. That doesn't necessarily mean that only freshmen will be sitting. But it's best to be prepared for that possibility, no doubt sitting in the stands will be a new experience for some of you. Coach Shyiak's first two years taught me that he is a coach who gives everyone more than a couple of chances to play throughout the season. This means sitting in the stands is something that has been (more or less) distributed evenly over those two seasons. As with any coach if you show it during practice you'll earn chances to play. And if you produce during those chances you'll stay out of the stands.

Deep in the winter it gets dark here early. Not 5pm dark. Not even 4pm dark. It's like 3:42pm dark at it's worst. It's different but it's not as big a negative as you might expect. The period of those dark days only last about six weeks. The daylight is longer here from March through October in the lower 48. And in the middle of summer it is exactly opposite from the depths of a dark winter. It's a bit of a tradeoff that most people who live here learn to appreciate. Golfing in June and July at 10 or 11 at night with discount twilight greens fees? If you like camping, hiking, hunting, fishing or otherwise recreating in an outdoorsy way then you're coming to probably the best place on the planet to do those things. My advice is for you to take advantage of every opportunity you get to do those things during your Seawolf career. You won't regret it. Fish that other WCHA players are catching near their schools are called bait up here.

Pretty much every other weekend you're going to have a long plane trip. 5 or 6 hours on a plane and probably some bus time as well. No doubt you've been on lots of road trips. You'll go on a couple that have 4 hour time differences. A couple have 3 hour time differences and the others are 2 hours. None of which will be a disadvantage. You'll see some rinks with impressive student support and fanbases that mostly fill their arenas. There's a bit of a "wow factor" visiting a couple of those joints so just try your best to get that out of your system before gametime. Here's a brief rundown:

At the Kohl Center in Madison the large student section dances and sings and chants. Mariucci Arena is so corpie tight-assed and revered spiritually by the fanbase that taking a crap in the public restrooms is frowned upon. The Ralph is glitz, tech and rabid ... that's what happens when a giant ego from a small prairie town builds a marble edifice as his legacy. I hear the fans are "biters". Be glad the glass is between you and them. In Colorado both the rinks present the same challenge. They're more than a mile high and you live at sea level. Best case for your body to completely acclimatize to a big altitude change is 3-4 days. So ... You're gonna be huffing and puffing. Some trips will be more interesting than others. Denver and Minneapolis are big cities with lots of sights and sounds, Denver and CC have mountain vistas, Grand Forks has the whole spectacularly flat thing going for it and Madison has hippies ... then there's the other end of the roadtrip excitement spectrum ... St. Cloud. Hey ... Deal with the little bit of bad in mostly otherwise interesting destinations. It's a relatively small burden.

We hate Fairbanks ergo you hate Fairbanks. OK? Seriously, we never want to lose to them again. You don't either. On board with that? The "Governors Cup" is a big deal to UAF fans and denying them it, is why you're here. Following the the general trend now? Seawolf > Nanook. It's just that simple. Ingrain it on your psyche. Burn it in your memory. Never forget. They hate freedom. We love freedom. Fairbanks bad. UAA good. The ticket is free to get on the "Hate-FBX" bus, so jump on it and stay on it. Comprende? Ok then ... the less said about Fairbanks the better.

We UAA fans look forward to seeing you on the ice. We look forward to the moments when you'll have a chance to be a hero for a night. We look forward to seeing you paste someone to the wall. We'll cheer our asses off when you kill off a penalty in the opponents zone with your forecheck. We'll bow in our unworthiness when you make some magic with the puck. But more than anything else we'll respect your 100% effort in an attempt to entertain us. Thanks in advance for that and for both our sakes ... do all your homework!

What I Did On Your Summer Vacation

Nothing worth noting. I took that picture and the one I used in my July post. This one is at 3:40 A.M. on June 26th. I could do that because I got a snazzy new Fuji Digital Camera for my birthday. I'm hoping I can use it to take a decent hockey picture or two that I can post here. I doubt we'll see any visual eloquence from a lens that I'm behind but I'll give it my best. This offseason I think I may have forced myself a bit in terms of not writing. It wasn't that I was jonesing to hit the keyboard but instead it wasn't like I stopped following the usual trickle of information. So I wasn't taking a break from the college hockey world per se ... just from mouthing off regularly in it.

You may have noticed I made a post Monday night announcing my petition regarding shootouts. Sign the petition here. I started it because I am genuinely concerned about the effect having shootouts will have on the game. Sign the petition here. I will be referring to it often during the season. Sign the petition here. I will dedicate a space on the right hand column to the effort. Sign the petition here. I invite a discussion of the issue in the comments section of that post. Sign the petition here. In addition to the emailing it to all the D1 Athletic Directors, I will send the final numbers to the NCAA Rules Committee members. Sign the petition here. If you are one of the wayward few who think that shootouts are needed. Then don't sign the petition here.

Since I'm starting off a new season then I thought it'd be useful to set some expectations for you the readers.

Don't read here if:
You can't deal with being grossed out by at least one picture a year.
You don't understand the internal processes of "fandom".
You don't enjoy the occasionally well-placed elite-level expletives.
You think the team you cheer for is unbeatable. They aren't.
You are looking for some faux-journalistic BS from an ass. There is no faux-journalism here.
You are a child molestor. Really, go read SCSU blogs or something. Just don't read here.
You can't take me busting SCSU's chops regularly for whatever reason I can come up with.
You are really dumb and prone to making dumb comments. I will eat your babies alive.
You think George Bush is keen. Really, what I said to the child molesters. Go away.

Please read here if:
You like truth and love and sincerity and trustworthiness and ... clean toilets.
You know that Dick Cheney should be in jail.
You understand the definition of the word irreverence.
You like puppies.
You have half enough brains to recognize a full brain when you see it.

That's right. My brain is full. And I plan to use it this season to provide you with the best analysis available of the Seawolves. You can expect something every Sunday with my regular Potpourri post (the only regular Sunday post in the college hockey web world). I'll have a couple of previews most weeks and game recaps and analysis for every game. I'll share my understanding and my opinions regularly. Welcome to 08-09: Just like 07-08 only different. My next post will be a preview of this years returning Senior class.

A Petition Regarding Shootouts

I have created the online petition (linked below) in an effort to communicate the idea that bringing the shootout into Division I hockey is opposed by a substantial number of college hockey fans. I will run this petition until the end of the regular season. At that time I will forward the results to the 58 Athletic Directors. I hope you will sign it. Your email address will not be displayed to other signers at any time.

The petition states:

We the undersigned believe that the introduction of shootouts as a method to determine the winners of NCAA Division I hockey games is an affront to the integrity of the sport.

We say:
A 65 minute sporting contest which ends in a tie is a valid result. It means that neither team deserved to win and neither team deserved to lose. Introducing a measure which utilizes a minor (albeit exciting) aspect of the competition directly threatens the integrity of the game we love. A one-on-one contest between a shooter and a goaltender is an event in the normal play of a game which occurs infrequently enough to make it wholly unrepresentative of the game. Using such an infrequent event as a representation of the whole contest is pure folly.

We must therefore decry its inclusion in our game.

We ask:
That those entrusted to nurture our favorite sport through their administration give exceptional consideration (in light of our beliefs) when deciding the future of this potential change to the game we love.

Sign The Petition

As a fan I think this is the only reasonable chance to effect the process that "officially" starts with the use of shootouts by the CCHA this season to calculate the standings. I personally believe that the inclusion of shootouts is all but inevitable however, I think the effort to be heard is incumbent upon we the fans. The people making the decisions cannot fail to least consider the issue while knowing our concerns. And to know our concerns we must communicate it. I hope this method serves that purpose.