XM Home Ice Tuesday night

Home. Have been since 2:30 a.m. Saturday night. Pretty amazing to leave Binghamton at 9:30 and be home to Houston by 2:30. Charter is THE way to fly. I'm spoiled forever and ever now. Guys should get paid LESS to play in the NHL since they get to fly that way all the time.

Had a good time in Bingo, as I've written. My liver was really glad I came home. I sweated out some seriously weird stuff at hockey last night.

For some reason I had in my head that things were going to settle down when I got home, but of course, they're only busier.

The big deal is that I'm going to be on XM Home Ice radio at 6:05 CT before the game Tuesday night talking the series and the Aeros and whatnot. I know the subject well, but I just pray to god a) they don't ask me a bunch of stats stuff, and b) I don't get brainlock and forget everything I know.

I can quickly dissolve into Simple Brain where I can only think about how adorable Colton Gillies is and how I wish Brusty were playing. Here's to keeping my wits about me.

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Had drop-in tonight and felt like myself for the first time in a long time. Empty head, just stopping pucks. Felt really good to kick the voices out of my noggin again. Nothing ruins a night in goal like voices talking to you while you play.

For some reason, my team quit playing at the end and the guy who can pretty much score on me at will started just getting breakaway after breakaway.

I had an awesome, sexy stop on him though that I'll smile warmly about for a while. He was trying to do that "drag across the top of the crease hoping I'd go down early and then get me around the other side" thing. But I saw it coming, loaded my left leg, and slid across to made a pad save.

Another one, I came WAY out and challenged. As usual, I went down too early, but I hooked him around the shin and it threw him off just enough that his shot toward the far post went into the corner instead. Phew. Illegal, but it's all I had. Just glad something worked.

Anyway, nice to have fun in goal again. Been way too long.

Now to figure out how to get coaching without sending my brain into overdrive and screwing up my game completely. May need Sean and Brusty to just mime everything at me during camp. I honestly think that's the only way to not irritate me or get in my head too much. Words are so pointy. 

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Sorry the blog's been so boring. I'm a little (or maybe a lot) burned out, as much as I love this playoff run. It's exhausting, even for the writers, to go this deep in the post-season. Totally worth it though. If I didn't have house shopping and Camp Brusty preparations going on, it would be another story.

But it's good to stay busy. I can rest when I'm dead, right? zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Looking for the silver lining...

Aw shit. Pretty bummed about the Aeros loss tonight. It's one thing for the other goalie to get a shutout, but it was a pretty lackluster shutout. Not many good chances on him to at least give me the satisfaction of having seen a great goaltending performance.

Oh well.

It's my fault because I wrote glowing things about them today, which is a surefire way to make them suck. Plus I didn't wear green. I'm sorry boys. I got cocky there...

Anyway, it's been a crazy week of working two jobs, basically, and moonlighting as a lush. Gone to bed sober one night this week and it turns out I still felt like shit the next day, so... why bother?

Good things about today though:

1. I had some mac and cheese at lunch
2. I got to ask BEAUTIFUL Cody Bass a (dumb) question at the post game presser. He smiled real big when he answered me. I blushed. He's really pretty and I'm looking forward to him shaving that Yosemite Sam beard off.
3. Lehner walked up some stairs next to me at morning skate and I got to ogle his ginormous thigh muscles. (Seriously, the boy is walking on redwoods. Not the usual goalie birdlegs.)
4. Didn't get completely hammered at Dill's tonight, so maybe I won't feel like puking during morning skate interviews tomorrow.
5. My first round of picks for my Five Hole Fantasy team came out today. It's basically a fantasy hockey league for next season where we don't really care who wins as long as our team is drop-dead gorgeous. NHL and AHL boys in the mix, plus one "Ice Man," who is basically a non-hockey hottie cheerleader guy. Mainly it was an excuse to wax poetic about Brusty to a new audience.

So, other than meeting a few Twitter gals and the above items, the day kinda sucked. Even my nap was full of nightmares I couldn't seem to wake up from.

And it's my last night in Binghamton. Back to real life earrrrrly Sunday morning when we land back in Houston. It's been a great experience here and I've actually gained some good confidence at this beat writer thing. Tonight, when Yeo's press conference started, he looked at ME for the first question. It's a small thing but it meant a lot to me.

Anyway, I'm exhausted and surprised I haven't started getting sick yet. Always do when I burn the candle at both ends like this. Maybe the alcohol is killing the germs. :P

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Finding my Zen and tonight's drop-in

Babies, I am crazy Zenned up for game 7. Totally at peace with how it goes either way, since it dawned on me that Brusty's coming to Houston in a month anyway. And I'll see a helluva lot more of him then. It just would be SUPER fun to have Joy and the rest of the Bingo crew I've gotten to know this season down here in our fair city.

Not to make it sound like I don't care if the Aeros get to the cup finals, but The Dream is Bingo v. Houston. It's a personal thing. The Calder Cup is an Aeros fan thing. We all want that, naturally, but it's not personal. Bingo is personal. And I guess maybe that gets more to the point of why I've been a basketcase about this series.

Anyway, tomorrow is just going to be me soaking it all in, since it could be the last home game and I don't want to look up with 1 minute left and have spent the whole game in Totally Insane Mode and not appreciated and reflected on the season at all.

Or the Aeros could just crush Hamilton's skulls early and I could do all that appreciatin' next round. Your choice, boys.

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Played drop-in tonight. I feel like I've regressed a year and a half in that group. Back when I first started, I would suck at the beginning and then as I got more comfortable, I'd start to stop most everything.

Same thing tonight. About 45 minutes in, I finally started stopping the puck reliably. Until then, I think every other shot went in the net.

Never mind that it was a festival of breakaways up until then, too. Not much fun.

I was going to break down and do clinic before, too, since this is my only night on the ice this week. But I got tied up with stuff at home and couldn't get to Sugar Land in time. So as penance for missing clinic, I made myself work on backside pushes when the game was over.

Thanks to Scott, I finally realized that the part I wasn't doing right was having my skate perpendicular to the direction I'm pushing. It's a very unnatural angle for my foot to be in, so I have to think really hard about that push foot when I do it. It's very slow and I don't go very far, but that little tip made all the difference in doing it at all without just spinning in circles.

I also spin less when I push mostly with the toe of my skate blade, but that's another thing I have to be really deliberate about, so it's going to be a long time before that move is game-ready and natural.

Still working on getting up on my dumb leg quickly. Somewhat sharp pain in my knee when I do it but it's getting easier all the time.

Camp Brusty is just about a month away, so I'm getting excited about that. Can't WAIT to get on the ice with my goalie. I'm soooo temperamental (emphasis on the mental) with anybody coaching me.... it will be funny to see if and how quickly I want to tell him to fuck off. It will take a lot, I suspect. You can't stay mad at this face:

Beauty.

Anyway...

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, Camp Brusty. Ha. Awesome.

History will be made Tuesday night, gang. How exciting is that?

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Exhaling. Resetting.

Sorry gang. I've been holding my breath for 3 days, hoping my next post here would be celebrating The Dream coming true.

But my ridiculously high expectations were dashed Wednesday night in dramatic fashion and I've since had to exhale and reset.

It's taken me until today to be honestly, completely happy for Bingo, which seems crazy and probably is, given my strong affinity for so many people on and associated with that team. But for 24 hours or so there, reminders of Bingo sweeping had an implied "and the Aeros didn't" attached. Bah. Shut up.

But regardless of what happens, I really can't lose. I can only win less. Either way, I have a dog in the fight and I'd love to see Binghamton shove it up Hamilton's collective derrieres if it comes to that. Especially Ryan White's. Greasy prick.

If you didn't catch my tweet of it yesterday, here's Bingo's room after their game Wednesday. Even media don't get these kinds of peeks too often, as there's usually a cooling off period after the game before reporters are allowed in.




Oh, hockey boys. Just ignore me yelling, "TAKE IT OFF!" when I watch that. Just instinct. Can't help it. Also ignore the singles I'm shoving at the screen when they show Cody "Hotter than Koivu" Bass. Rawr.

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Not a great week of goaltending for me, which is par for the course lately, but I offered up to the Hockey Gods my own hopes for success in the women's 3 on 3 tourney Tuesday night in exchange for the Aeros and Bingo wins. I'm fine with that trade, naturally.

I was playing across the ice from a girl who's been playing since she was a kid. Pure stand-up goalie. And really good, too. Those stand-up tendies sure make it look easy.... until one goes right between their skates. She whipped me, though, and seemed to hardly even move while doing it, so I guess I can't talk.

Ah well, it was fun and a killer workout to play 3 on 3 for an hour straight. I was flat out by the end of the last game.

Only clinic and drop-in next week, so I guess I'll do both. I sucked at drop-in this week even without doing clinic, soooo I might as well do clinic, right? Meh.

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Speechless

You couldn't wipe the shock OR the smile off my face if you tried.

The Aeros are headed to Manitoba!

I LOVE BEING WRONG!!!

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Pain is funny

At least, that's all I can figure about why it's so much more fun to write about colossal failures than it is to write about colossal success.

Seems like my best post-game write-ups are after a particularly disappointing loss. Not sure what that says of me, but I'm okay with whatever it is.

So, I rather enjoyed tonight's post-gamer on the Aeros 7-0 loss. Didn't enjoy the game so much, and absolutely would have shut 'er down in the second period if I hadn't had to write about it for PHN.

But you gotta make lemons out of lemonade. Wait, no they already did that to get the series to 3-3. No, you gotta make lemonade out of lemons. Here's hoping the boys brought enough sugar.

Anyway, just a reminder that if you're looking for Aeros coverage, 99% of it is over at The Third Intermission, which you may now conveniently locate by going to www.thethirdintermission.com or www.t3i.info or to the original Blogspot address, thethirdintermission.blogspot.com.

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Playoffs! I'm talking about Playoffs!

Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la.

(Sorry, Christmas, but it's playoff time and that's the gift that keeps on giving.)

So, tonight, the Aeros play game 1 in Peoria. I'll be paying my $8 to watch on AHLLive.com and live and die with every shift.

But I'll also be keeping an eye on the NHL playoffs. I don't have a dog in the fight, which will make it actually a little more fun because I know there won't be tears at the end, but I certainly have some favorites.

Here are the match-ups I'll have an eye on through the first round, in order of interest:

The series I'm most excited about is Caps v. Rags. It's the Ovechkins vs. The Averys. It's Son vs. Father. I love/hate the Rangers when they have Avery (I really didn't give a rats ass about them when he was gone). So, if the Caps destroy the Rangers, then the hate part of me is pretty happy to see them get what's coming to them.

And if the Rangers somehow manage to contain #8 & Co., then the love side will be happy. I predict the Caps win handily, but Beautiful Theo finally loses his hair dealing with Avery.

I probably should be more excited about Bruins/Habs, but I love my Western Conference and I'm looking forward to seeing how injury-riddled Calgary deals with adversity against the Hawks, who seem to have just redonkulous good will and positive momentum behind them this season. Plus, I heart Kris Versteeg and his adorableness. Kipper screwed me like a $5 hooker in fantasy hockey this season, so even though I have a certain Calgary fondness, I'll shed no tears if he's on the golf course by the end of next week.

And now for the Bruins/Habs. No brainer for the Bruins here. I hate the Habs and their obnoxious fans. I'll adopt Milan Lucic as my temporary, post-season Clutterbuck. If the Red Wings make it to the finals, I hope the Caps are there with them, but if anybody else makes it from the West, I hope the Bruins are the Eastern team. And I'm not usually a fan of anything Boston -- those whining Red Sox fans and the Patriots (augh, will they just get sucky again already?) I just wanna run 'em all over with the cah. But I make an exception for the Bruins.

Obviously, the Ducks need to get completely and embarrassingly swept by the Sharks. Anything else will be terribly disappointing. Suck it, Pronger.

Okay, confession time: I don't give a rat's ass about Columbus. Seems like people are universally so happy to see this team finally in the playoffs, so I kinda feel guilty that I have absolutely no interest in getting on the Good Will Bandwagon. I mean, they're in Ohio. OHIO. Who gives a shit? Go Red Wings.

My apologies to Kevin, but I'm taking the Flyers against the Pens. I like my hockey mean and gritty, so I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone. Plus, that orange looks awesome on goalie gear. And the Pens have just never captured my imagination. I mean, yeah, they've got a ton of talent and Malkin's funny with his broken English and Sid's pretty with is pillow lips, but ... meh.

Naturally, in the Nucks/Blues matchup, I wish the Nucks nothing but heartache. From Luuuuuuuuu to the brain-eating Sedins (Is it worse to question their humanity or their sexuality? Let's just continue to do both and cover all the bases.) I'm rooting for the Failboat to just crash right into the arena and take 'em all out. Then again, I'm not real fond of the Blues other than their goalie, Chris Mason, and their giant backup goalie, Ben Bishop. Carlo Colaiacovo can take a flying leap.

Finally, I actually think Devils v. Carolina could be a really good match-up. Cam Ward is hot, Brody is The Man. But there's no rivalry fire here, so, meh. I'm definitely rooting for the Devils, but probably won't see much, if any, of this series unless they go to some ridiculous overtime.

I dunno about you, but I'm ready to drop the puck, bitches. Month and a half of late-night hockey hangovers, here we come! *yawn* Right after this nap...

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Thoughts on a dying hockey season and looking ahead

Well, another season has ended. In spite of a little fraying around the edges on my part, as I've stretched myself pretty thin with all my hockey pursuits, it really feels like the season just started a couple of months ago.

Perhaps that's because neither of my teams ever really got off the ground and found themselves. Always one step forward and two back for the Wild. One forward and one back for the Aeros, with the occasional three forward and three back. What a weird thing it's been to cover the team this year.

And here we are at the end, at least for the Wild, though honestly, my hopes aren't very high anymore for the Aeros getting out of the first round. Maybe I'm just taking some self-defense measures with my skepticism, but I don't think so. The Good Aeros are SO good, but so ephemeral and fleeting. The Mediocre Aeros seem to be the default.

I suppose melancholy is the word for my mood today.

Anyway, I'm looking down the road a bit at things on my mind that I want to write about. I've got lots of thoughts on Constantine as a potential replacement for Lemaire in Minnesota. I've got some post-season awards to hand out. I've got my NHL playoff picks. I've got some ideas for how to spend the long, hot, hockeyless summer. These should fill a little of the immediate post-season void.

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A Ms. Conducty Birthday

I had a really nice birthday, chock full of love and hockey.

Started the day with a nice long nap after waking up at 5:30 with Mr. Conduct, who woke me up in time to go skating at the blissfully deserted midday public skate. I skated for an hour and a half and worked on crossovers a lot.

Then we went to dinner at Texadelphia before the game, which was tasty. And then to the game where the Aeros lost, as expected. It was good to have closure by losing at home though. Got to give them a few rounds of applause for their effort this season. They've run hot and cold but they've worked hard and I think we all know and appreciate that. I don't feel badly about the season at all and I'm really looking forward to next year.

Coach Stalin and Dan, our account rep, conspired to get "Happy Birthday Ms. Conduct" on the birthday announcements, which was embarrassing but very cool and appreciated.

And then we got to skate on the ice one last time before it's melted off for the year. I've never done that before, so it was pretty awesome to see the rink from the players perspective. Man, I wish we could fill the place up for the guys more regularly. It must really pump them up to skate out into the space and see lots of people cheering them on. And equally bummerific to skate out and see friends and family.

Anyway, it was a fun evening and I felt the birthday love and I wore myself out on my skates and it was all good.

My birthday present came TODAY... damn the luck. If only I'd ordered it back when Mr. C said I could, I'd have had it for at least the Thursday and Friday games. Oh well.

Pretty huh? I love it.

Time for Detroit to take it to the Avs again. Go Wings!

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Wednesday 4/23

Lower body strength training: Check

No hockey on TV: Check, which was weird and awful, at first. But then I found my groove with some Mythbusters, Top Chef, and a really fascinating show about the difficulties around building a bridge across the Bering Strait.

Today is my off day, since I'm skating twice tomorrow and we have game 4 of the Aeros/IceHogs series tonight. Still a ton to do, though I've gotten through most of it, including work, this morning.

Tomorrow I'm taking off work and going skating in the middle of the day, and then they're doing a skate after the game. Though I think it's pretty damn cheesy to charge $7 a person for it.

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Getting back

I haven't posted much but I've been watching lots of hockey. I have been slacking big time on the workout front, but that's about to change.

Pro hockey

My Wild got knocked out of it by the Avs. We have one less loaf of bread in the house because I took it all out on Mrs. Baird. The boys played hard all playoffs, but we were just out played, out experienced. I respect what the Avs did, but I still hate Floppa and likely will not root for them in Round 2. Many questions on the Wild side of things, so it's going to be a very interesting off-season.

I'm particularly interested in the decisions they're going to make around goaltending. Backstrom is expensive and average. Harding seems to be the "future of the franchise" even though he's frighteningly inconsistent from my perspective. And then we have two stellar AHL goalies in Houston who both deserve an opportunity to move up in the world after their amazing play this year, yet I don't want to lose either of them from this organization. I would lose some serious sleep over this if I was GM.

The Aeros are playing game 3 of the first round of playoffs tonight. Right now the series is split and they're home for 3 games. I don't expect them to win it out here at home. We're too bi-polar to pull that off. One of these nights (probably tonight) will be bad. However, it's nice to have Reitzy back from Minny and we'll see how it goes with Pouliot. All these guys are playing team hockey and if he's not bringing that to the table, I'd rather he just go sit in the press box. But I'm excited about the game. Gotta savor these last few home hockey games... never know when it will all be over.

Amateur hockey

So, I've been basically doing nothing towards my goaltending ambitions other than that terrible skate on Thursday. And it's been eating away at me, so I sat down last night with a spreadsheet and put down all the workouts I'd like to be fitting into a week and made a schedule for myself. That worked well when I was marathon training because it wasn't this, "Oh, what do I want to do today?" thing I've been doing. Plus, it takes care of the overwhelming feeling that there's SO MUCH I could be doing to train and how the hell can I fit it all in? I still wish I could work out twice a day, but that's really not a realistic expectation of myself for the long haul.

So, here's the plan, though the days can shift around, since getting out to skate can sometimes vary:

SUNDAY
Interval training: Running and walking, followed up by a plyometrics session

MONDAY
Yoga

TUESDAY
Upper body strength training & Pilates

WEDNESDAY
Skating and Stretch-a-Flex*

THURSDAY
Lower body strength training

FRIDAY
Rest

SATURDAY
Skating or spinning and Stretch-a-Flex*

*Stretch-a-Flex is this device that helps you increase your flexibility using this long band and your body weight. Comes with a DVD, as well as some goalie-specific stretches.

So, that's the plan. Of course, I'm screwing it up immediately by skating on Friday this week. I'm taking the day off for my birthday and going to the mid-day public skate at Willowbrook. Yay! Very much looking forward to that. I need to see about getting my pelvis adjusted again though. I'm back to being shaky on the ice for the first half hour. I need my balance back. It makes such a HUGE difference, it's unbelieveable.

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Thursday Skate

Sometimes the skating gods hold you aloft, steady you, allow you to suddenly do the thing you've been tearing your hair out over for weeks, and give you beautiful ice....

And then some days, they dump 50 teenagers on your tiny Galleria rink, screeching and falling everywhere. They give you The Worst Ice EVER. Melting and scraped to pieces, even after the "Zamboni" has gone over it. And then, after you've spent an unproductive hour and a half skating in these miserable conditions, they knock you on your ass while practicing stops.

I'm pretty sure my blood pressure was off the charts by the time I got home from this skate last night. I basically told Coach Stalin as soon as we hit the ice that this wasn't a lesson skate. It was a "survival" skate. Don't bother bossing me around tonight.

I will say, it's a lot easier to stop on that soft ice, which is why I fell... I'd been practicing on the soft (melting, slushy) ice at the end of the rink and then went to the center because all the figure skaters had left, but the ice was harder there and I just bit it. Not nearly as hard as last time, thankfully. Coach skated over and said, "You worked hard enough today." :)

But as I said, I worked on stopping a bit, skated most of the time working on keeping my knees bent and using good stride form. The rest of my energy was spent dodging falling teenagers and giving them all as much stinkeye as I could muster.

Though at one point, a group of guys was skating past me toward Coach and they were crowding her in a way that sent up a red flag in my head, and I instantly knew what it felt like when teammates stand up for each other. My only thought was, "If you f'ing touch her, you're all going down." Hah! Like I would have really done anything but that was the very visceral reaction I had to seeing that. Of course, I was seriously worked up at these youngsters anyway, so it wasn't a far reach to want to beat the snot out of them.

I'm resting up today, because tomorrow I'm waterproofing the deck and that's going to be backbreaking. Though if I feel so inclined, I might do a little yoga so I can make it through the Aeros first playoff game tonight. Pondering whether to just listen on the radio or invest the $6 in watching it on B2. Hopefully I can get a quality report from other subscribers before I go in for it. It's bad about 80% of the time, it seems.

Wild are down 2-3 in their playoff series. It sucks but Theodore is just f'ing lights out right now. We just couldn't get the puck past him. Backstrom is average as usual, particularly considering our depleted defensive corps. However, Reitz did a good solid job for his first game in over a month AND his first NHL game this season. Pouliot needs to gain 10-15 lbs so he isn't shoved off the puck so easily. Strong on the puck, Pouly! Strong on the puck!

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