Sens at Land’s End

And what kind of a shell has a nut like this? I’ve been reading Sherry’s 100 Things About Me posts and, despite my fears that I might not be able to come up with 100 things to say about myself, I’m going to give it a shot. I apologize in advance for my boringness.

100 Things About Me – Episode I: Origins

1. I was born in Ottawa, many years ago, very close to Christmas. The plus of having a near-Christmas birthday is that everyone who can remember when Christmas is can remember the date of your birthday. The big minus is that when you’re a kid and you want to have a birthday party, all your friends have gone away on their Christmas holidays, and you end up being alone and pathetic every year.

2. My mother loves Anne of Green Gables. She gave me the middle name Blythe, after Gilbert Blythe. I also enjoy Anne of Green Gables, so I think that’s a pretty cool person to be named after, really.

3. I am left-handed. The only scissors I own are a few pairs I … liberated from my elementary school.

4. My parents separated when I was about 6 and eventually divorced. My sister and I lived with my mom.

5. I have one full sibling — we’ll call her Mrs. Coco (because my brother-in-law is Coco, obviously) — as well as two half-sisters and a half-brother from my dad’s previous marriage. I’ve never lived in the same house with my half-siblings though, and they’re much older than I am.

6. My maternal grandparents have been very important in my life. They always lived in the same general area as we did when I was growing up and we saw them quite often. We called my grandmother Tutu because that’s Hawaiian for grandmother, and she was in Hawaii when my mom found out she was going to have me. I used to have a t-shirt that said “If mom says no, ask Tutu.”

7. When I was a kid, my family went to Prince Edward Island on vacation (see #2). While walking on a wooden bridge at Cavendish Beach, I got a splinter in the bottom of my right heel. My parents had to take me to the doctor to get it removed, and the doctor we went to basically just dug it out without any kind of anaesthetic or anything. My dad says he could hear me screaming from the waiting room and my mom eventually just carried me out of the place. I had a scar on my heel for many years afterwards, not to mention the mental scars — I wasn’t very old at the time, but I still remember screaming and crying. Trauma!

8. Until I moved to Vancouver last year, I had lived my entire life in the part of Ottawa that is bordered by the Canal on the north, Bank St. on the west, the Rideau River on the south, and Carleton University on the east. I lived in three houses during my youth, but they were all within that very small area. As a child, I spent a lot of time playing in Brewer Park, skating at Brewer Arena and on the speed skating oval in the park, and swimming in Brewer Pool.

9. I love to swim, but when I swim I’m not generally doing laps or any kind of organized fitness training or whatever. I really love being under water, and I pretty much just swim randomly around the pool. I developed this habit when I was a kid and my sister and my best friend and I would go swimming at Brewer on January weeknights. Most nights, we’d be the only people in the pool, so we could do whatever we wanted. Now when I go to adult swimming time I pretty much have to stay in the slow lane so my non-structured swimming won’t interfere with the serious swimmers. I end up chatting with senior citizens a lot.

10. I had a lot of toys when I was little. One of these was a stuffed Smurfette. Apparently, I was so attached to Smurfette that my kindergarten teacher told my mom she was worried about the possibility of me trying to go back inside to retrieve her if ever there was a fire at the school. I also had a large stuffed rabbit named Big Ears. Ironically, Big Ears’ ears eventually fell off. I never played with Barbie dolls; no, my sister and I had a huge Jem doll collection instead. Jem was way cooler than Barbie.

11. My parents put me in French immersion so I had all my classes (except an hour of English per day) in French starting when I was 5. I switched to English when I started high school and it was the first time I’d ever had Math class not in French. I remember I didn’t know the English word for a protractor. These days I can understand French extremely well and speak it at an acceptable level. I can also read okay (though very slowly), but don’t ask me to write anything.

12. I basically sucked at math in high school, until I got to grade 13 (yes, I’m old enough that I had to do grade 13). At that point I ended up doing two math courses at the same time, Finite and Calculus, and I was so afraid that I’d fail and not be able to graduate that I worked my butt off, especially in Calculus. I ended up getting 90 in Calculus and 95 in Finite. On the last day of school, my Finite teacher asked me in front of the teacher I’d had in grades 11 and 12 whether I was considering doing math in university, and my grade 11 and 12 teacher laughed. Despite my math suckiness, I enjoy trying to reduce numbers to their smallest factors in my head. I also really like multiples of 9.

13. When I was in grade 7 and 8, I was in the school band. I played the clarinet. I loved music class, and I tried out a bunch of the other instruments my school had, like the trumpet, flute, baritone, and trombone. I’d sign one of them out for the night and play them at home. I wasn’t good at any, but I figured out the basics of all of them. When I graduated from elementary school, I won the music award because of my enthusiasm. Then when I went to high school I kept on playing the clarinet and also picked up the cello. I tried out all the other stringed instruments too but I was never very good at anything beyond the simplest stuff.

14. I went through a phase as a tween where I was obsessed with Broadway musicals like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera, but especially Les Mis. I saw it three times and I’m pretty sure I still remember the lyrics to most of the songs. When I was in grade 9, I conducted a small orchestra of my classmates playing some of the music from the play for a school project.

15. The first concert I ever remember going to was New Kids on the Block at Lansdowne Park in like 1989. (Shut up.) It rained really hard and we were completely soaked by the end, but it was awesome. (Shut up!) My favourite New Kid was Jordan and you know, I still think he’s pretty hot. (Seriously, shut up.)

16. I had several pets growing up. My parents had a cat named Marilla (see #2) before I was born and she lived until I was maybe 10 or so. After she died we got a new cat named Tibby. My sister and I had a series of hamsters, my favourite of which was named Fudge. We had a Japanese fighting fish named Sir Percy Blakeney, and later I got goldfish who were called Simon and Hecubus. When I was in high school, we got a dog: Daphne, a schnoodle. She was a wonderful dog and I was very attached to her. She died pretty suddenly when she was nine years old and I was absolutely devastated.

17. Like many people (I think), I wanted to be a marine biologist for a while. I loved killer whales and dolphins. My family went to Marineland in Niagara Falls on vacation once, and though I have absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever, killer whales are the one thing I’ve ever been able to draw well.

18. I’m not sure if this is connected to my desire to be a marine biologist, but the only time I’d visited Vancouver before moving there was when I was little, and the only thing I really remember is going to the aquarium in Stanley Park. I have a vivid memory of seeing an octopus in a tank and being completely grossed out by its tentacles.

19. Twice during my childhood I managed to knock out a loose baby tooth and swallow it. Twice.

20. I was the section head for the Arts and Entertainment section of the school newspaper when I was in high school. I then went to Journalism school when I started university, but dropped out after a year.

21. I had never seen the Star Wars trilogy until I was a teenager. People used to give me the weirdest looks when I’d tell them I hadn’t seen it. I had one friend in elementary school who was so shocked by my failure to see the movies that he made me a VHS copy of all three. I’ve now seen all six movies several times, and I still have that copy along with my DVDs.

22. My grandparents used to live in Almonte, near the Mississippi River. A few times, my grandfather took me canoeing out there, and my cousins and my sister and I would wade in the water and climb the rocks by the small waterfall near their building. It was really nice. I also learned to drive on the quiet highway between Almonte and Pakenham. (These are small towns outside Ottawa.)

23. I was not at all athletic when I was a kid or teenager. I was usually picked last or maybe second to last in gym class. Last year, I started playing hockey, and guess what? I’m still not athletic. However, it’s a lot of fun.

24. The first time I ever went to a hockey game, I was in high school (I developed my interest in the game kind of late, I’m afraid). My dad took me to a 67’s game. Before I left I told my mom I would catch a puck and bring it back to her. She said “Yeah, right.” During the warmup, a Belleville Bulls player shot a puck that hit the top of the glass, bounced up high, hit the railing in front of our seats, then deflected off my dad’s wrist and bounced off my head. We looked for the puck but couldn’t find it until I realized it was in my hood. My mom was amazed. My dog tried to eat the puck.

25. When I first discovered hockey, I was all about the 67’s. My feelings about the Sens were mostly resentment that they got so much attention and the 67’s got so little. I knew a lot about the CHL, not much about the NHL. It was really only after Wade Redden was traded to Ottawa that I started paying close attention to the Sens. I do remember the whole Dave Allison saga though. I also remember the Patrick Roy trade very well, because I became *dramatic music* a Montreal fan for a while afterwards, and the first jersey I ever bought was a Jocelyn Thibault Habs jersey. I am deeply shamed.

26. My first favourite Sens player was Radek Bonk. I loved him! For my 18th birthday, I received an autographed Bonk jersey. My dad once took me to a Sens game, possibly sometime near my 18th birthday but I’m not sure, against the Bruins. It happened to be Bonk’s first game back from an injury. We sat in the 100 level and I remember Bonk scored a goal right in front of me. It was great!

27. The first Sens game I ever went to, also with my dad, was an exhibition game against Montreal. I was one of those obnoxious people cheering for the Habs at a Sens homegame because of my Thibault love. Sorry. During the game, Darcy Tucker made a questionable hit on Bonk and I think gave him a bloody nose or at least took him out of the game somehow. I have hated Darcy Tucker ever since that day. I know everyone hates Darcy Tucker, but that is my specific reason. No one can say I don’t hold a grudge. Chris Pronger and Steve Downie, take note: I will likely violently hate both of you forever, too.

28. I actually met Radek Bonk once when I went to the Sens’ Charity Carnival one year. I got my picture taken with him! I’ve also got a great picture of me and my friend with Janne Laukkanen, and I met Alexei Yashin too. I didn’t think he was very nice (surprise, surprise). At the same event, they had Wade Redden in a dunk tank, dressed in a wetsuit. Nice. I met Wade three times during his career in Ottawa. The first time was at the Ex: he was there signing autographs just before he started his first season with the Sens. Now that he’s gone, there’s no one I’ve met on the team except Nick Foligno.

29. I took Latin in high school and one of our assignments was to write our own will in Latin and make three bequests. In my will, I appointed my gladiator, Radecus Boncus, to be my executor, and willed my 67’s season ticket (section 25, row A, seat 4) to one of my friends.

30. Brian Campbell was my favourite 67’s player. I still think he’s one of the most exciting players I’ve ever seen. I once ran into him in the hallway at the Civic Centre and I told him “I love watching you play!” He said, “Thank you.”

(100 Things About Me – Episode II: Things I Love (Besides Hockey) coming soon to this space!)

Man, I am really tired of this no hockey thing August has going on, know what I mean? It just sucks. Could there be any less to do? Could I be any more bored? Hmm … well, probably, yes. But still, things would seem much less lame if there were a Sens game on TV tonight.

When I’m bored and there’s no hockey in sight, I read lots of different hockey blogs. A few of them have come up with some good ways to make this nightmarish hockeyless month pass more quickly. Sherry at Scarlett Ice, who like me is feeling the pain of no hockey, has started working on a 100 things about me meme, which makes for very interesting reading. I had no idea Sherry was so multi-talented! Meanwhile, Puck Daddy has announced the winners of the “Gary Bettman: Portraits in Heroism” contest. If you have some time to kill (and who doesn’t?), I strongly suggest checking out the Flickr gallery of all 231 entries, which not only is hilarious, but also serves as a great demonstration of just how overdone the whole Dark Knight “Why So Serious?” thing has become.

Puck Daddy has also got a series going called “5 Ways I’d Change the NHL,” in which they ask various people to describe, you guessed it, five changes they’d make to the NHL. My personal favourite suggestion comes from Will Leitch:

1. Hockey players should no longer be allowed to wear helmets. As all casual observers of the sport know, hockey players are impervious to pain. But their faces are still able to be damaged; teeth destroyed, eyes knocked out of their socket, noses flattened. And yet they will keep coming. This will help us train our master class of human to take on the Terminators during the upcoming cyborg apocalypse.

Yes! Anything that will give humanity a chance to survive the inevitable conflict with artificially intelligent beings (which all the science fiction movies and TV shows I watch assure me is coming any day now) gets my vote.

Inspired partly by Puck Daddy, I’ve come up with my own take on this concept. It happens to be something I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about. You see, I am a daydreamer, and when I’ve finished reading hockey blogs and there’s still no hockey in sight, that is when I start to drift off into my own imaginary land. When I daydream, I sometimes create elaborate scenarios that place myself at the centre of the universe in some way. Elaborate scenarios such as …

If I Ran the NHL

Picture a world where Gary Bettman is no longer NHL commissioner and the board of governors has, for some reason, decided that I, Meaghan, humble blogger and huge hockey fan, shall be appointed Supreme Ruler over the league. All my decisions will become law without any debate. I have total control and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Luckily, I’m a pretty benevolent dictator on the whole, even if I do show a disgusting amount of bias towards a certain team, and it’s generally agreed that my changes make the league much better. I am also invulnerable, which means Anton Volchenkov and I will likely be humanity’s last hope when the machines attack. (He’ll be like a Russian John Connor, and I’ll be like Neo from The Matrix.) It also means that even if there were disgruntled owners and GMs they couldn’t assassinate me, so I really am Supreme Ruler for Life. The National Hockey League changes its name to Meaghan’s Hockey League and I am given my choice of season ticket seats in every league arena. It’s awesome. (Bettman is now working as the home team’s penalty box door opening guy in Anaheim.)

“How did this come to pass?” you might ask. That is a story for another time. For now, here is the first major change I would make in taking the shoddy, somewhat run-down NHL, polishing it up, and turning it into the wonderful, wildly successful, crowd-pleasing MHL.

First Order of Business: Contraction and Re-realignment

I don’t think anyone could argue that the NHL’s current divisional and conference setup makes any sense. The Northwest division covers a vast geographic area and has teams in three different timezones. Detroit and Columbus are the only two Eastern timezone teams stuck in the Western Conference, where they play all their roadgames — except the ones against each other — in timezones different than their own. Dallas, despite being nowhere near the west coast, finds itself in the Pacific Division, while Vancouver, which is in fact right on the west coast, is not in the Pacific Division. It is bizarre.

The problem is the lack of teams in the western US. 21 of the NHL’s 30 teams are east of Dallas. One solution might be to expand into more western markets, but the MHL’s most glorious leader feels that the league already has too many teams, some of which are not very good, and some of which always seem to play in half-empty arenas.

With these considerations in mind, the MHL will make the following changes to its roster of teams:

• Six teams from the former National Hockey League will be shut down, effective immediately. These six teams are the Atlanta Thrashers, Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Nashville Predators, New York Islanders, and Tampa Bay Lightning. The remaining teams will have the option of taking on players from these teams at their current salaries in the MHL’s Contraction Draft (format to be announced). Southeast Division teams, it’s nothing personal. You simply don’t fit in with my vision. Nashville, we all know you weren’t going to last anyway. New York, in your case, it is personal. You annoy me, and I see no point to your continued existence.
• The Phoenix Coyotes will return to the city of Winnipeg and resume playing as the Jets. All Phoenix players and personnel will move with the team. Pack your bags and get ready for that prairie winter, boys!

The remaining 24 teams will be divided, as in the old NHL, into a Western Conference and an Eastern Conference, each of which has three divisions. The Western Conference divisions have been arranged in an attempt to minimize the amount of time teams spend travelling to different timezones:

Pacific Division
Anaheim Ducks
Los Angeles Kings
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks

Mountain Division
Calgary Flames
Colorado Avalanche
Edmonton Oilers
Winnipeg Jets (I know, there are no mountains in Winnipeg. But it’s the best I could do.)

Central Division
Chicago Blackhawks
Dallas Stars
Minnesota Wild
St. Louis Blues

The Eastern Conference divisions are based mostly on geography:

Northeast Division
Buffalo Sabres
Montreal Canadiens
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic Division
Boston Bruins
New Jersey Devils
New York Rangers
Washington Capitals

Midwest Division
Columbus Blue Jackets
Detroit Red Wings
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins

I expect to receive an effusive thank you letter and possibly a large gift of some kind from the Red Wings’ and Blue Jackets’ owners later today.

MHL teams will play a 74 game schedule. Each team will meet each other team in its division 3 times at home and 3 times on the road (18 games). Each team will also play each team from the other divisions in its conference twice at home and twice on the road (32 games). Finally, every team will play each team in the other conference twice a season, once each at home and on the road (24 games).

At the conclusion of the 74 game regular season, the top eight teams in each conference will advance to the playoffs, which will use the same format as the NHL playoffs: four rounds of best-of-seven series. Division winners are guaranteed to make the playoffs as they were in the NHL; however, they will not automatically be ranked 1-2-3 in the conference. Instead, the division winners and the other top five point-getting teams will be ranked 1-8 according to their point totals.*

Wow. I feel better already just looking at the new lineup! Big changes, I know, but there are so many benefits to this new setup. No more Southleast jokes. More in-timezone road games for Western teams should mean higher TV ratings, which might translate to more media attention and increased fan support for teams like Chicago and Columbus. Having Sidney Crosby in town three times a season can also only help the Blue Jackets’ attendance numbers. The two most boring teams in the league are now hidden away in the same division, which, okay, is painful for Rangers and Caps fans, but really good for the rest of us. There will be a lot of pressure on Alex Ovechkin to offset the dull, but I think he can handle it. Best of all, Winnipeg has its team back and we can all stop worrying about that Jets megafan friend we have who’s been verging on suicidal since 1996. Newly suicidal obsessive Coyotes fans, we haven’t forgotten you! An employee of the Anaheim Ducks will personally pay to relocate you all to Winnipeg with the team if you so choose. That’s what things are like in the MHL. We care about hockey fans.**

*The lone exception to this rule is the Ottawa Senators who, should they win the Northeast Division, will have the option of choosing their own position within the top 4 in order to secure the most favourable first round opponent (or mess with another top 4 team).

**Except Thrashers, Canes, Panthers, Preds, Lightning, and Isles fans. Sorry.

So awesome are my reading skills that I have not just one but two hockey books to report on today. Of course, one of those books was full of pictures, but I don’t think that makes me any less impressive.

Puck Lit Project Review #6: Scoring: The Art of Hockey by Seymour Segal (images) and Hugh Hood (text)

Plot Summary: There is no plot. It’s a collection of hockey drawings by Seymour Segal with commentary by Hugh Hood. There is also an introductory essay by Hood which tells the story of how the images in the book came to be and explores some connections between sports and sex. And oh yeah, this is billed as a collection of “erotic art” with a hockey theme.

Genre: Hockey Art, Hockeyrotica?

Hockey Content: The drawings all feature people either watching or playing hockey or wearing hockey equipment.

My Thoughts: First of all, I wouldn’t describe the art in this book as erotic at all. Scary is more like it. I can’t explain why anyone would see this art as sexual except that there is some nudity, and perhaps that’s all it takes for people to see sex? Most of the drawings have a dreamlike or nightmarish feel to them. This isn’t like the art you’ll see on the wall at the Hockey Hall of Fame (not that you would ever expect to see erotic art on the wall there — unless maybe Wayne Gretzky painted it — but you know what I mean). It’s a collection of abstract and sometimes disturbing images in which shapes shift into other shapes and nothing is quite normal. The drawings have names like “Reflection” and “A Quiet Moment” rather than “Two on One,” which would be a perfect name for a sexy hockey drawing. (After a 67’s game, I once heard an OHL player say to two girls “How about a little two on one?” On another occasion, I heard a guy try to pick up a girl using the classic “I play Junior B” as his line. Seriously, guys.)

Interestingly, Segal completed this series of drawings a few years after suffering a catastrophic head injury while playing goal. This probably explains the weird violence of the drawings as well as the presence of goalie pads in many of them.

Rating: 1 puck out of 5. I don’t care for the drawings for the most part and I don’t quite see the point. I’m no art connoisseur though.

Puck Lit Project Review #7: Midnight Hockey: All About Beer, the Boys, and the Real Canadian Game by Bill Gaston

Plot Summary: Though my plan was to read hockey fiction this summer, I enjoyed book #5, The Good Body, also by Bill Gaston, so much that I have deviated from the plan here by reading Gaston’s non-fiction account of his hockey-playing exploits. The book is an ode to hockey, specifically oldtimers hockey, which apparently involves lots of beer.

Genre: Hockeyography, Reflections on Hockey, Amateur Hockey, Humour

Hockey Content: Gaston talks about his own hockey games and deals with many other aspects of the game such as team names, the hockey smell, the similarities between hockey and yoga (which I had never thought about before, but yes, I totally see it now), and what goes on in the locker room. There is also a brief section which recounts how no less an authority than David Suzuki has concluded that the hockey player is the most highly evolved life form on the planet.

Choice Quotation: “Have you ever noticed that the Stanley Cup is shaped like a huge, godlike beer bottle?”

My Thoughts: My favourite section of the book was probably the one about locker room humour. Some of the stories in there had me laughing out loud, or at least trying to laugh silently because I was reading at work and my workplace is morgue-like in its quietness. One story involving a tray of meat stands out as possibly the funniest. The book is mostly made up of anecdotes, most of them funny, about things Gaston has witnessed or participated in during his oldtimer career.

It also serves as the author’s hockey autobiography. He relates stories from the time he spent as a playing coach in a league in France as well as his days playing for the UBC Thunderbirds (UBC shout out). Basically, it’s a collection of hockey stories and a meditation on why people play the game.

Rating: 4 pucks out of 5. Some of the stories in the book are totally ridiculous and stupid and they will make you question the sanity of everyone involved. But if you love hockey, and I assume you do, this book will make you laugh.

Way, way back, a long time ago, I decided I would make a series of posts reviewing the Sens’ season month by month. I thought it would be a good way to pass the time while there was no hockey going on. Then June and July turned out to be weirdly hockey-filled for offseason months. I didn’t really feel a need to kill time, and so the only portion of the season I reviewed was the pre-season.

Now, however, summer hockey season is basically over. There are no more development camps, and no more frenzied days dedicated to getting new players. The Ottawa coaching staff is complete and the roster seems mostly set, with only Andrej Meszaros left to sign (and of course any shocking trades BM the GM might happen to make). In other words, my hockey withdrawal is setting in. And when you’re in withdrawal, you’ll do anything to get your fix, no matter how painful. In that spirit, I will now continue my season review.

Episode II – The Return of the Sens (October)

The season started off with a fantastic, awesome bang as Bryan Murray managed to re-sign Dany Heatley to a six-year contract extension at a cap hit of $7.5 million just hours before the team took the ice for their first game. From there, things got better and better as the Sens flattened the competition (except Carolina) all month, allowing only 19 goals against in 10 games — five of those 19 coming in the month’s one loss to Carolina — while scoring 34. Who could ever have guessed how craptastic the defence would turn later in the season? Yes, they were the class of the NHL at this point, and media even compared them to the 1976-1977 Montreal Canadiens, a team that went 60-8-12 and set the record for most points in a season by an NHL team. It looked as though my theory about the team’s desire to get back to the Final driving them to brilliance would come to pass. The team had a bit of swagger about it and all was puppies and sunshine in the capital as the city brought out the red again for the raising of the Eastern Conference Championship banner at the home opener, and newspapers reported that Heatley’s negotiations had taken so long to finish not because he wanted more money than the team offered, but because he wanted a longer deal. Aww! Feel the love. It was a great time to be a Sens fan. Like all the best tragic protagonists, we lived our lives in a permanent state of happiness and calm, with no inkling of the terrible and cruel fall that was gradually creeping our way.

Memorable Moments: After signing his shiny new contract, Heatley started the season in spectacular fashion, scoring two goals — one to tie the game with five minutes remaining in the third period and another to win the game in overtime — in the season opener against Toronto and a third in the second game of the season, putting him on pace for 123 goals. (It’d have been cool if he’d done it.) On October 13, the Sens set a record for the fastest three goals in team history when they scored three times in 52 seconds on Henrik Lundqvist and the New York Rangers. Nick Foligno scored his first career goal against Montreal on October 18 and celebrated with a jump in tribute to his father. Another first: Brian Elliott made his NHL debut on October 10 against Atlanta, making 28 of 29 saves.

Eye on a Player: Heatley’s heroics aside, Martin Gerber was the story for October. Gerber was named a star in four of the eight games he played in and speculation began as to what might happen when Ray Emery, who spent a week or so on a conditioning stint with Binghamton this month, returned to the lineup. Emery did play one game for the big team on October 20 and he performed well, but Gerber returned the following game and was named the first star after a 31 save performance.

Sens’ Record in October: 9-1-0