2-2-1...

Since I’m late as usual with this post, there really is not too much to go over. My memory of the Friday game is already a bit fuzzy, and I could not get to the Saturday game. But don’t worry! I do have some things I think are worth mentioning, and some random thoughts.

-We won on Friday 5-3, and lost on Saturday 4-2. The next game is this Wednesday, the Stingrays(The Kelly Cup champions).

-They handed out rally towels...



-Lang did not play, I’m pretty sure he was playing assistant coach like he did last year.

-The Blades defense was blocking a ton of shots in the first two periods, for some reason they seemed to stop in the third. The question is has Coach Cameron encouraged this as a new strategy, or is this a sign that the players don’t have confidence in Morrison? (Bring back Khudobin…please?).

- Reid was a total beast Saturday; he was in on nearly every goal scored. Overall, the new players are looking pretty good.

-The Checkers were the same team I remembered from last year. A ton of cheap stuff and a lot of after the whistle crap. Good to know some things don’t change.

-And along those lines, with all the controversy surrounding officiating throughout the sporting world right now, it would be nice if the ECHL would do something about the inconsistent officiating in the league. Perhaps it is bias on my part, but the officiating was unpredictable. It would be nice to know that hooking and cross-checking always get a whistle, not just whenever the mood strikes the ref.

-Perhaps something else I’m off base on…In the first when the Checkers player was down on the ice was that the best time to introduce the Everbabes? The guy was being attended to by the Checkers trainer.I don’t care what team he plays for, that was tasteless.

I will be at the game Wednesday, and I'll be tweeting live. You can follow me at twitter.com/SwampHockey, or check the box on the side of the blog to see whats going on. Since all drafts on Wednesday will be $2.00 my tweets may start to get a bit weird by the third (sorry). Also, the blog may hit 100 page views this month! Nice to know people are actually reading.

1-1-1?

The first preseason game against Gwinnett


The Blades are back in town after spending the weekend in Toledo. The good news is they won Friday night, the bad news is the lost (badly) Saturday night, and lost in OT Sunday night.

But, none of that matters as the Blades are on top the division standings, even if it is by only one point. They are also facing the Charlotte Checkers in their home opener on Friday. Who's going?

Round-up!

Just before we get to the nitty gritty roster stuff, I feel the need to share this awesome video with you guys. You may have already seen it, but when Biscut dropped this off on my homepage with the suggestion that the Blades need a player like this, I kind of agreed.



The amazing part is this kid is only nine, and plays on a team with twelve year-olds! I don't know about you but at some point this year I want to see one of the guys at least attempt this shot.

Also, this beauty from last night almost gave me a heart attack. I'm showing you this for a variety of reasons...
1. The Canes are the Blades affiliate
2. Cam Ward is one of my favorite non-penguins players
3. It's just pretty



Are you watching Morrison?

Now on to the good stuff, the blades have received to players from the AHL. Goalie Chris Beckford-Tseu, was sent down from Rochester. His stats are here. And forward Brandon Buck was sent from the Aeros. His stats are here. This means that two players had to be let go to make room, they released Jason Reese, Lee Jubinville, and John Wessbecker.

They also announced the finalized roster, there are 11 forwards, 7 defensemen, and two goalies. There are some players on the injured reserve list as well. Breault is on the 3-day, Lang on the 7-day (noooooo!), and both Paquet and Aiello are on the 21-day list. For a little more of why they're on the injured list, and just a lot more info than I have, I recommend checking out the Blades Blog over at the Naples Daily News. Woody has way more access to the inside stuff than I do, he's actually a real sports writer after all.

I'm absolutelty dieing to see what happened on Saturday with Dan Sullivan, the meathead from Gwinnett. Whatever happened not only got him suspended for pushing a linesman, but also dropped from the Gwinnett roster. If anyone spots a video, please send it. All I can find is the video from the night before.

Finally, the Blades will be playing the first game of the year against Toledo tomorrow night. You can catch the radio broadcast online, or on the AM dial. You can also watch the game online if your willing to pay the B2 people.

Hockey Fan Rules (Obey or Else)

With the preseason starting this Friday I think it's really important to make these rules clear. This is just some stuff that I and many other hockey fans find very annoying, and I've decided to at least make my list known. These aren't written in stone, and nothing serious will happen if you break them, but your section-mates will hate you if you do.

Hockey Fan Rules
1. Don't yell "Drop the puck!", it makes you look stupid. The ref is waiting for a reason, learn to be a little patient.

2. Wait until the whistle blows to get up. They will not run out of beer, or hot dogs. When you stand up your blocking the people behind you, your also opening yourself up to get hit in the head by a puck.

3. Please don't let your little heathens run amok. There is no need for them to run up and down the aisle, or kick the seat of the person in front of you. It's open season on any child not being watched, hip checks on screeching brats is definitely allowed (actually it's encouraged).

4. If you don't know the rules that's fine, true hockey fans love to explain the game to newbies. We don't like to hear you discuss what you think is going on with your even more clueless friend, this is not football the rules are different.

5. Please don't yell "Punch him!" any time to opposing players jostle each other. There is actually more to hockey than fighting, you'll live.


I'm sure this is in no way complete, and if anyone reading this has any more to add I'd love to hear from you. Either E-mail, or add your rule to the comments section. Good ones will be added to this list (with credit of course). I also think it's a good idea to give you a list of the chants you might hear in the arena, but not understand. I will also take suggestions on these as well, mostly because I can't think of more than two.

Blades Chants
1. When we score immediately after the "Hey!" song you have to let the opposing goalie know what you think. So- "Hey (goalies name), It's all your fault! It's all your fault!...". This starts in the neighboring section to my favorite section. I'm pretty sure if the entire arena gets behind this one it could be great.

2. When anyone near you shouts "Hey ref!" your immediate response should be "You suck!". They deserve this if they have been even worse than the ECHL ref's usually are. It's also funny to hear someones grandma yell this.


Stuff was definitely missed, but it's been a bit of a long off season. I won't know if you guys don't drop me a line or leave a comment. The best part of writing a blog is getting reader involvement, and I haven't seen any. But, I did see that we hit five page loads yesterday, almost a record!
(Just a little update, apparently the commenting was broken. It's now fixed, sorry I pestered you guys)

3. Do not, and I repeat do not, allow your little heathen to run up and down the aisle or kick the back of the seat in front of them. Not everyone enjoys children, and no one but you enjoys badly behaved children

Is it Friday?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to go crazy if Friday doesn't get here. At least it's almost here, how exciting is it that seasons almost here?!

Yesterday, the Blades announced the signing of forward Jordan Morrison. You can find his stats here. Of course, I'm excited by the fact that the Penguins drafted him and he played a bit in Wilkes-Barre. He was named to last season's ECHL all rookie team, and had an average of a point per game during the Nailers playoff run.

I had a hard time choosing a video of our new guy, mostly because there are about 20 on YouTube. This was my favorite, but definetly follow the link to the video and check out all the other videos.This is from the 2005-2006 season he played in the OHL.



I'm also going to take this chance to mention that we set a new record for this blog by having six pageloads on Monday (sadly, we average about two a day). It's nice to see that I'm not just amusing myself here, and I would never be upset if all my lovely readers got the word out about this blog. Also, the special post I promised last week is going up tomorrow, make sure you check back.

YouTube Gold!

Once I saw this pop up on YouTube I just knew I had another post in me. It is a bit long, but this video is pure gold. Courtesy of SWFL insider, here is the funniest video you'll see all week.



I'm re-thinking the whole I like Lang better than Nicholson thing, because he's pretty funny, even if he is a bad dancer (seriously, the Charleston?).

Also, when I was checking out the page loads with StatCounter, I noticed a huge uptick in the blogs readership. I can also see where the readers are coming from (someone in Rochester is obsessed), there is actually a reader in Indonesia! That little tidbit led me to the Wikipedia page of Richie Regehr, the only Indonesian born NHL player. That's your YouTube video of the week and your Wikipedia hockey page of the week, now I'm off to learn how to play ping pong.

Almost There...

A lot of roster news was announced over the last few days so this is going to be a long post, and here we go.

-The team signed rookie forward Jason Reese, stats here, and this will be his first professional season. He has played in the WHL for the last few seasons.

The Albany River Rats sent a couple of guys down from their training camp to the Everblades. They are as follows...

-Goalie Mike Morrison, stats here. He was already announced a while ago.

-Forward Milan Gajic, stats here. I'm so glad he's back, he was totally in my top five favorites last season.

-Forward Jacob Micflikier, stats here. Also happy to have him back.

-Forward Rob Hennigar (It's embarrassing how much trouble I had spelling his name, especially when I've already typed Gajic's and Micflikier's names), stats here.

-And, Defenseman Elgin Reid, stats here. He played for the Wheeling Nailers last season, I'm going to be very tempted to ask about whether he had an urge to punch Luca Caputi, I'm pretty sure a lot of guys do.

The team also announced some training camp invites as well...

-Goalie Nate Zervos, I can't find his stats at HockeyDB so no stats here.

-Forward Richard Rochefort, stats here. His HockeyDB stats don't show that he spent the last two seasons in Japan playing for the Seibu Prince Rabbits, the name is real and you have to check out some of the other names listed at the bottom of the Wikipedia page (seriously, paper cranes?).

-Defenseman Anthony Aiello, stats here. He's just out of Boston College, and if he is offered a contract this will be his first season of professional hockey.

-Finally defenseman Frank Grzeszczak, stats here. Interesting fact, he was born in Plantation, Florida. Not that it really matters, He just needs to skate.

Now, I'm totally exhausted from writing all of that, and I'm sorry you read all of that. I hope to have a really special post up next week, at some point, in honor of the season finally getting underway. If you don't want to keep checking back you can always follow the blog on Twitter!