Friday Links

I know you guys have been missing your Friday dose of links. What can I say? The holidays are nuts. Please accept this kitten as my apology.


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Kittens really do solve all of life's problems don't they? On to the Links!

- I'm a little late with this, but here's a great story on Brian Ferlin. A Bruins prospect, one of Florida's best crop of young hockey players, and someone who spent a lot of time on Germain ice.

- Which reminds me, I only managed to make the second day of the College Classic. The photos I took are up if you're interested. Clarkson vs. Cornell is here. Maine vs. UMass is here.

- Right now, the Jr. Blades are 22-0-1 (including a 13-0 record at home). They're also sending eight players to their leagues all-star game. You're running out of time to get on the bandwagon guys.

- Your Wikipedia hockey page for today- "Hockey puck"

- Choosing the Tweet of the week was hard. No one was on their game at all this week. Therefore, I picked two from last week.  The first because "the Smurf line" is a great name for a line in hockey, and the second because it's a universal truth.

- I'm pretty sure I've discovered the reason why all hockey players seem to have a magical ability to rock a suit like no one else. They start dressing up early.

-  I'm tempted to buy this DVD. So very tempted.

- I mentioned this on Twitter earlier, but some of you haven't joined the cool kids yet so I'll mention it here. The Everblades aquired forward Tyler Shelast from the Trenton Titans. I hate being mean before a player has played a single game in a Blades jersey, but if his stats are any indication, he wont get much time to develop a tan and learn to love key lime pie (if you catch my drift).



- I am not willing to jinx the boys tonight. Please accept this second kitten in place of any mention of wins, standings, records, or gloating related to divisional rivals.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

News and Notes

It's a little funny that signing immediately bring me out of a terrible writing funk. I'm not going to complain though, it's always fun to see a new player in action, especially when it can mean good things for the Blades.

- We may have lost Justin Shugg, but we signed a forward with a Kelly Cup Championship ring in his place. Kory Falite won last season with the Alaska Aces, and was playing in Norway. Now he's all ours. His stats:



- The Lightning have sent us defenseman Charles Landry. His stats:



- Some bad news: Alex Hutchings was moved to the 21 day IR list. Not good at all.

- I didn't take that many pictures at the Teddy Bear toss because all the seats in my favorite section were bought before I could get to the arena (and then NO ONE SAT IN THEM, grrrr). This is my favorite though. Pat Nagle chilling with his new bestie.



- I'm super proud that I've had one of my photos appear in an actual magazine! It was included with a story on how amazing the Jr. Blades have been playing this season (if you still haven't been to a game, you suck). Skip to page 15 for the story (and my photo).

- The Blades start a three game in three days road series tonight in Gwinnett. They're eighth in the conference and last in the division. Losing is not an option at this point.

- Must mean it's time for a doggie picture then, eh?


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Jr. Blades Photos

It was great to photograph the Junior Blades game against FGCU's D3 squad.

I had to pull out my fvorite photo. Such a great moment.

As usual, I battled the cruddy practice rink lighting, but I think the photos turned out really well:



If you weren't able to come by, you really should head over tonight. It was a pretty great game, and tonights should be even better.

News and Notes

Here's a quick serving of some random bits and pieces for you.

- Oh, hey, look what I found! Photos from the College Classic staring Josh Van Dyk:





- The Chicago Express now have two former Everblades on their roster.

- I tweeted this yesterday, but I'll post this article again. It looks like the Bakersfield Condors are going to go without an NHL or AHL affiliate.

- I shot my first hockey game of the season! It was great to see the Florida Jr. Blades hand the Tampa Bay Juniors a stomping. Here's a handy dandy sideshow for your enjoyment:



- I really do recommend checking out one of their games if you can. It's amazing how skilled such young guys can be. Take a look at their schedule and maybe head on over. They only charge around $5 and they're a ton of fun to watch.

Friday Links

I'm sure you were all lost without your usual dose of Friday fun. Lucky for you, the links are back!

- First, I have to embedd this video of our very own Jimmy Williams being interviewed.



- I wish I could post a picture of this hockey cake, but I can't. It's just too coll. I think the Febreeze bottle is the best part.

- This jersey is so awesome, I'm really considering buying it. Too cool.

- As always, CHL Photos has another stunning picture. My first impression? Those goalie pads look old.

- Kitty time!


see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

News and Notes

Here's a bunch of bits and pieces to make Monday a little easier.

- The Blades ended up losing Saturday night 3-1. I missed most of the game, but what I did see was not impressive. You can read re-caps from Woody here.

- This great story from Woody on Alex Imbeault made the front page of  the ECHL website.

- I have all the pictures (10/17 & 10/19), and videos up. It's going to take me a while to get all the pictures tagged with the players, but it will be done eventually.

- Now that I've built up some pictures I'm going to try to tweet a picture of the day every day at 11:00. If you're still not willing to join twitter you can see it in the box on the lower left side of the blog or you can just peek at my Twitter profile.

- Former Eveblades goalie Barry Brust was featured in a post on Puck Daddy! I know Blades fans aren't suprised by Brusty being awesome, we saw all that last season, but it is nice to see the rest of the hockey world realize what we already know.

- The Jr. Blades have put up another hilarious video. It was too good for me to put off until tomorrow. (You probably shouldn't click play if you're at work though)

News and Notes

- The Jr. Blades won both their games this weekend. They are undefeated so far this season. The team has tweeted a preview of the game notes for this weekends series against the Atlanta Hawks.

- I got all the pictures from the Alumni game and Fridays game against Greenville up on Flickr.

- You can check out the game summaries for the two games against the Road warriors here and here. I have no idea why they announced the three stars wrong on Friday (they said McColm [who didn't even play], Raymond Nikiforov), but they seem to have corrected it.

- One of our affiliates has finally sent us a goalie. The Charlotte Checkers have reassigned Bobby Goepfert to the Everblades.Check out his stats:



- The Checkers have also assigned defenceman Kyle Lawson. His stats:



- I have to link to this blog post that talks about the growth of youth hockey in Florida. Especially because of the mention of two local boys R.J. Boyd and David Bohem.

OFF TO A GREAT START

The ACHA FGCU D3 & D2 Eagles are on a winning streak after two incredible weekends of Hockey.

The D3 Eagles took home two wins against the Space Coast Hurricanes and the University of Alabama. The D2 Eagles took home a victory vs the Jr. Blades and Central Michigan University. The Jr. Blades gave the D2 Eagles a run for their money. Those Jr. Blades are starstruck, young and very talented gentleman with nothing but pure passion and heart for the game. It was an honor to host them in their own rink and FGCU wishes them the best of luck in their first season as a Junior B program.

The D2 Eagles blew away Central Michigan with an 11-1 win on Friday October 1st, but they came "ready to play" on the night of October 2nd. CMU held the Eagles 4 to 3 and pulled their goalie in the last 4 minutes of the game. However, in the last 1ast 18 seconds of the game, FGCU's #18 Jake Coyle took a shot on an open net bringing the Eagles up by 2, with an end score of 5-3. Mr. Coyle left that game with his first hat trick for the 2010-11 FGCU Hockey season. Way to go, Jake!

For more news, scores and game day updates, check out: http://hockeyyall.com/

Until next time. . .GO EAGLES!

News and Notes

Here's a quick update on the news from this weekend.

- The Jr. Blades won both of their games against the Tampa Bolts this weekend. There should also be a fight video going up at the Jr. Blades YouTube channel at some point.


- Woody has a great story up on how training camp has been going so far. The opening day is here, and today's report is here.

- In case you didn't click that second link, Francis Lemieux and Shea Guthrie got into a fight. This is funny when you consider they rode back from Norfolk together. I guess you can't blame Lemieux though, Guthrie looks like the kind of person who sings (off-key) in the car.

- In case you missed my tweets over the weekend- McColm, Paquet, Guthrie, Raymond, Imbeault, Sarazin, Hendrikx, and Egener were all released from their try-outs and are either back in town or expected to arrive in the next few days.

- The Charlotte Checkers have assigned four players to us (click their names for their stats)- Matt Beca, Mike McKenzie (You can find him on Twitter here), Matthew Pistilli, and Elgin Reid.

- The Admirals have reassigned Mitch Fadden.

- That brings the roster to 21 players, plus the 6 players on try-out (Richie Smith was cut yesterday) brings the grand total to 27 players. The ECHL only allows 20 players (they don't count players on the injured reserved list). There still may be some more players arriving from our affiliates (one should be a goalie coming from Norfolk). Cuts will be announced Saturday.

- Most importantly... the Alumni Game is tomorrow!

YouTube Tuesday: Meet the Jr. Everblades

Regular readers should already know about the Jr. Everblades. For those of you that haven't, they're a brand new junior hockey team town. I mentioned yesterday that I was quite impressed by their play against the FGCU Eagles in their exhibition game on Friday. Today, I have to share these hilarious videos from their recent trip to the Hitmen Classic in New Jersey.





How refreshing is it to see hockey players being themselves? What is even more amazing is that the teams is sharing it with us. You really have to respect the organization for allowing us to see their players personalities.

News and Notes

First, some Everblades alumni news:
- Josh Harding had what is likely be a season ending injury. This means that former Everblades goalie Anton Khudobin has a chance to earn the back-up job in Minnesota. You can read about his rough start in last night's game here.

- A wonderful reader sent me pictures of Ryan Lang practicing in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago (I think an e-mail was lost somewhere along the way). Thanks for the awesome pictures!

 

Also, If you remember I went to the Jr. Everblades exhibition game against the FGCU Eagles. I was really impressed by both teams. I really do recommend seeing both teams play, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

-  I've added a page for the Jr. Blades with their roster and calendar, and I've done the same for the Eagles.

- Pictures Fridays game are on Flickr. You can check out the set here.

- A couple of the Jr. Blades are on twitter, here's the teams official list.

YouTube Tuesday: Meet Bobby Goepfert

Since it seems like we're pretty much guaranteed Bobby Goepfert will be one of our goalies this season, I figured know is as good a time as any to learn a little something about him. First, some videos (it is Tuesday after all):





And, just for fun:



And his stats (for readers not used to goalie stats check out save percentage and goals against average):


He's listed as playing for the checkers because he signed a two-way contract with our AHL affiliate. He wasn't invited to the Hurricanes training camp, and as the story I mentioned above hints at, he's been training at Germain. As you can see, he has some pretty respectable stats. I do actually remember Goepfert playing for the Stingrays. I really can't remember anything specific about what I though of his play (I barley remember last season to be honest), but I am excited to see him play this season.

One of the first chances we may get will be the Alumni Game on October 5th when our current roster takes on past Everblades. Also, for those of you who just can't wait any longer for hockey, our new junior team will be taking on the FGCU Eagles in exhibition games on Friday and Saturday this week. I'm looking forward to seeing my first junior hockey game and finally seeing some live hockey again. The tickets are free for FGCU students and $5 for everyone else.