Law Goalie

Beautiful, McSorley still rolling with the Jofa Colander.

Had an Olympian out to guest-coach with my goalies, got my first ice in months, received an absolutely glowing review on my latest paper, and discovered a blindingly good Sicilian table wine. Now to start on making my pads... Brilliant. Next year: goal-light on top, siren in the base.

Chin up, Joey. The world gives what it owes. I spit on his grave.

Unpegged nets... argh! And one very small unsolicited suggestion for 'Ricky': he'll find his positioning (and his position in general) a lot less tiring and far more successful if he plays inside-out rather than outside-in -- that is, by waiting with his back against the crossbar, tapping off on the short-side post and telescoping/challenging out to meet each scoring threat, then returning, rather than spending the entire game at the hash-marks and trying to find his angle and retreat from ten to twelve feet out. It seems like more skating (out and back every time) but it's actually far, far less effort to track the play and stay on-angle, and makes it way easier to play the puck behind the net. Inside-out is the way every single NHL goalie plays, and a very small change that can improve every goalie's success and enjoyment. Idiot coaches tended to beat outside-in positioning into young goalies through the 60s, 70s and 80s, which is a trend that serious goalie coaches only later began to reverse.

UPS. With any luck, you'll get the guns AND never have to see them for the rest of your life - or at least the rest of their lives.

You're doing it right -- and the ring just seals it.

Suicidal tendencies are a nightmarishly common side-effect of anti-depressants. Unless you've been diagnosed with a specific organic dementia that is the cause of or has been caused by your alcohol addiction, and which your prescription is specifically aimed at neutralising, get the hell off them and consult your doctor immediately. This isn't my opinion, informed or otherwise: it's invariably on the script or the package that if you have suicidal thoughts, discontinue. Beyond that, find a better psychotherapist. Check in with the American Psychological Association (apa.org) for a recommendation. You'll likely find that some combination of group and one-on-one work will be most effective, but it's important not to only do one, or to get discouraged because one or the other doesn't seem to work. Even if you don't "believe in" whatever particular approach a given psychologist favours, or psychology generally, if they have a specialty in your area they will have unfathomable experience in the kind of problems you're having, and they will have seen people who got better before their eyes -- enough to know what may help.

Wear light clothing, but more importantly, produce less carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Seriously. Change your respiration and you'll be less of a target. What they're keying on isn't what your sprayed on your skin, but what's coming out of your mouth and nose.

I'm guessing you're well past the point of saying, "Honey, what about a nice, intimate family wedding..." and still keeping your neck and/or genitals intact.

Congratulations! Just don't accept too quickly -- my wife made that mistake, and now she has no ability to dangle me. :) Keep him hanging just long enough... Side-post: wrapping up an absolutely enormous grant application that will keep me in socks, books, and sticks for the next three years, no matter what. It's the academic equivalent of the NFL's 'guaranteed money.' Potentially epic 'Sweet Spot' post to come in a few months.

Only the small amount of steel taken off to put the round hollow back in.

Many of them eke out a living as tenured professors. Then they ask someone to edit their memoirs, and the crazy is in black and white, with a little red pen for emphasis.

Well, allow me to minutely adjust my reading glasses by way of salute. Here you put me somewhat out of my depth... to the best of my knowledge, Canadian universities almost always hold open tryouts. At some schools these are purely nominal, but at some it can be a source of a player or two every year. My very ill-informed understanding is that most of the major US hockey schools are run like Canadian Major Junior teams: that is, they recruit through scouting, sometimes years in advance of matriculation. That said, I have played with a few guys who did exactly more or less exactly what you describe - put hockey second through high school, then try to sneak onto a university team through the back door via coach contact, tryouts, etc. - and had very respectable college hockey careers, and in some cases, minor and European pro terms after that, with the odd NHL camp as well. I've been tarred and feathered for saying as much, but I remain totally unconvinced that 'rep' or 'travel' hockey is the best development model. I think it's certainly an excellent model for creating the highest possible level of competition between eight-year olds. I don't think it's necessarily the way to make the best hockey players or the best human beings; it just happens to be the most obvious and cut-throat way of *appearing* to practice talent identification. If you take every hour you would have spent on some bus, and invested it in on-ice professional instruction or off-ice conditioning, or even, god forbid, a couple of books or a few girls who aren't puck-bunnies, I'm not sure you wouldn't come out a better player than Little Lord Honeybaked -- nor might a college coach be unreceptive to someone who made a reasonable case for their kind of under-the-radar development.

So jump ship. Believe me, colleges don't give a rat's ass about undergraduates unless massive scholarships are involved. They'll replace you in about ninety seconds, and the team in PA will be glad to have you. I'm not suggesting you uproot on the strength of 'a call', but if the hockey college is serious, you'll find your former school surpassingly indifferent; they'll complain, sure, but only superficially. Just get the offer from PA in writing (say you need it to 'break faith' with the prior school), and you're rolling. What you don't want is to find yourself with no school.

I feel your pain, mate. Ankles are terrible. Just RICE it and apply your analgesic of choice - maybe a half dozen G&T's? 0% coverage, 100% out of my pocket - yet another reason I was so pleased with them. Gee, don't give me any real NSAIDs or anything. I half expected to get referred to a lunar massage guru because the epicycle of Io was out of harmony with my Fluffernutter field variance.

How did you periodize leading up to the camp? My vent: nurse practitioners who prescribe placebos. Like I'm not going to go look it up on Pubmed as soon as I leave, you clots.

Sweet jerseys - used to watch your fellow Hibs in Edinburgh. :)

Despite being fatter than a whale omelette, I'm finally playing fairly well again: 1-2 GA per hour against respectable competition. Consistency isn't there (I'm still tanking the odd game if I don't get enough sleep, or eat well enough, or spend too much time thinking about Andrew Bloody Marvell), but it's getting better. Now, if I can just slough off this lard apron, I'll be laughing...

That's what I figured. I know they said 110 was impossible on player blades. Anyone tried 100/1 other than Tim Thomas and a couple of jimmy's experimental guys?

Possibly a dumb question, but has anyone tried 105/75?-- or is that only physically possible with wider goalie blades?

The GRE is a joke, and the only company with more questionable testing methods than ETS is the CSA.

Jesus wept... I will be so much happier when Michel gets my new mask done; he's got one or two ever so slightly more important boys to deal with first, but that shot and the MSH HHOF shooting gallery dispelled any buyer's remorse that lingered after I mailed the cheque.

Was one of them an orange liquid in a highball glass?

A delightful variety of all over the place. Couple of current junior players, all the way to guys who just picked the game up in the last couple of years. Every once in a while someone would bust out a coast-to-coaster, but for the most part, it was more about making plays and having fun than just filling the net; more interest in showing off gear and gonzo personalities than showing people up. Nice atmosphere.

Yep, those are in, Reebok-parlance, 'Turco-breaks' - which is really just shorthand for 'breaks in the vertical roll above and below the knee'. You may note, however, that with the way I have them strapped those breaks mean nothing: I put the two knee-straps through the top-calf buckle, and the top two calf-straps through the mid-calf buckle, leaving everything from the knee up totally free. At one point, I also sliced through the right pad's toe-ties, requiring some emergency surgery involving chikinpotpie and myself throwing our legs on top of the boards, and Dr. pmurphy17 using chikin's skate blade to slice off the rest. Amazingly, the pad continued to behave as normal. That stick (the Ballistik .52 Cal. on which I'm doing a long-term review) is far and away - and I mean by a country mile - the best and most durable one-piece composite goalie stick I have ever used, seen, or heard of. And it's damn sexy too!- especially once I got the blue Tackimac grip on there. Totally head and shoulders above the rest of the field.