Your typical Chuck-a-Puck. But if a Chuck-a-Puck takes place and no one chucks a puck... (Photo: Flickr user Travis S.)

After weeks of missing live hockey because of my upcoming wedding, I am finally in the midst of a multi-game weekend. Thank goodness, because this multi-game weekend allowed me to see two of the oddest intermission events I’ve witnessed in years of attending hockey games.

Friday night, the Boston University men’s ice hockey team hosted Northeastern University in their last regular season home game. BU beat Northeastern 4-2, which would go miles towards improving their status for the Hockey East playoffs. It was a double mites team game, with both intermissions host to a youth hockey team scrimmage. The teams usually have around five minutes to show their stuff, with the announcer and music timing their scrimmage, before the waiting Zambonis rev their engines and warn them off.

During the second intermission, I was chatting with a friend and not paying attention to the mites. Around me, I vaguely heard the announcement thanking the mites for their time and congratulating them on a scrimmage well done. Briefly after, my fiance nudged me.

“They won’t leave the ice.”

Sure enough, the entire team of mites were still down on one end of the ice, skating as if this was their home rink. The Zamboni was in limbo, resting on the lip of the rink, nearly seesaw-like. The opposite side ice door was open, with the security guard awaiting the mites coming off the ice. And the mites were still playing. On the ice, Rhett the mascot looked mighty perplexed.

It took the announcer getting back on the microphone. “Can our mites team please make their way to the exit?”

The kids still skated around the goal, oblivious. The maintenance man off to drag off the net stood, stagger stepped and with a drill in his hand a few feet away.

Finally, the coach realized that yes, his team actually might have to leave the ice. He zipped the mites off the ice, the Zamboni impatiently inching out during the mad dash.

Saturday, while at the Women’s Hockey East Semifinal game between Boston University and the University of New Hampshire in Providence, the announcer kept announcing a Chuck-a-Puck contest being held during the second intermission. A few of us played around with the idea of actually taking part in it for sheer novelty purposes, but vetoed against it. We’d never win – we’re in our late twenties. Our aim is shot.

The second intermission begins, the BU women up 1-0 (they would eventually win 4-0). The announcer proudly announces that it is time for the Chuck-a-Puck competition. “Get your pucks ready….and fire!”

Nothing is thrown on the ice.

“Time for the Chuck-a-Puck!” he exclaims again, trying to will us all to throw something, anything, on the ice.

A little girl next to the glass starts throwing pucks. With aim unbefitting of her age, she throws her three pucks right near center ice. Two more join from the other side of the rink, not getting anywhere near center.

The announcer eggs us all on, “Last chance to chuck those pucks. Five! Four…”

He pauses, realizing that those five pucks on the ice are all there will be. A rink employee begins to stroll onto the ice to pick all five pucks up.

“Threetwoone,” the announcer rushes through, purely to make things official.

My fiance turns to our group of fans. “Why didn’t I enter Chuck-a-Puck again?”

Luke Popko in the 2009 Hockey East Championship Game (InsideHockey.com)

While livetweeting the Beanpot for BU Today last week, I remarked how much I enjoyed watching BU senior forward Luke Popko on the penalty kill. He may be diminutive, but he is one of the most effective penalty killers I have ever seen. He is especially effective when BU is two men down. He also doesn’t shy away from blocking a shot, and stays out there and gets peppered, often barely limping off the ice after taking several shots to his body. He truly plays like a second goalie, just without the extra padding.

During the Beanpot championship game this Monday (which BU lost 4-3), I was watching Popko on the penalty kill for the seemingly millionth time in the past four years when it finally hit me. Popko is a short, extremely effective, and fearless special teamer.

He is, by analogy, the Steve Tasker of the Boston University Terriers.

For those of you who think Tasker was just the sideline reporter for Sunday’s Super Bowl (who had the un-enviable task of interviewing Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell post-game), au contraire. Tasker, as much as Doug Flutie, is every short Western New Yorker male’s inspiration for living. (Just ask my 5-6 tall father.) He was a member of the Buffalo Bills for 13 years, playing from 1985-1997.

Tasker is considered by many football journalists, football players and the like to be the greatest special teams player to play football in the modern era. He was tiny – listed as 5-9, but that must have been when he was wearing the Buffaloian uniform of five layers of socks, huge snow boots, and standing on a snow drift – but was fearless, throwing himself at punters and kickers, tackling kick returners twice his size by the ankles, and speeding down the field like a stolen Ferrari at 3am on kick returns.

He got kicked in the head, he got flattened by men double his size, and yet he yearned for more playing time. He rarely got looks at wide receiver (much like Popko is mired on the fourth line), but when he did, he made the most of them. Quarterback Jim Kelly begged head coach Marv Levy to insert him as a receiver because Kelly could count on Tasker’s athleticism to make a difference on the down. You could rely on Tasker to make key special teams plays in every game, much like you can count on Popko to be one of your most consistent penalty killers (considered special teams in hockey) no matter how many of his teammates are hanging out in the penalty box.

Much like Tasker never makes it to Canton (he has made it to the list of semi-finalists several times, but the voting committee is loathe to give a spot to special teamers because they only play a “third of the game”), Popko is never going to be Player of the Week, Player of the Month, or under Hobey Baker consideration.  But heck, you don’t want to be on the penalty kill or kickoff without one of them.

(For those of you who did not grow up with a father who promoted the legend of Steve Tasker at every single meal, here is a good summary from the NFL Network.)

The back of the Gryba Senior Shirt.

This year’s shirt honors BU senior defenseman Eric Gryba – lover of flannel, avid hunter and fisherman, and the tallest defenseman since Tom Morrow (the subject of Jason’s 2006 shirt). Gryba is a fan favorite everytime he checks an opposing player or even thinks about getting in a position to score. The BU student section responds to Gryba much like fourteen year old suburban teenagers react to Nick Jonas – there’s screaming, cheering, and the occassional sobbing.

Gryba is a stand-up defenseman who is very comfortable with his role on defense – he’s not often trying to be fancy with the puck, and he very conscientious of his duties at the blue line. He holds the program’s record for penalty minutes, set during January 2nd’s game, but he’s not necessarily a dirty player. His penalties come from his tendency to play at the boards during defensive situations – he isn’t always laying guys out, elbowing, or aiming for player’s heads. It will be interesting to see what he does after college.

Gryba may not be my favorite BU player ever, but he’s definitely a personality I have enjoyed watching progress through his collegiate hockey career. Thus, I took $15 out of my wedding fund and ordered one of these shirts from Jason.

If you too want to commemorate the personality that is Gryba by purchasing a t-shirt, find “The Hockey Shirt at Boston University” group on Facebook and chat with Jason. The shirt is only $15, which is a deal when it comes to any fan shirts. Orders are due Tuesday, February 9th.

Per usual, I’m all over the Beanpot like wanna-be rock stars up on MySpace. Catch my extensive overview of Beanpot Players to Watch on Beantown Athletic Supporters. Tonight, I’ll be live tweeting for BU Today along with several of my co-workers and students, and you’ll also be able to catch my reports direct from Twitter.

Later this week, I’ll be profiling the Charity Beanpot Challenge, a game featuring Beanpot alumni and supporting the Travis Roy and Mark Bavis Foundations.

Happy Beanpot Monday!

But tonight, they had finally changed them to this year’s captains. Or at least, who we had thought this year’s captains would be:

My screen capture of the official Beanpot website at 11:05pm, Sunday evening.

Did Brian Strait suddenly return from Wilkes-Barre Scranton to BU? Wow, he must have forgave all of those awful things Coach Parker said about him in that USCHO piece from the summer.

While watching the New York Rangers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins Monday evening on Versus, my friend Laurel wanted to look up Rangers rookie Michael Del Zotto’s exact age, so I pulled up the Rangers website on the good ol’ MacMini. A Flash overlay popped up immediately across the bottom of the page – one that included Boston University hockey alum Chris Drury doing his best James Bond impression.

The overlay was an advertisement for the Rangers’ Casino Night to benefit Madison Square Garden’s “Garden of Dreams” foundation. The event is February 8th, and it’s for high rollers only – tickets range from $500 to $2000, and attendees must be dressed to impress.

Drury has represented his country in the Olympics, fulfilled every dream of any kid who grew up playing hockey in New England, and now he gets a picture of himself looking like he’s about to order a “shaken but not stirred martini” at a swanky bar splashed across a NHL team’s website. Chris Drury, we salute you. Until Matt Gilroy starts busting Russian spies and jumping from speeding trains, you get the award for being the most Bond of any BU Hobey Baker Winner.

Matt Gilroy had been named the best rookie in training camp by the Rangers staff just 3 months ago. (Photo: SNY.com)

Wednesday evening, former Boston University captain and rookie New York Rangers defenseman Matt Gilroy was outskated by Chicago Blackhawks right wing Dustin Byfuglien (a last name more difficult than my own) to allow the game-winning goal in overtime.

Thursday morning, Gilroy was summarily dismissed  by the Rangers and assigned to the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.

And Saturday evening, I got a Facebook notification inviting me to the group, “Put Matt Gilroy Back on the Rangers.”

“We want to send a message to the Rangers front office that they need to move Matt back up to the NHL!” exclaims the description for the group. Created Saturday afternoon, the group already has 377 members with a wide variety of loyalties. (It grew from 324- 377 while I was writing this blog post.) A few BU teammates belong to the group, quite a few BU hockey fans, some New York Ranger fans, and a large contingent of members with the last name of Gilroy. (Not surprising, seeing that the Gilroy family is rumored to rival the population of Syracuse, New York in numbers.)

As the news of Gilroy’s demotion hit Twitter on Thursday, I learned that Rangers fans are quite opinionated, and were blaming general manager Glen Sather for the move right and left. They were calling for other defensemen, such as Michal Rozsival, to suffer a benching or demotion. Even ESPN anchor Linda Cohn got into the action, tweeting, “Can somebody explain to me why in the world the Rangers would mess with the head of Matt Gilroy and send him down to Hartford?”

In comparison, the Facebook group is pretty mild. A group member actually spoke up to explain why moving Gilroy is easier than demoting a more seasoned player and possibly exposing that player to waivers. Others continue to express anger at Sather, and still others are writing “keep the faith” messages to Gilroy.

Whether Gilroy’s demotion was warranted after his Chicago gaff, or this was a move to get him more playing time, the progression of this Facebook group will be quite interesting to watch. Will Matt Gilroy himself join? Will it catch on further among the Rangers faithful? Or will it go the way of those ubiquitous “I lost my phone – can I have your numbers?” groups?

Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.

This weekend, Agganis Arena kept running promotions for an event next weekend with Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer.” (Aka, a dog behavior expert that dog owners turn to once they realize that raising a dog may, in fact, take actual work.)

My immediate thought during the first ad Friday night was, “Gosh, Jack Parker could use a Dog Whisperer. He’s got a whole roster of Terriers that keep giving him trouble.”

What would happen if during his Agganis visit next weekend, Millan spent some time analyzing the problems of this year’s Terrier team? I think it might go something like this:

Parker: I can’t believe I’m turning to you.

Millan: Oprah does.

Parker: Fine. I guess I’m desperate. As I mentioned in my post-game comments after Friday’s tie to Vermont, “my team does not know how to get ready for a hockey game.” They then went on to emphasize that point with a 4-1 loss against BC on Saturday. What changed between my 2009 national champions and this team?

Millan: If you watch my television show, you’ll know I am all about owners quitting babying their dogs. If you baby your pets, they’ll walk all over you and develop behavior problems that you’ll end up paying me thousands to fix. I see you with somewhat of the same problem – this team is walking all over you.

As hard nosed as you are, you lost a huge part of your bite when a coach’s dream of a captain, Matt Gilroy, graduated. His age and superhuman-esque determination gave you an extra coach in the locker room. And let’s not forget about John McCarthy, a quiet, but impactful leader, especially among his classmates. Then you had that whole senior class – essentially, you had five or six captains.

According to many accounts (including a close reading of Burn the Boats), Gilroy and McCarthy did a lot of your coaching for you last season. They called out guys when they got lazy. They set the tone at practices. They instilled the goal-setting mindset of the team as a whole. You also allowed them much more reign than other captains had. And with this age group, acceptance by peers can be much more powerful than by authority figures, giving your captains that much more clout.

BU coach Jack Parker (Photo: College Hockey News)

Parker: But Shattenkirk has a lot of captaincy experience. He was captain of the USA Under-18 Team and the World Junior Team.

Millan: But there is only one of him, he’s a junior, and he thought he’d be assisting a captain Brian Strait this season. No doubt Shattenkirk is a good player and leader, but he now leads alone a team made up of a bunch of individuals who have been spoiled by a national championship.

Parker: A bunch of individuals?

Millan: Two glaring examples: On the ice, Colby Cohen always must take the slapshot instead of passing it to a more open or closer to the net teammate. It is as if he honestly believes his overtime winner in the national championship game will happen every time he shoots the puck. It won’t. It was a fluke play that bounced off a Miami player’s leg.

Then you have Vinny Saponari, who has decided that he wants to be the Southern Alex Ovechkin. His puck handling could win him points for presentation, but this isn’t figure skating – it’s hockey, and if he would stop his focus on being fancy, he could be a national leader in goal scoring.

Parker: Two out of twenty-six. Fine, I’ll figure out what to do with them, but something else has to be ailing us.

Millan: Speed. The North Dakota-like speed that signaled that this was a different team than usual during the October 2008 Icebreaker has vanished somewhat. Every team is now catching up in terms of speed, and while there have been games where you come out of the gate all speedy, you lose it much too quickly.

Secondly, the team needs to work on breakaways and rebounds. They are tending behind on both. They are not taking advantage of opportunities because they’re either focused on making the fancy play or thinking too much about what to do with the puck. There’s only one thing to do with the puck – get it somewhere where it can end up in the net. Is that a closer or open teammate? Is that the net? This thinking needs to be snappier.

Parker: What about my goalies?

Millan: Last year was like adopting a dog and having me with you for a year training it, then taking me away and expecting everything to be normal. You had two freshmen goaltenders in front of some of the most outstanding defensive players the program has ever had. You also had forwards who understood their defensive roles. This year, you still have massive, pounding defensemen, but you also have three of them thinking they are also forwards. Plus, your forwards are no longer defensively minded. No one is there to help the goalies, so you now see what they are really made of.

Am I saying either Rollheiser or Millan (who must be a distant cousin of mine or something) are bad? No, but they need to adjust to the lack of help they have in front of them. Their own teammates are screening them. Defensemen seem to be maintaining some set distance from the net – did the two goalies put out a restraining order on the team or something?

Parker: The boys and I have a break coming up. What can I possibly do to turn this season around? I mean, I’m beginning to think I should have hung it up after last year.

Millan: First off, bench kids. Bench kids with names. Bench seniors. Bench juniors. You were never afraid of benching “stars” in the past – why are you now? Bonino wasn’t prolific until you benched him last November. Tough love – you’re not their mother. But you do demand great things from them, and you can’t do that if you are afraid of hurting their feelings or thinking they can fix themselves. Bench unproductive players. Bench selfish players. Tell them that they don’t play until they take the game and the team seriously.

We also know you’re stuck on this, “Let’s not mention the National Championship bit,” to the team, with the team not allowed to be announced as the defending national champions and all. But hockey players crave motivation, and maybe putting the title out there – hey, we’re defending national champions, but we aren’t going to be able to defend until we have non-selfish, consistent effort – could be just the motivation that will click.

Break out every single passing drill ever known to man. A team that can pass to each other can score. This team is dropping passes right and left.

And tell the team that if they can’t make fancy plays until they make some All-Stars skills competition in their pro careers. But if they can’t score on rebounds and breakaways, there will be no All-Star skills competitions.

Order Gilroy make a video where he threatens to make them run the Charles hungover at 4:30am if they don’t win a game. Or tell Shattenkirk to get amazingly angry, and let Gryba get mean with him, and then get Gryba involve his other seniors. If the balance of the team won’t listen to you, they should be listening to their angry, older peers.

Parker: Well, as much as I can’t believe I am accepting your opinion on this, some of it seems pretty legit. By the way, I hear you’re gonna have dogs in my arena. You leave my arena clean next week, you hear me? So help me if there is dog anything stuck to my ice…

Millan: Tsst. Tsst. Down.

The Rangers must really want me to like them. I must resist. (Photo: Flickr user Bari D)

Note from 10/16/09: In this piece, I mention at the end that a bunch of my favorite players were picked up by the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers. Two days after I posted that, nearly everyone was either released or put on injured reserve. So the whole last three paragraphs of this piece no longer makes sense. The rest of it is good though.

I typically despise anything New York City related. An ex-boyfriend dumped me years back because I was from upstate and he was from downstate, and thus the differences were too great to navigate. Rochester-born me wasn’t too fond of the metro New York area before that, and after that, really started to dislike the city that everyone else loves.

I moved to Boston, a place where everyone shares my general disdain for Jay-Z’s favorite city that doesn’t sleep, and have settled nicely into disparaging the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets and Knicks along with any anonymous person I run into on the street.

Until this month, that is.

You see, the New York Rangers are trying to win me over. First, they signed Matt Gilroy, the most revered Boston University hockey player of the last decade.  That alone wasn’t going to sway me. Then, they resigned left winger and Rochester-bred Ryan Callahan. Okay, fine. A Rochester kid is playing in the NHL. No biggy. He’s not the only one.

Then the Rangers actually kept John Tortorella on as coach, tantrums and all. Torts was my favorite Amerks coach of my Rochester days, leading the Amerks to a Calder Cup in 1996. Then Torts went and grabbed former BU center, Mike Sullivan, as his assistant coach. At this point, the Rangers began to really nag me, like Philip, the boy in my first grade class who kept trying to tell me he liked me by comparing me to the token females in old school Nintendo games. No, Rangers. Stop trying to suck up to me. Stop telling me I’m your Zelda and you’re going to rescue me from whatever. No, I do not want to attend your Mario Brothers birthday party and play Princess Toadstool.

Then I had to read over the program for Red Hot Hockey, the BU-Cornell hockey game that is being played at Madison Square Garden in late November (which, shameless self-promotion here, I did the player profile pages for) which includes many gratuitous mentions of Chris Drury and Gilroy both being former BU players, both being Hobey Baker winners, both playing for the Rangers, and being from the Tri-State area. Fine. I get it. They’re both good stories. Learning-to-read fiction material for 6-8 year old Canadian boys. Whatever, Rangers. Just let me be.

Then, Jason Lawrence gets a tryout contract with the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers. (Yes, this blog has been in denial since the Providence Bruins released him, thus why it has taken me weeks to mention this fact.) On the Checkers are two other BU alums, Kenny Roche and Kevin Schaeffer, and Hockey East and Austin Prep (my adopted New England high school) alum Chris Capraro, and Rochester boy and former Michigan goaltender Billy Sauer. Fine, Checkers. Load up on six-degrees-of-Kat players. I don’t have a favorite ECHL team, so you just won the non-existant competition to be mine.

In researching my new favorite ECHL team, I looked up their AHL and NHL team affiliations. Not all teams have them, and some teams have multiple ones. The educated guess would be that a team located in Charlotte, North Carolina might be associated with the Carolina Hurricanes. But no.  That’s when I realized my several month long resistance was frutiless.

The Checkers are affiliated with…the New York Rangers. And now, whenever they aren’t playing the Boston Bruins, I might just have to root for a New York team. Might being the operative word.

Given that both BC and BU have combined to win the last two NCAA Division I Championships, their tradition-laced rivalry has started to receive additional national attention. Sure to add to this national spotlight will be the November release of The Battle of Comm Ave, a documentary on the rivalry by Utah-based Rival Films. The film will premiere on NESN, with an DVD release following. Rival Films’ Matt Fults agreed to answer some questions about the film, the company’s use of social media, and about his own favorite sports documentaries.

Kat: You are a film studio based out of Utah – given your geography, what made your company want to produce a film about the Boston College – Boston University rivalry?
Matt: Utah is our base camp. A majority of our work is done elsewhere. We’ve filmed in Austria, Switzerland, Chile, Germany, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan, California … the list goes on. So what we look for are compelling stories. I’m a big hockey fan, and while the BU-BC rivalry is well known in Massachusetts, it’s not as well known in the rest of the country. Plus my mom is from Reading, MA. That’s a plus.

Kat: I know you don’t want to give away a lot about the film yet, but is there any one part that you can mention that will excite fans of these teams (for example, any new information, a story no one has heard before, etc)?

Matt: I think there’s a couple of good stories that maybe haven’t been told. One involves former BU captain Jack O’Callahan, coach Parker and a coin. There aren’t a lot of secrets when it comes to these schools. What you’re going to see is the origins of the rivalry, how it became so intense, what drives it today, and finally just some terrific anecdotes and stories from players, coaches and others.

Kat: Do you see The Battle of Comm Ave spurring national interest in this storied rivalry, given that college hockey seems to be growing in popularity right now?

Matt: I hope so. One of the reasons we decided to do this was the belief that college hockey is undersold and undertold. It’s a great sport with strong traditions and true powerhouse programs.

Kat: Rival Films is quite active on Twitter and Facebook.  How are you using social media to promote this film and engage with the fanbases of the respective schools?

Matt: Being active doesn’t mean we’re successful. Our Twitter following isn’t impressive! Social media as a tool is new to us – literally within the last couple of weeks. Given the subject matter and the audience, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Our hope is to build an early buzz that will translate into greater interest when Fall rolls around, and ultimately the start of college hockey season. We are going to use Facebook and Twitter for contest giveaways and more importantly to announce a DVD presale. Sometime in October you’ll be able to find a link that will enable you to preorder the DVD at half price. So if you’re not following us on Twitter @RivalFilms or not a Fan on Facebook, that’s one less Christmas present for your brother.

Kat: Since you are in the business of creating sports films, what qualities do you think make a great sports documentary? What are some of your personal favorites?

Matt: You mean other than my own? Just kidding. To me, it’s all about storytelling. The quality of the story – and its storytellers – make or break any movie. In the end, the subjects of your film need to be the best storytellers. Narration is there to fill in the gaps. If your subjects aren’t compelling, you better hope the underlying story is or you’re done. One of my favorites is “Step into Liquid” by Dana Brown. On the surface, it’s a surfing movie. But it’s more than that. It examines a culture and a lifestyle. Visually, it’s gorgeous. I’m also a Bud Greenspan fan. He’s a master storyteller.

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Keep up-to-date with The Battle of Comm Ave by following the company on Twitter (@RivalFilms), becoming a fan of the film on Facebook, or checking the company’s website.