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.

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.

When we left last BU’s former starting goalie, Curry had returned to the AHL after impressing in his NHL debut around Thanksgiving. He then went on to set the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins team record for number of wins in a season in March, ending the season with 37 (33 in the regular season, 4 in the playoffs.) Curry earned those 4 playoff wins by leading the Baby Penguins team through the first round of the playoffs against the Bridgeport SoundTigers, but not without suffering a knee injury in Game 5 of that series.  (Of course, the SoundTigers are the team in which Curry participated in the now famous “goalie fight” last year. Can I just tell you that still, a year later, we play that video in the office when we’re having a particularly rough day? Or maybe it’s just me.)

Due to Curry’s injury, backup Adam Berkhoel received most of the starts in the Baby Pens series against the pesky Hershey Bears, which the Bears won on their way to the Calder Cup finals (in which they currently have a 3-1 series lead over the Cory Schneider led Manitoba Moose.)

But why is it then that a detail-oriented hockey fan might find Curry’s name on the active roster for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Finals? Because despite his knee injury, Curry was called up to be the third string goalie for the remainder of the playoffs for Pittsburgh. He is on what sports fans and writers call “the taxi squad.”

The taxi squad is a term used mostly in hockey and football, and means basically the same in both. In the NFL, the taxi squad equals the practice squad – reserve players allowed to practice and be a part of a team in the event of an emergency (if you lose two defensive ends in successive weeks, for example, you can call one up from the practice squad, where he’s already familiar with your coaching style, your playbook, and their teammates.) In my constant effort to make myself feel special, here is where I’ll mention that my second cousin Alan Zemaitis played on the taxi squad of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a few years back.  (Yep, the boy I played blocks with at that random family reunion when I was two technically played in the NFL. No, I haven’t seen him since I was two.)

Where the NFL and NHL differ when it comes to their taxi squad is the playoffs. Because the NFL has no farm league per se, it must never worry about sharing talent with their development system. (And when they did have a development system, NFL Europe, its season was separate from the NFL season.) However, in the NHL, your farm leagues (the ECHL and AHL) and your main league play their seasons concurrently. Thus, once one of your farm teams gets eliminated from post-season play, but you have other teams still playing, you can take a select group from the eliminated team and send them to the teams still in play.

Now, this does not mean that the Buffalo Sabres, who were not in the post-season at all, could send goalie Ryan Miller to AHL’s Portland, who were in the playoffs. The players on the taxi squad have to be on certain types of contracts – like Curry’s two-way deal we spoke of a lot last November – that allow them to be used on multiple teams within the same system.

The Penguins organization in the 2009 postseason is an excellent model in which to illustrate the “taxi squad” idea. The Penguins essentially have 3 teams – the ECHL Wheeling Nailers, the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins, and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. All three teams made their league playoffs. The Wheeling Nailers, home of former BU Terrier Boomer Ewing, were eliminated in the first round of their playoffs, while both the AHL and NHL Penguins won their first rounds. Thus Ewing (along with a few Nailers teammates) was sent to Wilkes-Barre Scranton in the event they were needed due to injury or other lack of players.

The AHL Penguins then were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs, while NHL Pittsburgh advanced. Wilkes-Barre Scranton then sent a selected number of players on certain types of contracts, including Curry, to Pittsburgh for the remainder of the playoffs, to act as emergency backups since the team they would normally be kept active with is no longer in play.

So why is it called a “taxi squad?” Well, for that we turn to the 1940s Cleveland Browns. According to legend, the Browns’ owner, who also owned a taxi business, attempted to circumvent NFL roster limits by employing extra players as “taxi drivers” with said taxi business. Those players probably never drove a taxi, but were ready in the event a Brown’s starter went down.

Therefore, despite injury and Wilkes-Barre Scranton being eliminated from the Calder Cup playoffs, Everyone’s Favorite Goalie has the opportunity to be called up during the Stanley Cup Finals.  And if Marc-Andre Fleury keeps letting up softies like he did on Saturday evening, who knows what could happen if the Penguins-Red Wings series ends up in a seventh game…

As I mentioned last month, Sportscenter doesn’t have a great online video archive, so I am without video for all of one of these appearances. I have found alternative video where available.

1) Chris Higgins’ falling down goal, Beanpot semifinal versus Harvard, February 6, 2006

Chris Higgins’ goal, which was representative of this senior class’ contribution as freshmen to the 2006 Beanpot victory, was as awesome of a goal as many BU fans had seen at that time. His ability to stay with the puck despite being covered by a Harvard defensemen like hot fudge on a sundae, and make the shot as he lost his balance made this goal,make this a goal that upperclassmen show to freshman to this day to initiate them to BU hockey.  (That is if they can find it on YouTube. I am having epic YouTube fail this week.)

The play made the Sportscenter Top 10, giving Higgins the first Sportscenter Class of 2009 mention. The play itself is viewable in this YouTube clip – head to 1:25 of the video.

2) Jason Lawrence wins a hyperventilating Beanpot semifinal with a goal that was so…not like him, February 2, 2009

We’ll delve into Lawrence’s crazy career in the coming days, but one of the contributions of his that will be etched in Terrier hockey lore was this high slapper to the right of Harvard goalie Matt Hoyle to win the 2009 Beanpot semi-final with just over a minute left in the game. Even Lawrence admitted to USCHO that that shot was not his usual, and that his father always tells him to “take the high slapshot,” but he rarely does.  But this time, he did, and what resulted ended up in the Sportscenter Top 10 the same night Kobe Bryant scored 61 points at Madison Square Garden.  Because Kobe had to go score a crazy amount of points and set a MSG record, Lawrence’s game-winner kind of got forgotten about. So…

3) Lawrence goes and gets another game winner; Yip assists Bonino; Scott Van Pelt yells, “Your mom goes to college!”, February 9, 2009

So the next week, although the Beanpot final wasn’t so tight against the Northeastern Huskies as the Harvard semi-final was, Sportscenter still featured the game because it was a relatively slow sports night (save for that whole A-Rod admitting his use of performance enhancing drugs, but we all knew that was coming) and because….well, it was a slow sports night and when you can get a clear NESN feed of a hockey game involving the top 2 college hockey teams in the country, you run with it.

Despite the story being the three Terrier short-handed goals, the video highlights from the game only featured Nick Bonino’s shorty with the primary assist by senior Brandon Yip and Lawrence’s game winner, his second in two Beanpot games, which Sportscenter anlayst Scott Van Pelt inexplicably explained by yelling, “Who goes to college? Your mom goes to college!”  Yep. Because that’s hard-hitting hockey analysis right there, yelling lines from Napoleon Dynamite. This is unlike the previous two Sportscenter appearances in this list because it was not a part of the Sportscenter Top 10.

4) Lawrence’s natural hat trick gives John Buccigross something to get excited over while reading the Top 10 copy, February 27, 2009

This latest senior class Sportscenter appearance occured last Friday, as Lawrence’ s third goal of his natural hat trick against UMass Amherst made #2 of the Sportscenter Top 10. They were all amazing goals, but this third one you could watch all day. He comes blazing down the ice, nearly losing the puck before he slaps it in the right corner of the net. I thought Bucci was seriously going to pass out doing the commentary. I think he was just excited that he had three hockey mentions in the Top 10.  (You have to feel for Bucci sometimes. I think he feels hockey deprived without NHL 2Night and after having to spend a few months earlier this season without Barry Melrose around.)

It remains to be seen, of course, if there are any more Sportscenter appearances by the Terrier Class of 2009 in the future. But I think we can all safely say that college hockey is just a tad less obscure to the general viewing public today than it was four years ago thanks to the help of this Terrier senior class, and their Sportscenter appearances are to thank for that.

Terrier fans, am I missing any mentions of this senior class on Sportscenter that you all can remember? Let me hear it in the comments if I am!

My Partner-In-Crime took this picture in Freeport, ME

For Valentine’s Day, my fiance and I traveled to Orono, Maine to cross yet another Hockey East arena off our list and see Boston University take on the University of Maine Black Bears.  Because of our work obligations, we could only make the Saturday game and missed Friday evening’s BU blow-out.  I followed the game on the radio and online Friday night, and knew we would see some angry Black Bears on Saturday evening.

Saturday evening’s game was uneventful. It ended in a 2-2 tie, which could have been anticipated -you weren’t going to see another blow out evening. Maine was too angry, and Dave Wilson, who they inserted halfway through Friday’s game and started again Saturday, isn’t too shabby of a goalie.  He’s very quick and is able to cover much of the net. Wilson’s shorter than Scott Darling – who, like Ben Bishop before him, should play for the basketball team, not the hockey team – which gives him a bit of an advantage in moving around much quicker and fighting low shots.

Maine’s fans are of their own variety. The people are relatively nice people – until you get them in Alfond Arena. And then, they want to bite your head off if you are for the other team. Which is fine – I’m all about fan loyalty. However, at the Alfond, you are shoulder to shoulder with these Maine fans in the crowded bleachers under a second level filled with students that leaks unknown liquids and has garbage falling from it, and then their rabidness just starts to make you the slightest bit uncomfortable. I could not move my arms without encountering a low growl by the Maine fan next to me. Sorry for wanting to get the circulation back in my right hand, m’am.

So while smushed up to your new best friends from Bangor, you look up and realize, “Ooh, not only is the second level leaking things on me, but there is no net at the ends of the ice.” And while you are thinking about that, whack! – an errant puck comes flying at your head.

Awesome. So now you have fast moving hard rubber objects flying at your head, you can’t move your arm, and you have a sixty-something woman from Bangor with blue face paint low growling at you.

Then the Maine student section starts hanging their stuffed life-size referee by a noose in the second level. And then the Maine lineup comes out of a giant inflatable bear’s head. And then the video board uses Comic Sans as it’s primary font. And then there is the random guy in back of you screaming, “Go Black Bears, go!” in a French accent over and over and over again. When things didn’t go the Black Bears way, he swears in French.

This all being said, the Alfond Arena is an experience that all Hockey East fans should take in at some point in their lives, unless you have a really short fuse, are claustrophobic or have a problem with strangers touching you. Then you might not want to go to the Alfond.

A few notes:

- At the start of overtime, a Black Bears defenseman (I think it may have been Simon Danis-Pepin, who really ought to be on the Black Bears basketball team- he’s the tallest hockey player I’ve ever seen) decided to defend his net by sitting on A-Number-Twenty-One. When I say “sat on,” I physically mean he sat on him. A-Number-Twenty-One had the puck, was nearing the net, and Danis-Pepin, who is at least a foot taller, just sat on him, like he was a chair.

I think it was the most random piece of hockey defense I’ve ever seen.

The State of Maine wants you to stretch.

- The lovely people of the great state of Maine are so concerned with others’ well-being that they have labeled all of their rest stop trash cans with a label saying, “For your good health, barrel picking is prohibited.” They also have signs around all of their rest stops telling motorists who are tired of driving to stretch in their cars. How nice of them. I felt cared for.

-While in Freeport (where I successfully refrained from purchasing anything at the Coach outlet even though everything was 60% off clearance prices and they had an awesome red leather Legacy collection purse that I really, really wanted), my fiance saw the sign at the start of this post. “Sinners will be towed.”

Only in Maine.

To see my updates, please visit http://www.twitter.com/sportsgirlkat. I don’t have my computer with me, so there won’t be an indepth recap until late Sunday when I get back.

My favorite picture is of all the players picking up their equipment off the ice – I tried to get a few of these, but my camera is elderly and just isn’t getting all the shots it used to. I think it’s the last one in the slideshow.

Oh, and there is a Beanpot recap – including an inexplicable, “Your mom goes to college!” line from Scott Van Pelt – on ESPN’s Sportscenter tonight. Unlike last week, I was able to catch it on TV.

Also, if you didn’t read it while the game was ongoing, my live coverage live from the Garden is available here (select play on the Cover It Live video.)

More Beanpot recap will be forthcoming.

My BlackBerry photo of the clearly relieved Terriers at the end of their too-close matchup with Harvard.

Oh, what a Beanpot first game. I think it’s a good thing I have low blood pressure, because I think my blood pressure was at an all time high last night, meaning it was normal.

While I’ll have a more indepth recap later, here are my live Tweets from the game. If you notice, I was too busy hyperventilating when A-Number-Twenty-One scored his winning goal to update the Twitter feed. Start from the bottom up to read in chronological order.

1. But, but…that’s Sasquatch’s music! about 13 hours ago from TwitterBerry

2. BU won 4-3. Craziness at the end with a goal after time expired, but time had clearly expired. about 14 hours ago from TwitterBerry

3. BU take a 3-2 lead by a Zach Cohen goal. about 14 hours ago from TwitterBerry

4. Scrum at the end of the 2nd. BU-HU go into the 2nd intermission tied 2-2. about 15 hours ago from TwitterBerry

5. BU ties it up 2-2 with a second Bonino goal. about 15 hours ago from TwitterBerry

6. BU scores finally. Bonino goal makes it HU 2 – BU 1 about 15 hours ago from TwitterBerry

7. Harvard scores on a 5 on 3. HU 2 BU 0. I am sick to my stomach. about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

8. The Harvard pep band is playing Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

9. 1st Intermission, BU 0 HU 1. So nervous. about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

10. Harvard scores first. 1-0 in the mid-1st about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

11. Harvard’s pep band just played, “Boom, Boom, Boom” about 17 hours ago from TwitterBerry

12. Today is jason Lawrence’s 22 birthday – the Saugus,MA native will start on the top line for the Terriers. about 17 hours ago from TwitterBerry

13. Is live from the Beanpot! Where are the Harvard fans? Us BU fans are here!

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Original Post:

I’m trying to live tweet the Beanpot, but of course, I can’t seem to get it to work in the actual factual post.

If you want to catch my live tweets from the game, follow my Twitter RSS feed or just follow the widget in the sidebar. Or if you are on Twitter, just follow SportsGirlKat.