NHL: St. Louis Blues

Last night, the St. Louis Blues mixed their St. Patrick’s Day commemoration with environmental awareness, and gave away a “Green Game” t-shirt to all fans in attendance (quite a risky claim to advertise – from personal experience, you should always give an exact number of giveaways, a la “first 5,000 fans”). The shirt giveaway was sponsored by Monsanto, a Cambridge, MA based agricultural innovation company with an emphasis on sustainable practices. This was the second year for the Blues promotion.

Shirt Grade: B I like the muted, antiquey kelly green shirt and faded style of the print. It also helps that the Blues’ team colors happen not to horribly clash with green. Kudos for using that to their advantage and not changing the logo’s colors for the holiday’s sake. Environmental awareness initiatives during games are the new “it” thing to do in sports marketing – trust me, I participate in one – but the giveaway needs to be backed up with sustained, but subtle, green initiatives, otherwise it is just a t-shirt giveaway.

AHL: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins

The Baby Pens (speaking of, we are long overdue for an edition of The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch, but that’ll be another post) are selling two St. Patrick’s Day long sleeve shirts in their online store. The 2009 edition ($20) features their mascot, Tux, skating with a four leaf clover in the background on the front. The back reads “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” The 2010 version ($22) features the logo in what appears to be a very dark green (nearly black), with a four leaf clover on the sleeve. Long sleeve shirts are always key in that part of Pennsylvania, where the damp gray chilly days seem to out number any other weather.

Grade: C The effort is there, but the execution is not. The 2009 version is too campy, and the 2010 version shows promise, but the green seems too dark. Kudos, however, for the 2010 edition’s four leaf clover on the sleeve.

ECHL: Gwinnett Gladiators

The ECHL Gwinnett Gladiators teamed with Old Time Hockey, the same Salisbury, MA based company who partnered to create some of the NHL’s 2010 St. Patrick’s Day gear, to create a green t-shirt to sell this March. The shirt ($20 with free shipping through today) features a rather disturbed and surly looking leprechaun brandishing a hockey stick, with a small Gladiators logo by his right foot. The all-caps font is rather 1950s style, and arches above Surly Leprechaun’s head.

Grade: A This is the first ever St. Patrick’s Day shirt I would ever consider purchasing, and not just because I’m in the market for a shirt from the team where two of my most favorite former BU hockey alums play. What sold me was the 1950s fonts – I’m a sucker for fonts. Plus, I feel like Surly Leprechaun is going to hurt me with that hockey stick if I don’t like the shirt.

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Take Friday night againist the Hershey Bears, for example. Curry stopped four shots in the shootout to lead the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins to a 4-3 win. He made 46 saves that evening.

On Saturday night, Curry stopped 21 shots as the Penguins rolled over the Syracuse Crunch 4-1.  Curry faced former Terrier teammate Brian McGuirk, who plays for the Crunch.

Trusty Baby Pens beat writer Jonathan Bombulie had this fun Curry fact on his blog after Saturday’s game:

Since being touched up for five goals in a 6-4 loss at Binghamton on Jan. 16, John Curry is 5-0 with a 1.55 GAA and .953 save percentage.

The Penguins organization has made a gesture of faith in Curry with their recent trade of Dany “Now We Don’t Have To Worry About Pronouncing His Last Name” Sabourin for former Edmonton Oiler goaltender Mathieu Garon.  According to many a Penguins blogger, Garon will be a free agent after this year, leaving the Penguins with the option to bring Curry up to be Marc-Andre Fleury’s backup for good. We’ll see…

In this edition of “The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” watch (insert overly dramatic TV news graphic here), news out of Wilkes-Barre this morning is that John Curry is on his way to Pittsburgh, where he will back up Dany “Still Can’t Find Anyone Who Can Pronounce His Last Name” Sabourin.

This is the first regular season call-up for Everyone’s Favorite Goalie.  He spent the pre-season with Pittsburgh, and technically was on the roster when they played their first two regular season games in Europe, but did not dress.

The Penguins take on the Minnesota Wild tonight at 7pm on Versus.  No word yet as to when the Curry 36 Pittsburgh Penguins jerseys become available on NHL.com (just kidding.)

Dan Bylsma, coach of the Baby Pens, said to my all-time favorite AHL blogger, Jonathan Bombulie, that he doesn’t believe in coaching emotionally and seems to believe in his ongoing goalie rotation:

“I don’t think coaching emotionally is a great way to coach. We had a plan going into the weekend and stuck with the plan. John played well in his game on Friday night, didn’t play poorly. Adam Berkhoel played well in his game on Saturday. It wasn’t a question of going with one guy who was hot and one guy who was not. Both were playing well.”

Still, a true Boston or Buffalo sports fan (of which I am both) always exists in an Eeyore like state of constant pessimism, and as such, I took the performance of Berkhoel to mean that Everyone’s Favorite Goalie may be spending more time on the bench in the near future.

But wait. Will that bench be that of the Big Pens?

Word out of the Steel City today was that Penguins franchise goalie Marc-Andre Fleury – one of the best Quebecois names ever, in my opinion – is out of Tuesday’s game due to an undisclosed lower body injury. Dany “I don’t know anyone who can really pronounce his last name” Sabourin will get the start.

If the Pens decide to call up a goalie, they would call one of the two goalies in the Penguins organization with two way deals, which my Twitter buddy QuickFacts was quick to remind me of. And those two would be Everyone’s Favorite Goalie and David Brown, who is currently playing with Wheeling of the ECHL.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Pens believe Fleury’s injury is bad enough that he can’t dress, and they decide to call someone up, or if he dresses and just doesn’t start.  The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie call-up watch is on (I feel like I should make a graphic, like when the local news make the “Economy in Crisis” or “Storm Watch 11″ graphics)….

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to follow the Bejing Games as much as I would like.  I have been traveling for work, and haven’t been able to catch the games.  I have been trying to stay up for the late night replays, but have been passing out whenever I see a bed.  I have missed so much of the gymnastics, and I feel out of the loop.  However, here are the observations regarding the little bit I have seen:

The Injured Americans - I honestly believe Alicia Sacramone is injured, but is just the least injured of the team (besides Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin.)  Reports out of the Olympic Training Camp last month kept mentioning that Sacramone was favoring feet, tweaking ankles, and heavily wrapping her legs.  When I saw her back in June at the National Championships, her legs were wrapped like a mummy’s.  She’s the least injured of the remainder of the team, given that Bridget Sloan was never 100%, Scrunchie Girl Chellsie Memmel broke her ankle, and who the heck knows what Samantha Pesek did to her ankle exactly.  If they had had the full team, Sacramone would have been able to complete two events, instead of three, and would have placed less impact on her already worn legs.  And why are they all injured up the wazoo? Because of the awful three round selection process, which made this group of gymnast go full out for two months, instead of training whichever way is best for them, which leads me to my next point…

Hi! Ho! The Karoylis Have Got To Go – Well, a centralized training camp with a national team coach may have worked in Communist Romania, and there exists state media who won’t question your team choices and decisions, and you treat gymnasts like goods instead of humans.  But it just will no longer work here in the US.  Marta Karyoli has no understanding of start values and difficulties in the new judging system – lest we forget that even without the mistakes of the US in the team final, they still would have lost because they were barely out-scored in difficulty by the Chinese.  Or, if Marta does possess such an understanding, her gymnasts are so injured that they can’t possibly perform those skills.  Of course, then we had her awful excuses and claims of unfairness after her team won silver.  Oh, that might have worked when your husband was in Romania and walked out of an international meet because of “mis-scoring” of his gymnasts because they were trying to “sabotage” him (detailed in Little Girls in Pretty Boxes), but it’s not going to work here in 2008.  Just suck it up and retire, Marta.  You and your husband need to ride off into the sunset and stop tainting USA Gymnastics.

Despite What Everyone Else Thinks, I Still Love Shawn Johnson’s Floor Ex – Why all the hate, Paul Ziert of International Gymnastics?  Ziert, in his live-blogging of the women’s floor exercise final today, stated: “This music just doesn’t do it for anyone… no place to clap along.”  That may be the lamest excuse ever not to like a piece of music.  That also may be the worst comment ever made about a floor exercise.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, Shawn Johnson’s floor exercise music – from the August Rush soundtrack – is the floor exercise music I would choose if I were a music supervisor for a movie about a gymnast winning the Olympics. It’s an attainable piece of instrumental music, it builds several times, and it matches the gymnast’s personality.  It’s great live and great on TV, and I just can’t watch it enough.  But I think I’m the only one.

The Chinese Gymnast Goes Indian - I heart Jiang Yuyuan’s floor exercise for what it represents.  The Chinese gymnast throws down a darn good floor exercise with actual factual dance elements to Indian music.  It’s rare that you see the Chinese perform on floor with such expression and to ethnic music of another country, no less!  Hate the Chinese if you will, I enjoy the fact that Jiang is actually showing facial expression and carrying arm movements through the tips of her fingers (my biggest pet peeve.)  Jiang Yuyuan, no matter what age you are, you are my Scrunchie Girl of the Olympics thus far.

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As for my hockey note of the day, one of my favorite AHL bloggers/journalists, Jonathan Bombulie of the Citizens Voice of Wilkes-Barre and Times-Tribune of Scranton, reported on Friday that the Penguins organization signed two free agent goalies this past week, but did not make any moves to replace the departed Ty Conklin on the goalie depth chart.  Bombulie believes that this is a vote of confidence in Everyone’s Favorite Goalie, John Curry, to be the number three goalie in the Penguins organization.  He’s the Rudy of ice hockey, that Johnny Curry!  From college walk-on to Hobey Baker finalist to Calder Cup finalist…and now number three behind Marc-Andre Fleury and Dany Sabourin.  If there’s ever a goalie to rally behind, it’s Curry. (And yet this news has not yet made the Terrier Hockey Fan Blog yet, despite their weekend update…when will people catch on?)

And for a fun time, I reccommend listening to WGR Buffalo the afternoon after a Buffalo Bills pre-season win where Trent Edwards looked pretty good.  I did while at work on Friday afternoon, and it was a Bills love-fest, which is always appreciated.  When you need a break from the WEEI’s of the world, listen to the live streaming feed of WGR, where they not only just talk sports, but a wide variety of sports – Friday afternoon was not just a BIlls love-fest, but also had a good discussion on Blue Jay’s pitcher Roy Halliday and a rehashing of the Brian Campbell trade at the trade deadline this past winter by the Sabres.  And who doesn’t enjoy Buffalo radio ads?