October 2011
14 posts
Quinoa
The first road trip of the season gave the boys their first look at this year’s pregame meal. The most notable addition to the growing spread was quinoa, which, as Matt Moulson had to explain to about the entire team, is a high-protein grain. Courtesy Miriam Webster: Definition of QUINOA (Pronounced KEEN-WAH): an annual herb (Chenopodium quinoa) of the goosefoot family that is native to the...
Travis “The Hammer” Hamonic opens up...
The Walk-Off
I’ve long gotten over the “you’re-going-to-be-around-a-lot-of-big-sweaty-dudes” aspect of working around a locker room, but at our game on October 10, I took it to another level.
At the end of every period, you’ll find me in the player tunnel, stopping select players as they exit the ice and setting up “walk-off” interviews with MSG-Plus, visiting TV, WRHU and the Islanders in-house scoreboard...
Forget game previews and season outlooks -...
September 2011
3 posts
Rookie mistakes
About half of the players in camp went on the first road trip of the season Friday, when the Isles took on Boston in the preseason opener. With a number of rookies vying for roster spots, there were more than a few first-timers on board who had yet to master the art of flying private.
Time to educate:
Rule 1: Go with the “one hot meal per game” strategy. It’s hard to justify...
Grabs and JT at the NHL Media Tour
John Tavares and Michael Grabner took the National media by storm on September 8th at the NHL Media Tour. Journalists from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times and USA Today took over conference rooms throughout the NHL’s midtown offices to interview top players from around the league. Beyond straight interviews, the players faced a gauntlet of photo shoots, VIP meet-and-greets and video...
August 2011
3 posts
With season-preview deadlines right around the corner for most publications, player interview requests have been pouring in this week.
In catching up with about 10 Islanders over the past few days, it’s been brought to my attention that they think my offseason consists of:
1. Perfecting my lean against the hallway wall outside the locker room (My perch for the three hours leading up to...
NHL R&D
“No-touch icing” and “3-on-3 overtime” are so 2010 Research and Development camp.
What have you got for me in 2011, Shanny?
Here’s what I’m thinking…
1. If a shootout is tied after three rounds, the winner will be decided by a fastest skater competition (go-grabs-go)
2. Scrap the “instigating with a visor” penalty. In fact, if a player with a visor goes after someone...
3 tags
Comeau Arbitration: All For Naught?
Blake Comeau’s signing on Tuesday conformed to a recent trend in the NHL that’s seen arbitration-bound players and their clubs agree to a deal prior to the hearing. The widely-accepted explanation for the trend is that the player-team relationship takes a pretty big hit after the sides present their competing cases to an arbiter.
Another reason negotiations tend to progress as the hearing date...
July 2011
1 post
An Offseason Post (Finally)!
You’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that it’s entirely coincidental that my last official correspondence (be it a tweet or the post) coincided seamlessly with my trip to Vegas for the NHL Awards Show. I was kept out of the office and the locker room for the past few weeks due to injury (again – completely unrelated to Sin City), but my time off (which I’m trying to think of as a vacation,...
June 2011
5 posts
Quick hits from Vegas
The Mayor – You can’t take Doug Weight anywhere. Never mind being constantly stopped in the streets by fans, as were all of the nominees; Dougie couldn’t even walk past another player without slowing down for a stop-and-chat.
Teen Grabner – Michael Grabner’s former billets from Spokane tell great stories about “Teen-Gremlin”. He didn’t speak a lick of English at the start of his first WHL season,...
2 tags
Islanders vs. Real Life
I went to a friend’s wedding this weekend and, like everything else in my life, couldn’t help but compare it to a typical team function.
That means it’s time for an exciting episode of “Islanders vs. Real Life”
This week: “The Islanders Pregame Meal vs. A Real Life Wedding”
Before I go any further, a quick message from our sponsor (errrr, my conscience): Let’s get it on paper that the...
The New York Islanders Select...
I recently finished writting press releases for EVERY single possible player that could feasibly be selected by the Islanders in the first round, fifth overall, of this year’s draft. Talk about getting your hopes up… Usually it’s easy to think logically about what players are likely to fall to you, but that drastically changes after you’ve written an extensive bio on Player-X’s record-breaking...
