Invading Enemy Territory

Last Wednesday, I did what many Sharks fans have done before me -- I invaded enemy territory. Yup, that's right. I watched the Sharks take on the Penguins IN PITTSBURGH. It was quite the experience.

Antti Niemi preparing to be awesome against the Pens.

As Promised...

Slight amounts of hockey present in this post... But you'll have to translate. Muahaha.

我們在中文課，所以我寫中文。
We are in Chinese Class, so I am writing in Chinese.

Random Musings... Warning, little to no hockey in this post

1. This blog needs a new name. I'm sick and tired of having a blog with the same name as eleventy kadillion* other blogs. If other people actually read this, I would open up the table for discussion on a new name, but other people don't actually read this, so I'll just have to be creative all on my own.

The teal also bugs me for some reason. Red, white, and blue would look better, but I want the blog to maintain some Sharks pride.

2. Hey, the Winter X Games just concluded pretty recently, eh? Two main ideas to come from this; Louie Vito and the Moore brothers. I don't watch a ton of snowboarding or snowmobiling, but I do enjoy skiing and other snow sports, I love the ski culture, and I always enjoy watching the X Games each winter. It's an atmosphere you don't quite get anywhere else- local competitions aren't that exciting, and the Olympics are more uptight. Basically, the X Games are cool, and this year, I saw a couple of awesome things.

6th Sense

I've developed a sixth sense this season. An intuition that tells me when the Sharks will be scored on. Not the Kovalchukian goals that come straight from faceoffs, nor the Santorelli-type goals that are fluky at best. No, I'm talking about when the Sharks just can't get a clear. It starts out alright- the other team is in the zone, yeah, but Nemo can help us out, and our D will get it done. But then they don't. I see clearing attempts, but inevitably they are blocked right at the blueline. I see guys try to pass to teammates to move out of the zone, but inevitably that pass ends up on the other team's stick. The clearing attempts aren't working. It isn't as though the other team has a great cycle going (although sometimes they do, but that isn't a necessity for this scenario). It's simply that the Sharks can't possibly manage a clear. And then I get that gut feeling. "The Sharks just simply can't clear the puck. It's gonna wind up in the back of our net." And sure enough, it does. The worst part is that every time this happens, there was an opportunity to clear the puck at some point in time, but it was wasted either by waiting too long and turning over the puck, or not putting enough on the clear in an attempt to avoid icing. At the time, they didn't seem like costly mistakes. But then those mistakes start to add up. It gets to the point where I know the other team will score if the Sharks don't clear. I wish they would just take the icing call- it would be better. Even if you end up losing the faceoff, you have stopped the play. You've stopped the rush, you've slowed the momentum of the other team, which is more important than getting a clean clear, something which the Sharks weren't able to do anyways. I'm no NHL Head Coach, but taking an icing call over a goal seems like a logical thing to me. But I'm just another fan ranting on the internet, so this is just one more problem the Sharks inevitably won't fix. And if they don't, it's going to haunt them in the playoffs- if they make it that far.

The Sharks also ran into some penalty trouble in the 2nd, so you get a picture of the penalty box. Perhaps all that PKing wore out the Sharks for the 3rd...

And now I've broken my English teacher's biggest rule of thumb- large, unbroken chunks of text. But I don't feel like breaking up that way-too-long paragraph, so you get a picture instead.

Vaulting

Warning: This post is in no way related to hockey. But it does have cool pictures, so I think you might still like it.

Dear god did I just get side-tracked. I meant to put up this post, but I ended up messing with the settings of the blog, then I was twittering some, then of course facebook jumped in the way. I finally remembered what I was going to do when I minimized some windows and saw iPhoto still open- oh, right! I was going to put up some photos of vaulting (equestrian vaulting, not pole vaulting), because quite frankly no one actually knows what vaulting is.

"Equestrian vaulting is kind of like dance and gymnastics on a cantering horse..."


I don't know how many times I've used that line to try to explain vaulting. Too many times. Often I find the best way to explain vaulting is with pictures. This post is in no way a comprehensive lesson on vaulting, but rather a compilation of cool pictures. Most were taken at the 2010 World Equestrian Games, which means those teams are really, really, really good.

When you vault, you don't use a saddle, and the horse is on a longe line.

Team Germany. They've been doing this crazy dismount for a while now,

 

you rarely see other teams try it.

Team Switzerland. This picture is a bit blurry, but it gives you a good idea of team vaulting.

Team USA! FACE vaulting club, vaulting to Romeo & Juliet. The US actually won the team competition at WEG this year (1st ever gold medal finish for US team vaulting!)

This Post Hates Corey Perry

I may or may not be posting simply for the sake of posting. That is for you to decide.

We played the Ducks last night, in Anaheim. 4-3 win. Jonas Hiller pulled after letting in three goals in about 12 minutes in the first. Couldn't have happened to a better goalie. The end of the game was kind of sloppy, and we're going to have to pick up the pace if we want to compete with Boston on Saturday.

Playing Anaheim reminded me of something- Corey Perry. In case you were curious, I hate Corey Perry.

One of the guys on the right is Corey Perry, who I hate.

Back in November, at the Tank, someone had a sign that read "Corey Perry is a tool." And it had a picture of a hammer. Excellent. Since this blog features the Sharks, it is aimed mostly at Sharks fans. Sharks fans don't like Corey Perry*. Therefore I can mention this little tidbit.

That November game at the Tank? Yes, it was an overtime loss on a bad icing call, but I had a pretty awesome time because I got to hang out in the broadcaster's booth with Dan Rusanowsky. Sometime in the game Perry did something Perry-like, and during the commercial break Rusanowsky turns to me and declares, "That was Perry. Everybody hates Corey Perry."

Fantastic quotation.

Also congratulations to Al Stalock for his first NHL win. Awesome job, dude. (But seriously, he was awesome.)

*Truth. Disliking Perry is actually a prerequisite to being a Sharks fan.