Takes and trash talk from both ALL sides of the NHL's most obscure PATHETIC* rivalry

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Sleek picks the correct preseason game to attend! Ducks 6, Sharks 3

Boy oh boy did I have fun last night, I got so drunk I couldn't even post. My pal Damndaze took a lot of cool pictures from our Row B, so I'm sure I'll put a few posts together with those.

This guy sure looked grumpy that he had to wear a helmet, but despite our pleading, he never called a penalty on our new boy Mr. Pronger.


On the other hand, though, we did get some nice penalty box visits from Ian Moran and Todd Fedoruk. Moran in partciular seemed very surprised when I encouraged him to continue his blogwork, and Fedoruk was the only one to grant me an 'interview':

Sleek: "I'm really looking forward to your rematch with Laraque."
Fedoruk (dead serious): "So am I."


Other fun highlights:
  • Todd Marchant scoring a goal immediately after I finished telling my section how Marchant cannot score outside of PS2.
  • Shane O'Brien and Grahame Mink getting into a cursing contest across the penalty boxes after a fight. I think I counted eight mentions of the word "pussy".
  • Our repeated consoling of out-of-place defenseman Bruno St. Jacques: "Oh, you should have a great time in Portland this year."
At any rate, it was a really great time. Uniforms looked pretty good, and I did notice something interesting about the Duck PP, but I'll throw that into another post.

Nothing like a little shark-spanking to bring out the SJ boys, eh?

4 comments:

PJ Swenson said...

Cool photos. Pronger is so fast it looks like he is moving when he is standing still. And I like the recurring adult beverage theme in your game recaps.

Nice work keeping BOC hope alive Earl. After a long break this summer, it took me 2 weeks to learn how to post to a blog again. I think I am going to make Battle of California an outlet for my nascent career as a hockey cartoonist.

This season will be fun watching Pronger and Niedermayer try to stop Thornton, Cheech and Marleau, not to mention the rest of the Pacific. One question, who was the top Anaheim prospect at the rookie tournament in LA this year?

Earl Sleek said...

I know generally the Anaheim kids got creamed trying to win their third straight rookie tourney, but I hear the top scorer was the ping-pong ball Bobby Ryan, though message board correspondents say his skating still needs improvement.

But thankfully our (new) rookie woes are eclipsed by a big #25 on our blueline.

I should confess that I am horrible about tracking prospects, for the most part I find out about kids when they hit NHL ice, but rarely before.

Oh, and by all means, hack cartooning is where it's at!

Anonymous said...

Earl! I love the game recaps and penalty box chatter. Tell me these are your regular seats.

The only reason I haven't started a Ducks blog is because you're already doing a fantastic job. An absolute treat.

Earl Sleek said...

Tell me these are your regular seats.

Well, I buy into those seats, but I only get three regular season games and one preseason game each year.

In the playoffs is a different story, one I will cover in a different post, but I was there for G1 vs. Colorado and (tragically) G5 vs. Edmonton.

Honestly, one of the best reasons to be a hockey fan in a nontraditional market. You could probably never score these seats in Toronto or Detroit.