Chirps from Center Ice

Sorry I am late with this. Weather, travel and work have jumped to the forefront.

By now you have heard that the Eastern Conference beat the Western Conference in the AHL All-Star Classic Monday. Binghamton’s Bobby Butler was named MVP but it really could have gone to either John Curry or Robert Bortuzzo. Bortuzzo had two goals and Curry made a boatload of saves. (Gamesheet / theAHL.com article)

Figured I would include my very unprofessionally done pictures. Here so we’ll do so

It started out Sunday afternoon at the Skills Competition. Some teams send their mascots. I love mascots. Here are a few I was lucky to get pictures with.

Me and Pucky the Whale! He’s from the Connecticut Whale.

Group photo of Screech from the Springfield Falcons, Hawkey from the Abbotsford Heat and Max from the Binghamton Senators.

Down Boy! Me and Duke from the Toronto Marlies.

It’s T-Bone from the San Antonio Rampage! Standing on a table! Tux is still the best mascot!

Probably my most favorite thing of all the weekend festivities is mascot hockey. This was especially hilarious because Tux got in a fight where they had to call out the stretcher! The mascots loaded him onto the stretcher then dropped it! They had to pull poor Tux off the ice instead. Tux later re-appeared bandaged up with a sling!

The rest of the photos are on my Twitpic page. They’d eat up too much of your screen so we’ll link from here.

As for my view of the festivities, well they couldn’t be further away from Center Ice. I was in a section in a corner all the way up in the last row. On top of that, this stared me right in the face both nights.

This was a peculiar sight. Those two are going to be married soon.

Center ice in Hershey. No chirps from there though.

Ha ha ha ha!

Overall, a great time. After the skills competition they had a 20 minute autograph session where you can go to ice level and get the players’ autographs right on the ice. A majority of the players stayed well after the 20 minutes had expired. I got about 90% of the players.

Later, at the post-skills party, I met other AHL fans from around the league. I tweeted that about 30-40% of the teams in the league had at least one fan in attendance. Truly a great time had by all.

General consensus in speaking with Hershey fans was that they are concerned about Wilkes-Barre dethroning them as Champions.

Best part of the post-skills party for me was meeting the beat writers in attendance. I met Tim McManus from Adirondack, Pete Dougherty from Albany, Tim Leone from Hershey, Joy Lindsay from Binghamton and of course Jonathan Bombulie and Tom Venesky from Wilkes-Barre were in attendance also.

Bombulie has the most concise summary on the AHL State of the League address given by League President David Andrews. Here is the link.

I had an awesome time. I look forward to going to All-Stars every year. It’s such a good time.

Back to business Friday as the Manitoba Moose are in town. Let’s Go Pens!