Chirps from Center Ice

I attended the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins Booster Club Awards Banquet tonight. It’s more of a semi-formal thing where you get a player at your table. Tonight’s contestants to have stupid questions lobbed at them by a tall balding guy with an iPhone addiction were C Matt Rust and LW Geoff Walker.

The club had formal awards and “fun” awards. Apologies if none of these make sense, my note taking isn’t what it should be. In years past I would tweet the event. I even had whomever runs the Penguins Booster club twitter, @WBSPBC ask me if I was tweeting it. I decided against it because I needed something for blog fodder with a whole workweek to go before the next game. Here goes:

Formal Awards: (as voted on by members of the booster club)

Winger of the Year: Bryan Lerg
Center of the Year: Zach Sill:
Defensemen of the Year: Joey Mormina
Goaltender of the Year: Scott Munroe
Darcy Robinson Memorial Award: Alex Grant
Player of the Year: Colin McDonald
Mascot of the Year: Tux*

Now to the Fun Awards. Members of the booster club needle players for “inside information” on teammates and this is what they came up with this year.

Play-by-play Tom Grace: A hand patter to pat himself on the back.

Color commentary Mike O’Brien: A light saber from Star Wars, as his nickname is “Obie”

Tux: A “flarp” machine. If you are near Tux during games, he squeaks. Sometimes he makes other bodily noises. The “flarp” is apparently an upgrade.

Head Coach John Hynes: A Patriotic tie and a quack-quack whistle for practice.

Assistant Coach Alain Nasreddine: Someone dumped beer on him when the team was in St. John’s so the booster club got him a rain poncho.

Boris Valabik: His teammates call him a gypsy so he got a red bandana and gold earrings.

Joey Mormina: He apparently drops his stick a lot so they got him a child safety leash to hold onto his stick.

Carl Sneep and Alex Picard: They got Sneep a Hawaiian lei, a hat and maracas. They gave Picard the same thing and a “#1 Dad” button, as he is a new father.

Cal O’Reilly: He is a bit of a ladies man, so they got him a large black book.

Steve MacIntyre: This one is the funniest of all. He is an avid hunter, so they got him a play bow and arrow. They got him a blow up Penguins to shoot (I would have went with a Bear, but that’s me) and they put a picture of Springfield’s Greg Amadio on the penguin. They tried to get a Greg Amadio bobble fist from Grand Rapids (it was a promotion this year there) but they said that even the bobble fists wouldn’t show up to fight him. Hilarious.

Brad Thiessen: He backed up Marc-Andre Fleury in Pittsburgh, so they got him a “Flower” headband.

Scott Munroe: Scott is into martial arts so they got him a martial arts gorilla.

Keven Veilleux: Hurt all year, they gave him a “boo boo ice pack and cane”

Simon Despres: All-Star representative this year for WBS, they got him Starglasses. He’s also known as a big eater on the team so they got him a plastic hot dog.

Robert Bortuzzo and Brian Strait: A “shake and bake” for both of them. It’s out of Talladega Nights.**

Jason Williams: They call him “DJ Willy” so a plastic microphone.

Bryan Lerg: Because he cut his long hair, they got him a gold wig and since he has “best smile” they got him a smiley face.

Alex Grant: Apparently finds some tasks difficult, so they got him an easy button.

Ryan Craig: Since he is the team captain, there apparently is some correlation between that and “king of the jungle” so they got him a crown.

Matt Rust: Known as a good dancer, they got him a “dancer” hat and a dancing wand twirler.

Brandon DeFazio / Paul Thompson: They gave them the “bromance” award.

Cody Wild: They photoshopped him into a picture with actress Angelina Jolie.

Nick Petersen: A book of questions and answers.

Brian Gibbons: Apparently is a man about town, so they got him a Wilkes-Barre activity list, a copy of the local “Weekender” and a clown nose.

Ben Street: Known as a member of the “prostitution line” (Street / Geoff Walker and Nick Petersen) they got him a pimp hat.

Zach Sill / Philip Samuelsson: Sill is known as the teams resident redneck and has the best chest hair. They gave him a fake mustache and a hair growing kit. They gave the same thing to Samuelsson, as in December he grew one and couldn’t wait to get it off.

Colin McDonald and Geoff Walker: Apparently McDonald eats healthy and Walker not so much. They got McDonald starry glasses (as the teams All-Star representative) and both a gift certificate to McDonald’s.

Hey, I am only reporting on what each was given. Don’t ask me!

If you frequent the blog and want to shed more light on why a player received the award, the comments are open.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have something more serious to blog on, but this was fun regardless. Hope you enjoyed reading.

Let’s Go Pens!

* – apparently T-Bone’s name was left off the list
** – I don’t watch movies, so I had no idea what they were talking about