Chirps from Center Ice

If you follow me on my Twitter feed, you’ll know that I visited the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Team Headquarters today. I took lunch early. I inhaled my Circles sandwich. Got to my truck and drove to the Coal Street Complex only to find out….

…they were closed on Monday!

I do plan on visiting again (and going inside) this week and posting pictures.

But to whet your appetite, and because I am itching to play with pictures here, I present the following of what I was able to get today.

…and…

My office is down there somewhere. Would love to get this same picture at dusk. (Don’t judge, I know I should have taken a few steps forward and not had that large lightpole in the way)

I should hope to have many more pictures for you guys later this week. I really don’t care if you re-post my pictures. I’m not making a dime off of any of this (and want to keep it that way) but all I ask is that you keep the homemade watermark I have in the upper left hand corner.

Please don’t forget to vote on whether you like “The Ticket” for Brett Sterling. Polls close sometime Wednesday.

Earlier in the week I put the nickname “Craigslist” to a vote. It got smoked. 17-5 against. I will not use it again.

Next up is a nickname I came up with for Brett Sterling who has the potential to be the biggest free agent signing in Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins history. I came up with “The Ticket” because, you will undoubtedly want a “ticket” to see him play a game at Mohegan Sun Arena sometime this year.

I’ll let this poll run until about Wednesday. You guys give me a pretty good gauge on things within 24-48 hours.

I am putting this whole “Nicknames for the Players” to a vote.

If you haven’t noticed already, I have a poll on the right hand side of your screen. The subject is WBS Pens signing Ryan Craig. I came up with this totally awesome nickname “Craigslist” last night. Before I just added it to the list below, I figured I would tool around with the poll feature the fine people at WordPress offer bloggers such as myself.

Right now, “Craigslist” is getting smoked. But there is still time, (Friday) for people who like the nickname to vote for it.

Like I said, I am putting all the nicknames to votes. Well, some of them. I don’t think we have to put to a vote “Big Dog” or “Chicken” – but the others I may. If you like them, they stay. If you don’t, I never mention them again. If enough nicknames get scrapped, then I may drop the whole nickname thing altogether.

Do your duty (if you haven’t already) and do the following: 1) Vote in my poll. 2) Bookmark this page. 3) Follow me on Twitter.

I figure since I have a blog now, why not have some fun with it?

Hockey players have nicknames. If you were with me back when I live-tweeted the Booster Club Awards Ceremony back in the Spring, you know that the guys on the team have nicknames. For example, Nick Johnson – WBS forward, was given the nickname “lunchie” because he was always out to lunch. Then Pens Defenseman Chris Lee was aptly named “Bruce Lee” after the kung-fu movie star.

A lot of the blog visitors are familiar with Eric Tangradi and know that his nickname as “The Big Dog”. What you may not know, is that the team called him “Super Rook” because he always had his own seat on the bus when they traveled.

I’d like to try to replicate the same thing here on the blog and on the Twitter feed. So I am looking for ideas on nicknames for some of the guys who will be doing time in Wilkes-Barre / Scranton this year.

Here’s is what I have so far, and this is just off the top of my head:

Eric Tangradi: (The) Big Dog
Casey Pierro-Zabotel: CPZ
Keven Veilleux: Beast Mode*
Zach Sill: Kevin Bacon*
Brad Thiessen: Chicken** (People who don’t know how to say the name say “Tyson” like the chicken)
Joe Vitale: Nice Teeth^
Mark Letestu: Frodo / Tubes^
Brett Sterling: The Ticket***
Brian Strait: Steak** (he looks at you like he is a piece of meat)
Tim Wallace: Chuck** (as tough as Chuck Norris)
Simon Despres: The Big Horse – I have never seen Despres in person, but credit Jamie Tozer for tweeting this to me.

This is a very early list, as I’d like to get nicknames up for just about everyone. I do plan on coming back and editing the list. I will even credit you if you came up with it.

Go ahead and leave a comment in the comment section for the rest of the guys you don’t see listed, or if you have a better name for one listed, leave it there as well.

* = credit @EricP55
** = credit Siena Slusser and her friend Tiffany for coming up with this one
*** = This one is all me. Figure Brett is the biggest free agent signing in WBS history, so you’re gonna want a “ticket” to see him right?
^ = credit Nicole Tracey from Pens Universe for this one.