Snowman On Fire

Forget NCAA hoops, the NCAA hockey playoffs start tomorrow. Of course, if you feel the urge to fill out a tiered form filled with teams you may have heard of while watching ESPN in a late-night stupor, check out the Sun Dukes online bracket, courtesy of one of our work-sponsored teams. If you want to catch the Princeton game, it will be broadcast on WPRB, 103.3 FM or you can catch it via WPRB’s webcast. On a serious note, this is where my hockey attention is fixated until the Devils come out of their slump (which might be September), or the Tigers lose (which might be tomorrow night, North Dakota is ranked third in the country).

Win or lose, the Tigers had a great season and brought a wheelbarrow worth of awards home from the ECAC this week: Lee Jubinville, player of the year and Hobey Baker Award top-10 finalist; Guy Gadowsky as coach of the year; Mike Moore as defenseman of the year and Landis Stankievech as student-athlete of the year. Lots more notes on the semi-official Princeton fan site.

The last time Princeton made a tournament, Jeff Halpern was leading the team, and he later went on to show up at the Washington Capitals camp undrafted and unknown. And a few seasons later he was the captain of the team. He always wanted to play for his home-town team as a kid. Attention, Lou: check out Zane Kalemba — he looks really good in a Devils uniform.

One of my college friends had a variety of ways of expressing disgust, typically involving creative uses of other people’s body parts. My favorite, after nearly three decades, is that he was so disgusted with something that he would “puke through his nose.” That searing, burning, horrendous, watching-garbage-trucks-collide with nothing you can do to stop it feeling? That’s it.

That’s what it’s like watching the Devils over the last two weeks. Five losses, a handful of goals, and seven in a row to the Rangers. Seven? The last time the Rangers beat a team seven times in one season “expansion” referred to leagues, not salary caps, and my nasal friend was vomiting in grade school. We entered March like a lion, thinking about a first seed in the playoffs, and we’re going out like a slaughtered lamb, hoping to hold on to a playoff spot or at least avoid Montreal or Pittsburgh in the first round. My only consoling thought is that I now know what my co-author, and long-time suffering Jets fan Evan Marcus feels like every Sunday from September through Christmas.

Like the Jets, the Devils are inventing ways to lose. Doesn’t Zajac know how to take a center out of the play without dumping him into his own goalie, particularly when the puck has deflected off of Brookbank’s skate? Didn’t someone tell the Devils to cover the center in the low slot on the power play? Help, please. How about picking some number of defensemen (out of NINE) that can play this game? How about picking up some talent this summer, and dropping the dead weights? It’s March, and I’m talking about the off-season. It’s stupid talk, it’s the talk of a deranged fan, it’s the language that precedes a vomit incident.

Princeton University’s mens ice hockey team won the ECAC Championship last night, defeating Harvard (again! glee!) 4-1 to earn a spot to the NCAA playoffs. This season held so many highlights it’s hard to enumerate:

After being left in the dust by Notre Dame in a pair of home humblings, the Tigers bounced back to go on a tear in January. Leadership and coaching. Here’s what’s even cooler: Landis Stankievich, Princeton Senior, won a Rhodes Scholarship this year. Shades of Ken Dryden?

Former Devils Youth players Zane Kalemba and Kevin Shattenkirk came up big for the Tigers. Kalemba in particular was Brodeur-esque between the pipes during the ECAC run, shutting out Yale twice in the quarters, earning another blank against giant-killer Colgate, and then giving up a singleton to the Crimson in the title game. One goal when everything was on the line. He’s from NJ, not Canada, but he could be good enough to take over our favorite Canadian’s New Jersey spot in a few years.

Guy Gadowsky proved that sometimes it takes a bit of time to put your imprint on a college program. This is the first team that’s been mostly his work, and the results are impressive. Princeton missed winning the ECAC regular season in the last game of the year, but they delivered in the post season.

As the song goes, Princeton, forward! In more than 15 years of the past two decades, this time of year has had me cheering for a Princeton team in an NCAA playoff, typically involving a hardwood floor and a roundball. I’m thrilled to continue to the tradition.

I’m starting to think that there’s some sort of conversation of hockey momentum that I must share between my three favorite teams: the youth Devils, the Tigers, and the NHL Devils. As the Tigers clawed, the Devils thawed, and our youth Devils skated furiously into the semi-finals of our season-ending tournament, only to lose on a strange goal. But if a season is the net sum of its ups and downs, and we remember the positive momentum turns and joys into future years, it’s a good season. Our youth season included a silver medal, a trip to the NJYHL playoffs and a bronze medal, and a chance to play some outstanding teams, some old friends, and some new rivals. It ended with a loss, as most seasons do for everyone but league champions, but it was outstanding hockey.

Right now, I’m not getting the same outstanding feeling from the old Black and Red. I’m sorely tempted to punt on playoff tickets for the first two rounds, and send the money to the Friends of Princeton Hockey, the Princeton University Band Endowment Fund, and to support our NJ DareDevils program. Then again, if the Devils continue to sink to the natural lair of their mascot, I won’t be spending much money on spring time hockey anyway.

Seasons that end with a loss are part of sports; ask any of the 64 NCAA basketball teams that aren’t cutting down the nets on the first Monday in April. But all of those players, coaches, and pep bands will take those memories with them, recalling them whenever they hear the strains of “One Shining Moment” for years to come. The lack of something memorable is what is troubling me most about the big Devils this year: Parise is having a good year, Marty extended his record for 40-win seasons, but nothing else has etched itself into the back of my head. The new arena is fun, but I’m not going to relive memories of eating buffalo chicken fingers a dozen years from now. I remember The Streak, and Elias’ playoff performance in 2000, and even Jason Arnott beating Florida in overtime in the last game of the 99-00 regular season as we celebrated Bubba’s birthday in the stands.

What I want is something by which to remember the last 8 games of the season. Not to much to ask, is it?

I’ve been playing in Hockey North America for five seasons. More accurately, I’ve played four full seasons and one season that was reduced to a single game due to a broken leg. In each of my close-to-full seasons, I’ve been a one-shot wonder, scoring exactly one goal a season, much like Scott Stevens in his last full Devils season. I am the adult hockey equivalent to A Flock of Seagulls, but with stranger, more grey hair. This year I was worried that I might break with tradition and consistency, as we were 16 games into a 20-game schedule and I’d made only one scoresheet with a lucky pass that earned an assist.

Sunday night we were playing the team tied with us for first place in the division, and a solid opponent that we’ve played within a goal or two in previous games. It was a little chippier than usual, and I earned a trip to the sin bin for blatantly dumping a guy (the other #8, coincidentally, who also happened to have all of their goals) while playing the puck along the boards. Now at least I can say I know why NHL players take dumb penalties: sometimes you have such an urge to make contact that you forget your job is to play the puck, not the body. And this is a no checking (and minimal contact) league. So I got two minutes for roughing, the moral equivalent to dropping the gloves (actual fisticuffs earn you a suspension, and anything more than a bump in the night is usually a double minor — we all have real jobs to go to in the morning).

I was skating with Tommy (another youth hockey team manager) and Dog Food (what he does, not who he is). We had Hammer (who he is, not what he does), on right-side “D” while I took up the left wing. Hammer is a great skater, and he’ll rush the puck end to end, meaning that if he’s on your side you cover for him at the point or if you’re on the off wing side, you can look for garbage goals if you manage to get in the vicinity of the crease about the same time he does. Deep into the third period, Hammer popped in a goal on one of his crazy legs rushes, making it 3-2, and 30 seconds later, he rushed again in an attempt to tie the game.

Here’s what everyone saw: Hammer shot low, the goalie went down and blocked the shot, and I picked up the rebound and put it in the open weak side of the net, tying the game at 3-3. Stick and glove taps ensued. The scoresheet has the details.

Here’s what I remember: Hammer was flying, again, and I broke to the left side of the net to both clear a shooting lane and get out of his way. Nothing like imitating a skating drill pylon during a solid rush. He shot as I was stopping (I can only stop going left, fortunately leaving me turned in toward the play and not toward the boards). The goalie went down, made the save with the paddle part of his stick, and I saw the puck bounce toward my feet. I have near zero ability to see the puck once it goes under black line, namely the area shielded by my gut, hockey pants, and gloves that extends roughly six-twelve inches around my skates at any time. Don’t look for that definition in a hockey dictionary, as the NHL hasn’t made playing the puck over the black line a delay of game (yet). As a natural reaction, I got my stick down and attempted to direct the puck back toward the net, but I’m pretty sure my eyes were closed at the time, because I heard it hit the net’s footer before I saw it circle around under the twine.

Here’s the goofy thing: I scored the exact same way, against the same team, during my first HNA season with the Ice Dragons. I feel like the Canadiens versus Brodeur right now. Perhaps consistency isn’t over-rated. And my streak of one-shot luckiness continues.