Final Pre Season Skate (Friday)

Some new (to me) faces on the ice and a few surprises. Faces I hadn't seen back this week yet were:
Anssi Samela
Rich Peverley
Ondrej Pavelic
Ilya Kovalchuk
Slava Kozlov
Joey Crabb
and yes ladies, Ron Hainsey! Woot Woot!





I got there about 10:00 a.m. (slacker) so I"m not sure if they did any drills before. It was scrimmage time when we arrived. There were two teams today, dark blue and powder blue. Serge and I called the powder blue team "Team Party" because it had the likes of Ron Hainsey, Marty Reasoner, Eric Boulton, and Joey Crabb. They were having a blast, especially Ron. He was very animated today and yelling stuff at the guys. The dark blue team had Ilya, the stoic Slava and the very intense Zack Bogosian on it.


I sat in about the same spot I did last time I went to preseason skate and realized the same damn smudge was in my way. So this time I cleaned it off (yuck). The things I do for my blog :)




Ronsey and Pevs chilling.





Pavs getting ready to see some action.





Team Dark Blue bringing it into the Party zone. I think you missed that one Pavs.





Anssi of Team Party defending the zone.





Kovy scored on Pavs and popped his water bottle off of the net.





Pavs was not amused.





Pavs says no.





Marty: It's good to be back, huh?
Hainsey: Yup.
Marty: That chick has been here a lot more lately.
Hainsey: Which one?
Marty: The cute one that takes all the pictures.
Hainsey: Oh yeah, her. I hear she lost her job.
Marty: Really? Damn, that sucks.
Hainsey: Yeah. She entered a picture of me in a photo contest for ESPN.
Marty: Really? Damn, she really is cool.
Hainsey: Yep. How's my hair?





Team Party had an unknown on it, #24. We asked around the few people watching and no one knew. When I got home, I looked him up and it is Josh Gratton, who we signed in the off season. I checked up on Mr. Gratton and my favorite stat came from his 2005-06 season with the Philly Phantoms. He spent 265 minutes in the penalty box. WOW!





Players that I'd previously seen there that weren't on the ice today:
Todd White
Boris Valabik
Nik Antropov
Tobias Enstrom
Colby Armstong
Chris Thorburn

And, most importantly (to me) my Moose. We got there and sat near the entrance so the far goal was kind of blurry. I just assumed it was Moose down there. I watched him for a few minutes and told Serge..."that's not Moose." Serge said "Are you sure? Who else would it be?" I insisted it wasn't. He wanted to know how I know. You can call me nuts (which many do) but I just KNOW. Mystery Goalie was about the same height as Moose but he just moved differently. He wasn't twitchy like Moose. He didn't save like Moose. I knew it wasn't my Moose.


Welcome to Atlanta Peter Mannino! We signed Peter in the off season as well. Peter played for the University of Denver where he led the Pioneers to the to the 2005 NCAA Championship. He then played for the Tri-City Storm of the USHL and helped them win the Anderson Cup in 2004. He played last season for the Islanders getting his first NHL start against Chicago Blackhawks on March 15. The sun must shine on Peter because it was one of the few games that the Islanders won last season.





The guys chilling after scrimmage.





When everyone had left the ice, Hainsey pulled the goals closer to the middle of the ice.





Then commenced to haul ass around them. I left after a few laps, so if he did anything fantastical, I missed it.


The season OFFICIALLY starts (for me) Sunday with the first day of training camp. As I still have no freaking job, I'll more than likely be there every day.