Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey is the only sport that I follow and even then I tend to only follow it around the playoffs.  Knowing me you might be surprised that I follow any sport at all, let alone hockey considering my nerdy and geeky life and the aversion the stereotypical geek has to any physical activity.

My History with Hockey


I suppose my enjoyment of hockey comes first from the proximity of our local team, the San Jose Sharks as in the 93-94 season they moved to San Jose for their third season (the first two they were right outside San Fran).  This made them the only major sports team to date to be based in San Jose.  The other major factor was that our neighbors at the time had season tickets to the Sharks and when they went out of town they would let my Dad, me and my brother go to Sharks games.  Add in the fact that my oldest friend Michael Yee (known each other since birth) was a developing Sharks fan (he's still way more of a fan than I am) and sprinkle in how cool the goalies look with their pads and I was well on my way to becoming a hockey fan in my youth.  Oh and did I mention they enter the game through a huge sharks head that's lowered from the ceiling?

Finally to seal the deal something amazing happened that third season.

History is Made


First some important background (not that I knew most of this at the time).  The Sharks were in their third season and for their first two seasons saying that they did horrible was an understatement.  They were one of if not the worst teams in the NHL and they hold the NHL record for loses in a season (71).  However, in their third season they had one of the best turnaround seasons ever and even made the playoffs (barely) as 8th seeds.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are set up as follows: 2 conferences, 8 teams per conference, you play a best of 7 series and if you win you move on to the next series while your opponent is eliminated.  The top seed is matched with the lowest seed so 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7 etc.  Given the highly physical nature of hockey, lasting through 4 grueling series and winning them all is one of the harder things to do in sports.

The Sharks were matched against the number 1 seeded Detroit Red Wings who were largely favored.  Detroit is also known as "Hockeytown" and has the largest active streak of going to the playoffs among the 4 major sports.  They've been going for 20 years now, they're that good.  They currently have 11 Stanley Cup wins, but the Sharks won the series in 7 games.  As a young kid that was just amazing to see.  I was sold, and even started drawing Sharks swimming around the ice eating maple leafs (their next opponent) but they lost that series in 7.

Hockey and Me Now


Over the years the Sharks have turned into one of the dominate teams in the NHL although they still haven't managed to get past the conference finals (they were just eliminated this week) but I figure they'll get their justly deserved Stanley Cup championship eventually.  The sport is just fun to watch with the speed and skill of the players.  It's even starting to catch on and become decently popular here in the states.  I know logically my rooting for players has no impact but sometimes it's just fun to watch people do something amazing that you could never do.  So what are you waiting for? Go out there, pick a team and enjoy the action!  Here is a link to start understanding how the game is played.



I love these history is made comercials :)

Transitions

I am fast approaching the beginning of a new chapter in my life with my (hopefully) immanent graduation from graduate school.  As such I figured it would be a good time to transition my much neglected vlog into blog form (with possible video interjections).  Mostly because writing is easier and less time consuming than shooting and editing video but hopefully it will also get my writing juices flowing so I can breeze through my 100+ page thesis.

I have no illusions as to how few people will read this but I have a few goals:

1)  Understand myself a bit more - You ever stop and think about why you do what you do?  No?  Ok I'm probably just weird but, I do ask myself that from time to time and often the answer is I don't know and I do so love a puzzle :)

2) Have a handy list of what's going on in my life - Cause when people ask what's going on I tend to forget or say "Not much".

3) Use it as a creative outlet - I'm mostly doing logical "right brain" things these days.  It's relaxing to use the creative part of my brain from time to time.

4) Try and improve my communication - This is an area I suck at, I hope this blog helps alleviates this weakness to some degree.

5) Share cool stuff - I like sharing things that I think are awesome with people.  Sometimes a get a little too excited though but yeah this will let me share some of what I think is worth sharing.

[Side note: I'll use brackets and italics to designate times where I go off on tangents and just write what's on my mind, feel free to skip these quite possibly long winded sections. Case in point, what do I mean by "improve my communication"?  It's not like I don't know how to be clear when I speak.  I'm naturally shy (possible blog topic) but that's not the real problem.  Part of it is laziness (should probably call my family back) but again not quite what I'm getting at.  It certainly takes me forever to open up to new people, I mean like on the order of years, that could certainly use some improvement.  Letting people get to know me without them having to go to extreme lengths to find the "whole me" (not the real me, that seems an inaccurate description) would be a good improvement.  Perhaps I should use this space to be more transparent?  Being quiet is cool and all (another possible topic) but it leaves people wondering what you're thinking and often times they just assume/ assign a thought to you.  So yeah by "improve my communication I suppose I mean "let you know what I'm thinking."]