This is perhaps a wee bit excessive.
So, a couple of days ago I was on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette webpage and saw a little blurb that said the Penguins were having a free-and-open-to-the-public practice and scrimmage this morning, and I thought to myself, "Hey, that might be interesting. Also, free."
So, this morning I hopped on the subway (which I needn't have bothered with, really; the closest stop to the arena was one stop after the closest stop to my apartment; oops. It seems farther when I'm going past it on the bus everyday, somehow, but it is actually pretty close to where I live.) Seating was first-come, first-served and it was kind of more crowded than I expected... they asked one guy (on the Jumbotron) what brought him and his family out and he said "...it was free?" Anyway, I'll not soon again have seats that aren't in the upper deck, so:
I got there around 9, and the doors had opened at 8:30, so the ushers were encouraging us to head over to the far side of the rink. This proved to be excellent ushing, as there were plenty of seats available goal side where the players were practicing. The very first thing I noticed was Geno:
This was fortunate, because none of the players had their names on their practice jerseys. But Geno's is one of the few players' numbers that I actually know, and it was on the back of his helmet (and on several jerseys in the stands near me) so I knew I was at least in the right place.
The players had been divided into practice groups for their training camp. Real Penguins had black or white jerseys, while the n00bs seemed to have off colors -- baby blue, green, yellow, etc. There were handy xeroxed sheets listing all the players and their numbers, though, which I referred to often throughout the morning. The goalie in this pic, for instance, is (I think) Jeff Zatkoff. In other practice groups, I saw Tomas Vokoun and Marc-Andre Fleury on my end of the rink.
After about an hour of practice, they zamboni-ed the rink, and Geno's "Group C" (in black) had a short scrimmage with "Group A" (in white). Happily, their scrimmage jerseys did have names and numbers on.
During the scrimmage, we had a visitation from the Penguin's mascot. I didn't know there were mascots in hockey, but apparently ours is named Iceburgh (sic), which I think is fairly hilarious.
They played two 18 minute periods with just a minute or two intermission between them. There was at least one penalty during that time. But they did the proper face-offs and all, and had linesmen, and everything:
The white team won, 3-0. The black team took their goalie out and had a six-on-five at the end; I guess it totally makes sense to practice for that kind of situation too.
After the scrimmage, it was Group A's turn to practice for about an hour. I think this photo is of Brooks Orpik. I don't know much about him at all, except that he was in one of the first half-dozen or so videos for the You Can Play Project, which means that he is a pretty awesome person. I have pretty strong feelings on this topic.
A lot of people left during the Group A practice, but I'm kind of glad I stayed... after another round of zam-boning, Group B appeared. Group B was heavy on "players I actually recognized from being on the ice when I watched the games on the television." For example, here is Kris Letang, surrounded by prospects.
And, of course, Sidney Crosby:
He was on my end of the rink when they started doing what I think might've been "suicides," which I've heard about in the fanfics? I don't know. Whatever you call it when they line up and race from one end of the rink and suddenly change direction and come back, a couple of laps. It looked like a lot of effort, anyway. It would be suicidal for me to try something like this, is the point.
Whatever they're called, he seemed to be looking forward to it.
Aaaaand, go!
The real Penguins all managed to keep up with one another pretty well. Then they had a line of mostly prospects go, and it was somewhat less impressive. One of them was skating like he might've been injured or something, even; it was just not so good.
Then the others went a second time.
They even made the goalies go, but that was kind of sad and very slow, so I didn't want to take a picture of that. Poor guys, with all that padding. At least they only made them do one round of it.
Then they ran various other drills. Since they didn't scrimmage, Crosby's group was practicing a little longer... at that point, I was feeling a little hypothermic, not to mention hungry, so I left. But it was interesting to watch the different types of drills they were doing... some were two players, some were three, some were four... some were two-on-three attacking, some were clearly defensive drills... quarter-ice or half-ice... at one point they were practicing from attacking down the entire length of the ice. So, I dunno, it was kind of neat. And free. It's possibly egregious that I'll have been in the Consol three times this month, but, whatever. I liked it.
After, I took the subway/light-rail to Dormont to check out that used book store (ElJay's? Really?) that daharyn had recommended. They had a pretty great sci-fi section. I was only going to buy one book, but then I overheard two of the salesclerks talking about the relative merits of Sam vs Dean, and how some fans thought that Dean/Castiel was going to be canon, and also Wincest, and I had to cover my mouth to stop from laughing out loud. So I bought four books instead. D'oh.
So that was my Saturday. Wheeeeeee.
So, this morning I hopped on the subway (which I needn't have bothered with, really; the closest stop to the arena was one stop after the closest stop to my apartment; oops. It seems farther when I'm going past it on the bus everyday, somehow, but it is actually pretty close to where I live.) Seating was first-come, first-served and it was kind of more crowded than I expected... they asked one guy (on the Jumbotron) what brought him and his family out and he said "...it was free?" Anyway, I'll not soon again have seats that aren't in the upper deck, so:
I got there around 9, and the doors had opened at 8:30, so the ushers were encouraging us to head over to the far side of the rink. This proved to be excellent ushing, as there were plenty of seats available goal side where the players were practicing. The very first thing I noticed was Geno:
This was fortunate, because none of the players had their names on their practice jerseys. But Geno's is one of the few players' numbers that I actually know, and it was on the back of his helmet (and on several jerseys in the stands near me) so I knew I was at least in the right place.
The players had been divided into practice groups for their training camp. Real Penguins had black or white jerseys, while the n00bs seemed to have off colors -- baby blue, green, yellow, etc. There were handy xeroxed sheets listing all the players and their numbers, though, which I referred to often throughout the morning. The goalie in this pic, for instance, is (I think) Jeff Zatkoff. In other practice groups, I saw Tomas Vokoun and Marc-Andre Fleury on my end of the rink.
After about an hour of practice, they zamboni-ed the rink, and Geno's "Group C" (in black) had a short scrimmage with "Group A" (in white). Happily, their scrimmage jerseys did have names and numbers on.
During the scrimmage, we had a visitation from the Penguin's mascot. I didn't know there were mascots in hockey, but apparently ours is named Iceburgh (sic), which I think is fairly hilarious.
They played two 18 minute periods with just a minute or two intermission between them. There was at least one penalty during that time. But they did the proper face-offs and all, and had linesmen, and everything:
The white team won, 3-0. The black team took their goalie out and had a six-on-five at the end; I guess it totally makes sense to practice for that kind of situation too.
After the scrimmage, it was Group A's turn to practice for about an hour. I think this photo is of Brooks Orpik. I don't know much about him at all, except that he was in one of the first half-dozen or so videos for the You Can Play Project, which means that he is a pretty awesome person. I have pretty strong feelings on this topic.
A lot of people left during the Group A practice, but I'm kind of glad I stayed... after another round of zam-boning, Group B appeared. Group B was heavy on "players I actually recognized from being on the ice when I watched the games on the television." For example, here is Kris Letang, surrounded by prospects.
And, of course, Sidney Crosby:
He was on my end of the rink when they started doing what I think might've been "suicides," which I've heard about in the fanfics? I don't know. Whatever you call it when they line up and race from one end of the rink and suddenly change direction and come back, a couple of laps. It looked like a lot of effort, anyway. It would be suicidal for me to try something like this, is the point.
Whatever they're called, he seemed to be looking forward to it.
Aaaaand, go!
The real Penguins all managed to keep up with one another pretty well. Then they had a line of mostly prospects go, and it was somewhat less impressive. One of them was skating like he might've been injured or something, even; it was just not so good.
Then the others went a second time.
They even made the goalies go, but that was kind of sad and very slow, so I didn't want to take a picture of that. Poor guys, with all that padding. At least they only made them do one round of it.
Then they ran various other drills. Since they didn't scrimmage, Crosby's group was practicing a little longer... at that point, I was feeling a little hypothermic, not to mention hungry, so I left. But it was interesting to watch the different types of drills they were doing... some were two players, some were three, some were four... some were two-on-three attacking, some were clearly defensive drills... quarter-ice or half-ice... at one point they were practicing from attacking down the entire length of the ice. So, I dunno, it was kind of neat. And free. It's possibly egregious that I'll have been in the Consol three times this month, but, whatever. I liked it.
After, I took the subway/light-rail to Dormont to check out that used book store (ElJay's? Really?) that daharyn had recommended. They had a pretty great sci-fi section. I was only going to buy one book, but then I overheard two of the salesclerks talking about the relative merits of Sam vs Dean, and how some fans thought that Dean/Castiel was going to be canon, and also Wincest, and I had to cover my mouth to stop from laughing out loud. So I bought four books instead. D'oh.
So that was my Saturday. Wheeeeeee.