Game Day Report: Indy Fuel vs Worcester Railers HC

 

ECHL

Indy Fuel vs Worcester Railers HC

DCU Center 

Worcester has been an AHL city in the past, but the DCU Center has been host to the ECHL Worcester Railers HC since 2017 and I think the coast league is perfect for the building as it is today. It's a little bit older than some of the buildings in the league, but with a series of renovations in 2009, 12 & 13, the building has kept up with some of the newer buildings like Santander in Reading, and other recent reno barns like Cross Insurance in Portland.

Providence Bruins Begin to Improve Fan Experience

One of my biggest complaints with the Providence Bruins over the last two seasons have been their almost impossibly bad fan experience.

My chief complaint has been that the team seems to do the barest minimum for the fans that do show up, and don't seem to be too concerned with bringing new fans into the building.

Providence Bruins Meet the Team Night & Catching Up

Tonight was Meet the Team night at Dunkin Donuts Center for the Providence Bruins. The majority of the roster was in attendance signing autographs.  The two noticeable exceptions I picked up were Chris Breen and Cameron Hughes.  Hughes we heard was ill and stayed home. Not sure why Breen wasn't there.

We arrived fairly late for session two, but the event was pretty well organized.  Players were sitting two or three to a table around the concourse, and big thumbs up for having not just the team store, but also the Dunkin' in the building be open to sell not just gimmicks, but coffee for the coffee drinkers.

I won't bore you with the details.  But I was able to zip through the autograph lines pretty quickly.  The team also did a very good job of having a pretty big paper stock poster for people to get signed.  The only person on the poster not available to get an autograph from was Hughes, which isn't bad.

So, going in, the plan was to get the team to sign the pennant.  Really nice of the boys to keep their signatures small (and also number tag), so that I could get everybody.  But I also picked up a logo puck with a lot of white space to get Peter Cehlarik's auto.  His signature was small enough that I was also able to get Trent Fredric and Max Legace on there, too. 

So, I've added my first autographs to my Providence Bruins collection.

In the last few weeks I've also had some TTM and fanpack returns.  I'm going to get back on posting more often, but I don't have pics to go with the post, so we'll just tag them in here.

Gene Garber and Dick Groat returned some custom cards that I sent out a while ago.  And fan packs came back from the Arizona Cardinals, Oakland Raiders and just today the Jacksonville Jaguars (BORTLES!).

I am also less than 100 days away from going to Ireland.  We are missing a chance to see an EIHL game just a day or two.  But I am hoping to see SSE Arena Belfast, home of the Belfast Giants while we're there (and will be getting a puck for the collection, because count it).

Happy Hockey Season

I'm going to keep this brief, because my laptop is beginning to suffer catastrophic failures.  Fortunately, in a few days I will be building myself a new computer (which I'll be using to stream some sports games at http://www.twitch.tv/revdonkbonkers.

However, until then, hockey season has finally descended upon us.  The Providence Bruins had to wait a week to get their home opener and did so with a back-to-back Saturday/Sunday slate featuring the Rochester Americans and the Springfield Thunderbirds.

2019/20 Hockey Season Rink Wish List

It has been a few days since I've posted anything.  Several things have been taking up time; we lost my partner's grand father a few weeks ago, and yesterday was his memorial.  He was a great guy and the joke around her family is that while most women find a guy like their dad, she found a guy like her granddad in me.  Joe and I got along famously, mostly because we have identical senses of humor.  And losing him was hard on all of us.  Fortunately, he had great relationships with my partner and her mom, so the final days were full of love and support.

Besides that, and obviously way less important, I've been doing play by play for my friend's NHL 20 team as they compete in LeagueGaming.com's ESHL season 12.  Calling 5 games over 2 nights a week isn't hard, but it is absolutely time consuming.  And on top of all that, I'm 4 weeks deep into a certification course for a planned career change.

So things have been happening around here.

Providence Bruins Fanfest & Preseason Game Vs Springfield Announced for September 28

It's almost hockey time.  It has been a long, hockeyless summer, but that changes in just a couple of weeks.  The Providence Bruins, who have the worst fan experience in the AHL's Eastern Conference, but is my new home team (sad trombone) are coasting into the preseason with a Fanfest & preseason game on September 28th.

Pack Rip: 2019-20 Upper Deck MVP

It's not uncommon in this scene for a post like this to start "So I was at Target today..." And that's where this post starts.

Went to the Target in Dedham, MA today with my partner.  We were there to pick up some stuff off our brother/sister-in-law's baby shower registry.  I shot over to where the cards are usually located (on the peg board wall at the end of check out) and I was actually confused.  There was nothing.  I saw an end cap with a gaunt selection of Magic, Pokemon and Yugioh.  And honestly, it may have only been Pokemon and Yugioh.  I did eventually find a small selection of Topps 2019 baseball (series 1 and 2), some repack boxes of football and basketball, and some blaster boxes of 2019-20 Upper Deck MVP hockey.

Mail Day: Providence Bruins Cards, Pocket Schedules & Pins

Won a couple eBay auctions on Sunday, in between doing laundry and watching the new Spiderman movie.  The first to arrive is this package, with a smattering of smalls from the Providence Bruins.  Going into my 3rd hockey season (which - as much as I do love baseball - I can't wait for), and I think I've officially transitioned from being a Philadelphia Phantoms (RIP) fan to a Providence Bruins fan.  It's easier to make the change, considering the Phantoms have moved twice since the last time I saw them as the "home team".

News: AHL App Finally Back Under Control, Sean Shapiro With More Details

The day-long drama revolving around an anonymous poster and the American Hockey League's HockeyTech-driven mobile app seems to have come to a calm and quiet conclusion.

The final flurry of rogue notifications came just after 10AM with the last push being a final request to Stewart Zimmel to "pay the outstanding monies owned".

While HockeyTech's social media was silent on the issue, the AHL released a very simple apology (via yet another push notification) that "We have worked with our app host to resolve today's issue of unathorized notifications coming from the AHL app.  We apologize for any inconvenience."

Then, what we all hope is the final push notification of the day came at about 4pm when the league released it's 2019/20 regular season schedule.

The news broke nationally and was picked up by major outlets including Deadspin and the New York Post, (and also Reddit, though that was probably just for the upvotes and front page status) leading to a major black eye for the AHL despite their position as proxy to the app's developer HockeyTech.

News: HockeyTech App Developer Takes to AHL App to Complain About Non-Payment & Threats of Assault

It seems that an unhappy coder has taken to using their access to the American Hockey League mobile app to lodge their complaints against HockeyTech.

Fan Pack #16: Straight from Smashville - Nashville Predators in 6 Days

Team: Nashville Predators
Sent: 6/20/19
Return: 6/26/19 (6 days) [TTM HOF Entry]
Items: bottle coozie, two large logo stickers, 1 large logo magnet, thank you note.
Address Source: email from SCF.
See all Fan Pack Returns Here.

Fan Packs #14 & 15: San Jose Sharks & Clearwater Threshers

Team: Clearwater Threshers
Sent: 6/15/19
Return: 6/21/19 (6 days) [TTM HOF Entry]
Items: Game day program, jar opener, drink coozie, phone wallet, 2 2019 pocket schedules
Address Source: email from SCF.
See all Fan Pack Returns Here


Team: San Jose Sharks
Sent: 6/15/19
Return: 6/21/19 (6 days) [TTM HOF Entry]
Items: Logo magnet, sticker & temporary tattoo, 2 oversized cards (Joe Pavelski and Joe Thorton).
Address Source: email from SCF.
See all Fan Pack Returns Here

Two returns today after an eight day drought.  These two both come back in under a week and are from a recent volley of fan pack requests sent out after listening to a recent episode of TTM Cast with @TrentFanPackTTM.

Fanpack #13: Hershey Bears

Team: Hershey Bears
Sent: 3/25/19
Return: 6/13/19 (80 days)
Items: Game day program (April 14th, 2019), 8x10 of Liam O'Brien and a 2016/17 schedule magnet
Address Source: email from SCF.

I'm not going to sugar coat it...I hate the Hershey Bears.  In youth, the Bears had been the AHL affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers.  Then in the early 90's the Flyers brought an AHL expansion team to Philly and immediately, we began to hate Hershey.  Some of the best rivalry games in the league happened between Hershey and Philly.  And it was a true treat to watch the Phantoms & Bears play the last regular season hockey game at The Spectrum.

Hockey Custom Cards: WHA TTM Set

Sources
Logos: SportsLogos.net
Photos: image.google.com
(note: I do not own any of these photos or logos. None of these images are for sale)

I'm obsessed with the history of the WHA.  I love rebel leagues, and this was the most successful of any in modern history.  So with Bruins/Blues game 6 on the TV, I started cooking something up. 

2019 Calder Cup Playoffs: Checkers vs Bruins

Fan Pack: Vancouver Canucks

Team: Vancouver Canucks
Sent: 3/26/19
Return: 4/17/19 (22 days)
Ratio: 0/4
Item: 3 oversized cards, 1 sticker
Address Source: email address via Sports Card Forum

I'm always appreciative when a team responds to an email and sends out a fan pack.  So when I say this isn't the coolest fan pack, it's still cooler than teams who don't send fan packs (or teams like the Blue Jays, who do "digital fan packs").

2019 Hockey Rinks in Review

With a new work schedule and a gender reveal party planned for this weekend, it looks like my 2018-19 hockey season may be over.  The hometown Providence Bruins are currently the 4 seed in the division, and need some help in the last two games to leapfrog the Hershey Bears for 3rd.  I'm praying to Don Cherry and Tiger Williams that we can get the 3 seed because of the division's top seeds, the PBruins match-up way better against #2 Bridgeport.  In fact, we've beat the brakes off the Sound Tigers a couple times, whereas it looks like the #1 seed Charlotte Checkers will go relatively unchallenged through to the Calder Cup.

That bracketology session aside, it was a great hockey season for my partner and I.  She has become a rabid hockey fan and this year marked our first two over-night hockey trips, which helped me add 2 of the 5 new rinks to my stadium collection list.

Game Day Report: Utica Comets vs Providence Bruins AHL Regular Season

American Hockey League Regular Season
Utica Comets vs Providence Bruins

Dunkin' Donuts Center

I can count the number of Baby Bruins games I've missed over the last two seasons on two hands (and probably still be able to hitchhike).  So I am intimately familiar with the Dunkin Donuts Center.  It is a great place to watch a hockey game.  Of the New England minor league/college rinks I've been to, it may be the best laid out, brightest and most technically proficient building in the region.  This season my partner and I have spent most of the year in section 101 anywhere between 2 and 5 rows off the ice behind the goal (Bruins attack once zone).  We're actually considering doing season tickets for next year because we'd like to slide down to glass row, or at least be able to get good seats without having to show up at doors open.

TTM Success: Mike Eruzione

Mike Eruzione
Team: US Olympic Hockey Team ('80)
Sent: 3/25/19
Return: 3/29/19 (4 days)
Ratio: 0/1
Items: 5x7 photo
Address Source: email address Sports Card Forum

When I started dabbing my toe in back into the TTM waters last month, I found myself browsing through the SCF database and finding that some people will send you an autograph if you ask.  It's a great way to get some confidence up in this TTM game, and an easy way to build a quick collection.  Mike Eruzione is the first hockey player I found that would do this.