Too bad it’s the Maple Leafs instead of our beloved Canucks, but check out the new Mike Myers film called The Love Guru, featuring hockey:

Worth seeing?

How much does your season cost your team? $1,500?, $2,500? $5,000? or even $6,000 for one season of hockey?

How about putting a small percentage of that towards 40 seasons of play for the kids?

Kilmer Elementary school in PortCoquitlam is in dire need of a new playground for their present and future students attending from Kindergarten through Grade 5. Their current playground is 40 years old and literally falling apart. Wooden structures are rotting. Old unsafe tires are half buried in gravel. Plastic slides are missing. It is estimated that within a couple of years this playground could be closed permanently if the degredation continues.

The local community is trying hard to raise the funds, but a new playground is terribly expensive: $80,000! They have raised almost $10,000 but need a lot more.

Please help by clicking here to donate online to the Kilmer Playground Fund:

The following people have contributed to our Playground fund:

Dr. B. Meetarbhan (Port Coquitlam Medical Clinic)
The McNicol family
Ranger Security Locksmiths
The Forsyth Family
The Campbell Family
The Wray Family
Bel-Air Taxi Ltd
Best Western PoCo Inn & Suites
The Sawchuck Family
G & F Financial Group
Cairns Electric
Dura Seal Ltd.
Euro-Rite Cabinets
The Hassanali Family
Ledcor Projects Inc.
VanCity
and many other Kilmer families…. for a total to date: $9055.00

You can help.

Kilmer Kids Play Safe

This one has to be seen to be believed. Amazingly, Rob Davison of the New York Islanders fires a clearing shot out of his zone at the goal line during a penalty kill, and it’s a flutterball. As it goes end over end down the ice, it manages to take a weird bounce and goes up and over Toskala’s left pad. Amazing, and embarrassing for the poor goaltender.

This has got to be the most pathetic hockey fight I’ve ever seen.

Hat tip to Tim.

Many adult recreational teams have their own websites. They serve the purpose of reminding players of the next game, reminders for beer fines, provide a common place for useless idle locker room chatter, and many of the sites post their own “Photoshopped” virtual trading cards as well, just for fun. But this site takes one level further. If you’re going to post hockey trading cards they may as well have pictures of hot hockey ladies. Take this one for example. This is a common occurrence on the CuppaJoeGrinders Site where they take an online photo of a hockey babe and edit the jersey to don their own logo.

These guys have scoured the net and have the largest collection I have ever seen. Sorry, I was asked NOT to give the link (Yeah I don’t get it either) , but obtained permission to post a picture of their Photoshop masterpieces every once in a while

Brian Campbell of the San Jose Sharks pulled a spin-o-rama on the defenseman in the high slot, then took a beautiful backhand shot. Check it out:

(Via james mirtle.)

Have you seen this video of Ryan Smyth of the Colorado Avalanche being run into a Stanchion?

Would this happen in the beer leagues? Possibly, but most likely not. In my league, at least, it’s an instant penalty if you step onto the ice without your helmet done up, and done up snugly.

If the NHL is going to so far as to mandate helmets (which they’ve been doing for years now), and even mandate that referees wear them, why not go the extra mile and ensure that they are used in a safe and responsible way?

Maybe I’m the wrong person to talk to about this, but I also think that shields and/or cages should be mandatory. But that’s another post.

[via Tom Benjamin]

The other night a hockey fan named Darwin Head got the chance of a lifetime: to shoot for one million dollars.

Standing at center ice at General Motors Place in Vancouver, Darwin needs to shoot 20 pucks in 24 seconds, and score at least 15 of them.

Check out how he did:

[Via James Mirtle]

Jarkko Ruutu spent a number of years as a Vancouver Canucks, and though he’s the type of player you love to hate when he plays for the other team, he was a blast to watch in a Canucks uniform.

Not known as a scoring player so much as a shit-disturber, Jarkko has somehow managed to pull off a few highlight-reel shootout goals in his time. The most recent was from the other night against the Ottawa Senators. Watch how slowly he comes into the zone (usually the worst thing you can do), then how he stretches out with one hand to direct the puck in:

Now, if you’re a Canucks fan like me, you might remember Ruutu’s “leg kick” move back when the shootout was first put into place:

Gotta love players like Ruutu.

What makes one persons slapshot better than another? Well, if we take” aim” out of the equation then it comes down to two things; stick-on-puck time and recoil time. increase the two of those and you end up with greater velocity on your shot. So says the results of a study examining the “recoil” effect of the ice hockey stick shaft during a stationary slap shot.

A Villasenor, RA Turcotte, and DJ Pearsall, from the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at McGill University tested nine male adult subjects (four elite and five recreational) . Their performances were evaluated by simultaneously recording stick movement and internal bending from high-speed digital video (1,000 Hz) and puck acceleration from a triaxial accelerometer positioned inside the puck.I n addition, an electrical circuit measured blade-puck contact time.

For the record, the elite players shot the puck at about 12okm/h. The beer-leaguers, about 80 km/h.

Analyzing the data reported on several dependent variables, including final puck velocity, puck acceleration, maximum stick shaft bending (angle and distance deflection), stick shaft angular velocities, blade-puck contact time, and corresponding time events.

The results indicate the following.

Interestingly enough puck acceleration was virtually the same between the two groups. So how did the elite players manage to shoot the puck harder? Well they would have had to accelerate for longer: about 11 milliseconds longer.

Blade-puck contact time was greater for the elite players than for recreational players (38 +/- 9 ms and 27 +/- 5 ms)

How did they do this? They bent their sticks more. The greater the bend means the recoil is greater and therefore spends more time accelerating the puck. 59.8% of blade-puck contact for the elite players was spent recoiling.