Tag: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins

Who Cares if Your Team’s Colors Aren’t Green?

17 March, 2010 / Kat

St. Patrick’s Day has become big business in the sports fan wear industry. It has become commonplace for teams across sports to eschew their traditional colors for the day and promote green and white fan wear and jerseys. All levels of professional hockey have been the biggest to jump on the trend, with special fanwear for sale and given away at games, and special jerseys worn for games played around March 17th. The following are three shirts that caught my eye for various reasons.

NHL: St. Louis Blues

Last night, the St. Louis Blues mixed their St. Patrick’s Day commemoration with environmental awareness, and gave away a “Green Game” t-shirt to all fans in attendance (quite a risky claim to advertise – from personal experience, you should always give an exact number of giveaways, a la “first 5,000 fans”). The shirt giveaway was sponsored by Monsanto, a Cambridge, MA based agricultural innovation company with an emphasis on sustainable practices. This was the second year for the Blues promotion.

Shirt Grade: B I like the muted, antiquey kelly green shirt and faded style of the print. It also helps that the Blues’ team colors happen not to horribly clash with green. Kudos for using that to their advantage and not changing the logo’s colors for the holiday’s sake. Environmental awareness initiatives during games are the new “it” thing to do in sports marketing – trust me, I participate in one – but the giveaway needs to be backed up with sustained, but subtle, green initiatives, otherwise it is just a t-shirt giveaway.

AHL: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins

The Baby Pens (speaking of, we are long overdue for an edition of The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch, but that’ll be another post) are selling two St. Patrick’s Day long sleeve shirts in their online store. The 2009 edition ($20) features their mascot, Tux, skating with a four leaf clover in the background on the front. The back reads “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” The 2010 version ($22) features the logo in what appears to be a very dark green (nearly black), with a four leaf clover on the sleeve. Long sleeve shirts are always key in that part of Pennsylvania, where the damp gray chilly days seem to out number any other weather.

Grade: C The effort is there, but the execution is not. The 2009 version is too campy, and the 2010 version shows promise, but the green seems too dark. Kudos, however, for the 2010 edition’s four leaf clover on the sleeve.

ECHL: Gwinnett Gladiators

The ECHL Gwinnett Gladiators teamed with Old Time Hockey, the same Salisbury, MA based company who partnered to create some of the NHL’s 2010 St. Patrick’s Day gear, to create a green t-shirt to sell this March. The shirt ($20 with free shipping through today) features a rather disturbed and surly looking leprechaun brandishing a hockey stick, with a small Gladiators logo by his right foot. The all-caps font is rather 1950s style, and arches above Surly Leprechaun’s head.

Grade: A This is the first ever St. Patrick’s Day shirt I would ever consider purchasing, and not just because I’m in the market for a shirt from the team where two of my most favorite former BU hockey alums play. What sold me was the 1950s fonts – I’m a sucker for fonts. Plus, I feel like Surly Leprechaun is going to hurt me with that hockey stick if I don’t like the shirt.

ACR5GWEKYTEQ

The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch: Keep On Trucking

1 February, 2009 / Kat

It’s been a while since …On Being a Sports Girl checked in on the play of Everyone’s Favorite Goalie. No, John Curry hasn’t been called up to Pittsburgh again, but he has spent the last two weeks playing out of his mind in the AHL.

Take Friday night againist the Hershey Bears, for example. Curry stopped four shots in the shootout to lead the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins to a 4-3 win. He made 46 saves that evening.

On Saturday night, Curry stopped 21 shots as the Penguins rolled over the Syracuse Crunch 4-1. Curry faced former Terrier teammate Brian McGuirk, who plays for the Crunch.

Trusty Baby Pens beat writer Jonathan Bombulie had this fun Curry fact on his blog after Saturday’s game:

Since being touched up for five goals in a 6-4 loss at Binghamton on Jan. 16, John Curry is 5-0 with a 1.55 GAA and .953 save percentage.

The Penguins organization has made a gesture of faith in Curry with their recent trade of Dany “Now We Don’t Have To Worry About Pronouncing His Last Name” Sabourin for former Edmonton Oiler goaltender Mathieu Garon. According to many a Penguins blogger, Garon will be a free agent after this year, leaving the Penguins with the option to bring Curry up to be Marc-Andre Fleury’s backup for good. We’ll see…

The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch – Recalled to Pittsburgh

18 November, 2008 / Kat

In this edition of “The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” watch (insert overly dramatic TV news graphic here), news out of Wilkes-Barre this morning is that John Curry is on his way to Pittsburgh, where he will back up Dany “Still Can’t Find Anyone Who Can Pronounce His Last Name” Sabourin.

This is the first regular season call-up for Everyone’s Favorite Goalie. He spent the pre-season with Pittsburgh, and technically was on the roster when they played their first two regular season games in Europe, but did not dress.

The Penguins take on the Minnesota Wild tonight at 7pm on Versus. No word yet as to when the Curry 36 Pittsburgh Penguins jerseys become available on NHL.com (just kidding.)

You Take The Good, You Take The Bad…The Facts of Hockey

18 November, 2008 / Kat

Monday morning, I was mentally planning a blog entry about how Everyone’s Favorite Goalie’s status in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton was quickly becoming that of a backup to the suddenly amazing journeyman goalie Adam Berkhoel. After Berkhoel recorded his third shutout of the season against Binghamton on Saturday, Curry let up four goals to the Syracuse Crunch on Sunday for the loss. Eeek. There are ups and downs to every athlete’s career, and this looked like Everyone’s Favorite Goalie was going through a rough patch.

Dan Bylsma, coach of the Baby Pens, said to my all-time favorite AHL blogger, Jonathan Bombulie, that he doesn’t believe in coaching emotionally and seems to believe in his ongoing goalie rotation:

“I don’t think coaching emotionally is a great way to coach. We had a plan going into the weekend and stuck with the plan. John played well in his game on Friday night, didn’t play poorly. Adam Berkhoel played well in his game on Saturday. It wasn’t a question of going with one guy who was hot and one guy who was not. Both were playing well.”

Still, a true Boston or Buffalo sports fan (of which I am both) always exists in an Eeyore like state of constant pessimism, and as such, I took the performance of Berkhoel to mean that Everyone’s Favorite Goalie may be spending more time on the bench in the near future.

But wait. Will that bench be that of the Big Pens?

Word out of the Steel City today was that Penguins franchise goalie Marc-Andre Fleury – one of the best Quebecois names ever, in my opinion – is out of Tuesday’s game due to an undisclosed lower body injury. Dany “I don’t know anyone who can really pronounce his last name” Sabourin will get the start.

If the Pens decide to call up a goalie, they would call one of the two goalies in the Penguins organization with two way deals, which my Twitter buddy QuickFacts was quick to remind me of. And those two would be Everyone’s Favorite Goalie and David Brown, who is currently playing with Wheeling of the ECHL.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Pens believe Fleury’s injury is bad enough that he can’t dress, and they decide to call someone up, or if he dresses and just doesn’t start. The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie call-up watch is on (I feel like I should make a graphic, like when the local news make the “Economy in Crisis” or “Storm Watch 11” graphics)….

I Drool Over the Olympics Like Homer Simpson Drools Over Donuts

18 August, 2008 / Kat

The Olympics are, hands down, my favorite sporting event. It started when I was two, and my mother, an Olympics junkie if you’ve ever seen one, pretty much forced me to watch the 1984 Summer and Winter Olympics instead of doing normal two-year-old things. This caused me to mimic Mary Lou Retton by diving head first off my couch when my parents weren’t looking, which then resulted in my first of two childhood concussions when I went flying into the window. (The other came while roller skating when I was four, back before helmets were all the rage.) Since then, I drool over the Olympics like Homer Simpson drools over donuts.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to follow the Bejing Games as much as I would like. I have been traveling for work, and haven’t been able to catch the games. I have been trying to stay up for the late night replays, but have been passing out whenever I see a bed. I have missed so much of the gymnastics, and I feel out of the loop. However, here are the observations regarding the little bit I have seen: