I was reading something the other day about sports fans and when they like to boo. The article was talking about booing at a high school sporting event, and that got me thinking. When is it OK to boo? Does it matter what age the players, whether it's amateur or professional? Does it depend on the ticket prices?
Rockford Register Star writer Mike DeDonker wrote an good story about the IceHogs' penalty box attendents that you can read here .
It also reminded me of one I ran a few years ago about odd things that have happened in the penalty box.
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000
formerly known as the Komets Booster Club, I present to you (or rather Nanci and Laurie do) Kometskrowd
Let's give them a hand!
Also, the Komets have waived David Besner.
A couple of things I've been thinking about for a long time are discussed here.
So what do you think?
Komets coach Pat Bingham said this afternoon he's not sure if and when the defenseman from Hershey will arrive. In fact, he's moving ahead and planning as if the player is not going to arrive.
"We're working with what we've got to get them as ready as possible for Saturday's game,'' Bingham said. "We can't worry about who is not here, and you can't rely on one player too much, anyway. We'll try to help everyone we have get better and go from there.''
This is from Komets PR Director Chuck Bailey's secret archives. He said it's a photo from the Komets' first season and shows George Drysdale ("that old guy'' according to Hit Somebody, who should feel shame).
Notice the logo.
Other than a few bumps and bruises, coach Pat Bingham reported Sunday that everybody came through the weekend healthy. Now the Komets have five days to practice before Saturday's home opener against Quad City.
“We'll have this week to use some video and show them some clips
of good and bad,'' Bingham said. “We'll do a lot of teaching, and hopefully
we'll be making fewer errors, have more intensity and be ready to go right from
the beginning.''
Our internet folks, Keith Hitchens and Melody Schmidt-Foreman, are trying to do some things with our Komets' web site, including player biographies. Here's the link:
That we couldn't squeeze into the paper.
* The Komets are now 8-4-1 in their last 13 Friday the 13th games. How spooky is that? They are 16-14-2 overall. Yes, I need to get a life.
* To get to the 19-man roster limit, the Komets put Kelly Miller on the 7-day IR, David Besner on the 10-day IR and Jonas Gabrielsen on team suspension. Martin Gascon was a healthy scratch.
* Daniel Goneau scored the first goal of the game despite missing two days because of the flu. He looked very weak in warmups, too.
Happy locker room. Everybody was amazed by what Frenchy did. He totally controlled the game. Komets showed good team toughness by not reacting to Watson's cheap shot. It gave them some much-needed time off the penalty kill. Rockford had 53 shots, plus I'll bet the Komets blocked seven or eight before they got to him. They were mostly from long range, but Frenchy did make some excellent close-in saves as well. It was one of those games where I could tell about five minutes into the second period that there was no way Rockford was going to beat St. Pierre tonight. He was dominating.
It is incredibly windy here and I haven't even started talking to anyone.
For those of you who didn't buy the paper, you can see our preview stuff here:
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/sports/hockey/uhl/
Guy Dupuis and the assistants are J.C. Ruid and Mario Larocque. They were selected by the coaching staff. Interesting piece of trivia: Guy will be the first and only player to be the Komets' captain in both the IHL and the UHL. No other IHL Komets' captain is still active as a player.
1. There's a bunch of stuff coming over the next three days in the paper that I hope you'll like. At least I had fun writing it (and truthfully, isn't that the only thing that really matters? LOL).
UHL CEO/President Richard Brosal just finished an hour-long teleconference with the meeting that was very informative. Among the highlights:
The Komets released defenseman Adam Blanchette this morning. That gets the roster to 22.
Don't forget we'll have Larry here starting at 7 p.m. to answer your questions.
This comes to us from long-time Komets fan Bill Hudson who has gone all-Chris Berman on this year's roster. Some of these are quite inspired.
Those released today were Charle Levin, J.S. Richard, Chris Cote, Daniel Ljung, Martin Aubin, Drew O'Connell and Carl Michaelson. This brings the roster down to 23.
``Practice was OK that way today,'' Komets coach Pat Bingham said. ``It's definitely a manageable
number. If we have to make moves beyond that only time will tell. Our aim and our goal is to get the guys we have as ready as we
possibly can for Friday night in Rockford.''
Just talked Pat Bingham (who is celebrating his 38th birthday by the way), and he said they'll probably get to 22 or 23 players tomorrow, and then they'll see what happens.
``The decisions aren't obvious,'' he said. "From there they really get hairy.''
He, too, said between six and eight rookies will survive the first cut. He's not sure when the next cuts will be made, and could even come after the first weekend of play. Each team can have a 19-man active roster, but you can also put up to four players on injured reserve and another on team suspension.
