I stopped in our home office this morning and started to answer some of the hand written letters that our fans sent to us, and I started to think wow, we probably have more fans that don’t have computers than any other blog on the internet. I sorted the questions by topic and decided that this morning I would answer all of the pucking questions sent to us.
8isenough – Scratched out this note from his rusty AMC Pacer at a Walmart in Landover with a brown crayon on a Big Mac wrapper: Dear Soutshide, I noticed last game that Varlamov had a red rash on the back of his neck. Do you think he’ll be ok for the playoffs? Well 8, If you remember last year’s playoff game 7 vs the Penguins, Your boy Varmie sustained 3rd degree burns on the back of his neck from the radiation coming off of the goal light! The Pens were scoring like a rich kid on prom night in a 6-2 pounding of your Crapitols! Even though the regular season was a different story, I’m guessing that scar will still burn should the Craps face a healthy Pens team in the playoffs!
99isGR8 sent: Southside, What is your favorite goal scored by 99?: This one is easy! The one Lemieux scored standing on his head!
Pensin10 – Wrote: Hey Shultzie, why have you been so tough on ‘Tanger this season? Well Pensi, as I mentioned before 58 has more trouble hitting the net than a guy shooting pucks with a mop. I’ve seen him wind up for a slapshot and the ushers in C3 duck for cover. All kidding aside he has a 1.7 shooting percentage. To put things into perspective, Sarge has a SPCT of 8.4 and half of those broke the sound barrier. I’m not saying ‘Tanger should have the shooting percentage of say Jack Ruby but a guy that gets ample time on the point during the PP should be able to hit a bull in the ass with a banjo once in a while!
huckpuffer mailed: Hey SSS: What is the size of a hockey puck? If you ask any goalie they will say “too small!” In reality pucks are 1″ thick and 3″ in diameter and weigh 5.5-6oz.. The NHL made these pucks standard in the 1990-1991 season although this is pretty much the same puck that Art Ross helped develop in the 1940’s. The pucks are kept in a cooler during the game to keep them from bouncing. Game pucks are manufactured differently than souvenir and practice pucks. These cheaper to make pucks are actually cut down from a long rubber tube while the game pucks a molded in a more expensive but more uniform process. The term “puck” has loosely been attributed to the name of Shakespearean character “Puck” . Some people believe that it came from a gaelic work for “shove” or “push” since hockey was played in Great Britain many years before our friends in Canada adopted it, I’ll side with them on this one!
Other strange pucks of note: The now defunct WHA boasted of a blue puck being easier to see for the fans (they later resorted to black pucks). The Ill fated, and expensive at $400 a piece Fox “glow puck” was made by cutting regular pucks in half, inserting electronic components and batteries, then gluing the halves back together. After all was said and done the pucks had an ice life of about 10 minutes before the batteries ran out. If you were a lucky fan who got one as a souvenir, ushers would retrieve the $400 puck and give you a souvenir puck.
See you during the playoffs! (probably not you though Thrashers!) And now I leave you with…..skating monkeys!
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