practice today

I hauled my ass out to Raleigh this morning to watch the 'Canes informal "practice", and I'm glad I did. I've never been to a practice before, so it was kind of neat to see the skating drills.

Despite reports to the contrary, former Cane Bates Battaglia was not present.

There were only nine skaters there today:

Rod Brind'Amour
Kevyn Adams
Glen Wesley
Cory Stillman
Erik Cole
Jesse Boulerice
Chad LaRose
Danny Richmond
Aaron Ward

In the skating drills, Jesse looked like crap. He lagged behind in the "herbies", and was clumsy in the technical skating drills. During the four-on-four scrimmage, he fell down a bunch and lost his edge a bunch of other times. He's just not in playing shape right now.

I was most impressed with Cole. He looked good all day. Adams, too. And during the 4-on-4s, Stillman looked terrific, as did Wesley. I can see that Stillman is going to be a big part of our offensive production. His passes were always right on the tape. He made a lot of things happen in a little scrimmage.

Ward was barely noticeable.

The two noobies are smart to be there for these voluntary unofficial practices. I really liked what I saw from Danny Richmond, but I wasn't sold on LaRose.

I brought along my camera, but none of my shots were turning out good at all. About 80% of the pictures I took from the 2003-04 season are poor in quality. The one in the banner at the top of this page is one of maybe three dozen that don't suck. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to learn how to use my digital camera properly.

Afterwards, I stopped by the arena to go to The Eye. I wanted to maybe get a new t-shirt or something, but the new stuff won't be getting there until the first of September. I'll wait until I go to a pre-season game to buy a new sweater (probably Adams), but I might return next week to check out the new gear.