Eric Staal is having a tremendous start to the season. Four goals in three games, and looking very good. We kept saying in 2003-04 "If he just gains about 20 pounds, he'll be a real force to be reckoned with." He gained the 20 pounds, and is playing with such confidence. It's pretty amazing. Obviously, he won't keep up the pace that he's keeping right now, but it's nice to see some production right out of the gate.
Now we just need the rest of the team to start scoring. Josef? Kevyn? Erik? Rod? Justin? Cory?
As far as I know, we'll still be without the services of Ray Whitney, who continues to recover from some crazy rib/neck/groin injury. I think we've scratched Radim Vrbata in every game, but nothing on the injury report. I don't know what's up with that.
The Rookie Cam Ward is looking very good. His record thus far is 1-1, but he looked really sharp even in the loss to the Islanders the other day. So it appears that all the hype is not without reason. Gerber schmerber. I like the kid.
We REALLY need to get the power play going, and we need to start scoring more than two goals per game. That didn't cut it in the old NHL and it certainly won't cut it in the new NHL. It would seem that a game against the Caps would be the perfect opportunity to give our offense a jump-start, but we have a history of underachieving versus them.
I had the day off on Monday, so I took the opportunity to take advantage of a busy NHL schedule and the free preview of NHL Center Ice. I watched a lot of hockey that day. I'm awfully tempted to just throw down the $129 to subscribe to Center Ice. There are
I watched some of the OLN game that night, too. I have to say that I don't like their zoomed-in look. I understand that the reason for doing that is they didn't like that a traditional hockey tv angle includes the first nine or so rows of seats, and they wanted to avoid that. They said something like 32% of the screen was spectators, and by zooming in, they have 32% more ice. The math is wrong on that, and I don't have time to get into it, but all they're doing is actually showing less ice, much closer up. The result is that there's a lot of camera movement to follow the puck. It's a little dizzying to be frank. Nonetheless, they still treat hockey better than ESPN did, so there's that.
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I've been digging the Center Ice free preview, too. The Senators - Maple Leafs game the other night (6-5 in OT) was awesome hockey, with lots of fast action straight up and down the ice. What a great game to watch. The Sens are off to a really hot start, too.
I agree with you on the OLN camera angle thing, too (which I've also seen mentioned on at least two other blog sites). I've noticed as well that sometimes the picture looks foggy and the sound is murky (though that happens with Center Ice, too-- must be a local thing).
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