Today Is The Greatest Day I Have Ever Known

BOOYAH, FRIENDS, IT'S MY LAST DAY AT THIS CRAPPY JOB!!!!!!! Um, so I might be slightly enthusiastic today... Just a warning. ;)

Hahaha, my inbox BLEW UP with tips about these photos posted on PittsburghLive by FSN Pittsburgh correspondent Dan Potash. (I wish I could list you all, but I hope you'll forgive me for just throwing out a blanket Thanks for the link! to all of you instead.) Here are five of my favorites. The best about them is that Potash uploaded the original images, so click these babies for HUGE wallpaper quality shots - because really, who among you doesn't want this next shot on your desktop?

Sleepy Siddo and Flower - those masks are dead sexy! :P

The Boys practice in Sweden.

The Saint takes a tour of the Vasa Museum.

Another shot of the Boys touring the Vasa Museum

Sid, Mad Max, and Pascal Dupuis enjoy a candlelit dinner. (WOW - I barely recognized the now relatively hairless Mad Max!)

Good Friends of The Show Lauren H. and Stagerat (who now is affiliated with my good friend, Loser Chris, as a contributor to The Flower Shop) sent in the link to an article detailing how much Siddo is enjoying anonymity in Sweden.

Friend Maria T. sent in this piece about training camp continuing in Sweden:

Because of the extent of this undertaking -- the NHL Premiere also includes weekend games between Tampa Bay and the New York Rangers in Prague, Czech Republic -- the NHL and sponsors are helping to defray some of the player expenses and assisting with things such as arranging transportation.

Some of the Penguins' European players have requested tickets because people from home can get to Sweden more easily than they can get to Pittsburgh.

Russian defenseman Sergei Gonchar had asked for about 50 tickets here and in Helsinki, mostly for friends making the relatively short trip from St. Petersburg, where Gonchar and center Evgeni Malkin work out in the summer. Gonchar had to give those seats back after a dislocated left shoulder forced him to miss the trip.

Malkin still has a group coming, including his girlfriend, Oksana, a friend who doubles as his Russian agent and workout pals from St. Petersburg. [snoop: Aww!!! :)]

WAIT A MINUTE - I have to read that again: "Because of the extent of this undertaking ... the NHL and sponsors are helping to defray some of the player expenses." SERIOUSLY?! I'm no accountant, but I'm pretty sure even the rookies are making more than enough cash to foot the bill. I wouldn't care except that the NHL will likely pass along the costs to us in the form of even higher ticket prices.

Friend of The Show RACHEL S. FOR THE WIN!!!!!!! We get to head back to Pittsburgh for our latest installment of our Roaming Penguins saga, where Rachel captured the first picture of Sidney Penguin in the stands watching Sidney Crosby on the ice:

YES!!!!!

(Here's a zoomed view of S.C.)

Here are Rachel's own words to tell us about their day together:

Roaming Sidney and the family traveled to Pittsburgh for my brother’s wedding. Friday morning, Sept 19, we took the kids and Sid to the open practice. It was really cool – people were walking up in jerseys, which was fun to see.


Heading in to the arena, which will always be the Civic Arena to me, none other than Ray Shero drove in front of us into the lot. The practice itself was really quiet and it was strange to be in the semi-empty, quiet arena.

Sidney P. watches the Zamboni drive by.

My son, Henry, who is 4 ½ was so excited and shouted “my first hockey game!!” I told him, “you have no idea, honey.” It was also funny to see people eating hot sausage sandwiches and nachos at 9:30 in the morning.

What an awesome day!

I highly recommend getting in to see a practice for anyone who can, because it was really cool. So, I got a few good shots of Sidney inside and one at the new arena construction site.

This is also S.P.'s first trip to the new arena site! :)

(I also got some good Pens gear at the shop in the arena!)

Thanks, Rachel!

All that's left today is TSCS's Quote of The Day:

"This letter is a declaration of my resignation, as I have accepted a position as an IT Team Member at another company. I am looking forward to my new position and the challenges that await me. My last day of work will be September 30, 2008."

~ snoopyjode, in a resignation letter which was signed, sealed, and delivered two weeks ago today. :D

Endless thanks to everyone (including Lauren, Stagerat, Maria, and Rachel) for helping with today's post! :)

Training Camp Is Now Underway

And you know what that means... LESS THAN ONE MONTH UNTIL THE PUCK OFFICIALLY DROPS!!! It's ironic that this has been the shortest off-season for the Pens in over a decade because it certainly has felt like the longest summer break we've ever had! I don't know if it's because I'm so pumped for the season to start again because I run this blog now which it makes it that much more fun, or if it's because I want this season to be a sequel called Stanley Cup 2009: The Penguins' Revenge. :P It's most likely an even mix of both reasons. :)

FINALLY! Do it.

First things first: Friend of The Show Jan M. found this Q & A with Ray Shero. The most surprising thing in the article to me was how nonchalant Shero seemed about the idea of losing Jordan Staal to another team! Perhaps he was just playing it cool in front of the media... LATE EDIT: Please disregard the last part of this paragraph. I totally misread Shero's response to a question about resigning Jordan Staal. (See the comments section for all the details.)


So now that training camp has started, I think it's a good time to get you excited for the season opener against the Senators in Sweden. Good Friend of The Show Dave H. sent in some crazy facts about the Stockholm Globe Arena in which the games will take place (from Deputy-Dog.com):

To be found in Stockholm, Sweden, this enormous building holds 2 records, one far more interesting than the other - to me at least.


The less interesting but still impressive record? It’s the largest hemispherical building in the world with a diameter of 361ft and volume of 21′188′800 cubic ft.

The Globe is shown lit up for a hockey game in February 2007. That is truly stunning. (Click to enlarge, image from Wikipedia)

The best of its records? The building represents the sun in what is the world’s largest scale model of the solar system (1:20,000,000). That’s to say, all other planets of the solar system are represented by other precisely sized and distanced objects throughout Sweden. As an example of the distances between these models, the dwarf planet of Pluto can be found 300km from the Stockholm Globe Arena and has a diameter of 12cm.

Clockwise from top left (click for sources): Venus, Jupiter, Earth, and Mercury (Click to enlarge)

This is a map of Sweden with the Globe as the sun and all the "planets" plotted out. (Click to enlarge)

Here's another interior view of the Globe. (Click to enlarge, image from Wikipedia)

Prior to Dave's email, I didn't realize the arena represented the sun in a scale model of the solar system. That is absolutely amazing!

Yesterday when I got home from work, I had two special visitors waiting for me at my house in Tyrone, PA:

Haha, we've finally reached our limit! Google Maps won't let me plot out Sidney Penguin's travels from Nashville to all the towns he has already visited to my town. I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle that in the future, so for now I'm just going to show you his journey from Colorado Springs to Tyrone.

It marks the first appearance for one very special Roaming Penguin:

Sidney Penguin and Mario Penguin (← finally!) found their way to my town!!!

My visitors wanted to meet my dogs. My Golden Retriever, Baylee, is a good boy and obeys my every command, so I trusted him enough to let them get close to him:

Aren't the three of them adorable together? My Greyhounds (Link, Connor, and Logan) really are good boys, too, but for the first 4+ years of their lives, they chased a mechanical lure around a track, and as a result they're conditioned to catch (and potentially destroy) small things so I didn't want to take any chances...

I'm planning to take S.P. and M.P. on a tour of State College some time soon... I've got more Roaming Penguins pictures from several Friends of The Show to share with you later this week. :)

But for now, it's time for TSCS's Quote of The Day:

"Probably the biggest thing that surprises people is that I am obsessed with hockey. I grew up in the Boston area so I am obsessed with hockey since I was a little kid."

~ musician and horror film director Rob Zombie

Well, it certainly surprised me enough to include it as the Quote of The Day! A hundred thousand thank yous are due to Dave for all the awesome information about the Globe Arena and to Jan for sending in the Shero interview link. :)

Six Days Until Training Camp Begins

Training camp starts in less than a week!!! You can get all the details as well as the practice and preseason game schedules here. (Tip of the hat to Friend of The Show Jan M. for sending the link to me, which made me realize that I had forgotten to include it in today's post even though I used it for the title. I think I'm losing my mind, LOL!)

I am so excited! I got an email from a new Friend of The Show yesterday, Björn A., who just happens to live in Sweden:

I'm just sending a little hello from Herrljunga, Sweden! Got my ticket for the game on October 5^th, so psyched about finally getting to see the Penguins live, got up in the middle of the night to see them for over 40 regular season games + all of the playoff games last season.

Included in the email was a photo:


Now you KNOW I just had to ask Björn this question:

Congrats on getting a ticket for the October 5^th game! That will be an AMAZING game!! I would absolutely LOVE to be there... Do you think I could impose and request a few photos of the game? Getting some photos from the inside from someone who is actually going to be there would be fantastic!

To which Björn replied:

I will send in some pictures from the game, sure, actually I was already planning on sending in some photos :P

I think I speak for everyone when I say I can't wait to get them and have a WONDERFUL time at the game, Björn!!!

So I saw this on CNN yesterday and I thought it was a typo: Slovakia's women's ice hockey pummels Bulgaria 82-0. Turns out, it was correct. YIKES! That's an average of 1.367 goals per minute! That's quite a beating - more like something I'd expect if the Pens played a high school team! :P

From the "Who the hell would watch this?" department: poor Friend of The Show Stephanie S., who now has to endure having IFHSA™ on her beloved Stars team, found this piece on Boxoffice.com that New Line Cinema - yes, this is the same company that brought us the unmatched awesomeness of The Lord of The Rings trilogy - is planning to make a movie about the life and times of Sean Avery, Vogue intern. I have but one thing to say about that. W-T-F?!?! It gets even worse - it's going to be a romantic comedy. Unreal.

It makes me wanna gag, too, Sean.

Kim S. can be added to the list of Friends of The Show who have "Pensified" [← *nods at Jaime for coming up with that word*] their dormrooms:


A Friend of The Show was bored on the commute home from work and discovered that an anagram of SIDNEY PATRICK CROSBY is "SCORED BY A TRICKY SPIN." It's fitting, don't you think? :) If you come up with any other good ones, let me know.

After taking a short break, Sidney Penguin is on the move again. He left Welland and made his way south to Austin, Texas...


...where good Friend of The Show AustinLovesCrosby him to her favorite restaurant, Home Slice Pizza in downtown Austin:


Her own caption explains the second photo:

"I took my Sidney Penguin to the big D for some field hockey; at 105 ̊ we were the Girls of Summer!!!"

It's time again for TSCS's Quote of The Day. Today's quote is a reminder why IFHSA™ is a more than appropriate acronym for him:

"I think it was typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not back anything up."

~ Sean Avery commenting on an incident in 2005 in which forward Jeremy Roenick suffered one of his many concussions after he took a hard, clean hit from defenseman Denis Gauthier in a preseason game

What a tool.

Thank yous go out to Jan, Björn, Stephanie, Kim, the anagram Friend, and AustinLovesCrosby for their contributions to today's post. :)