College? Major Junior? Or A Life?

For junior-age kids, choosing a route to pursue hockey can be tough.  College or Major Junior?  Heavy stuff, man. 

That choice looms for the young bucks of puck every off-season.  That whole “predicting your growth spurts, size, intelligence, time needed to develop, importance of education and exposure to scouts” thing is tough to wrap your 16 year old face around.

But isn’t it time we look at the third one?  I call it the “holy-crap-warm-American-Universities-are-sick, why-are-you-still-playing-hockey-at-all” choice.

My college teammate Charlie Kronschnabel and I were road roommates.  Many a night after a 20 hour travel day to somewhere miserable (read: North Dakota, Michigan, or worse, Fairbanks, Alaska) we’d sit in our room and daydream about a normal college life.  We’d joke about quitting WCHA hockey and going to play club hockey for Arizona State University.

We figured we’d easily be the best players in the league (so partying the night before games would be no problem), and it would be hotter than Marisa Miller so we could chuck around a frisbee in shorts and hit on girls.  But nooo, college hockey is sooooooo cool, heaven forbid we make that choice… idiots.

Lets say you love hockey enough to be a college walk-on (no scholarship, but play on the college team).  Theres about a six percent chance you made the right choice, and Charlie is almost in that six.  He walked on, earned a scholarship after his freshman year, became someone the Anaheim Ducks loved, and is taking his shot at “making it”.  But that’s the good side of the story.

The "fear the fork" hand sign is perilously close to a shocker.

For most people, the best advice is take the mone you’re spending, and go to school somewhere vacationy.

If you’re a college walk-on, the only person getting less powerplay time than you is the janitor, and one turnover by you and he’s in.  That’s not a dig.  I’m saying regardless of who’s the best player, scholarship guys get the first chances.  Less opportunity equals less success, equals less playing time, equals the chance to pay for the right to not have as much college-style fun as you would somewhere warm.  Good luck digging up a career from the bench (I know, it does happen occasionally).

In talking to guys at our school, they thought we got all the girls.  All we saw was that the “normal” students went out whenever they wanted, partied on Friday nights, and had two day weekends (as opposed to one or zero).  I missed more parties in college than you went to.  Oh, and from 18 years old until this upcoming year, I HAVEN’T BEEN TO A NEW YEARS EVE PARTY (that didn’t come with a 12:30 team-imposed curfew, anyway).  Pretty solid nine-year run.

I have zero regrets about my own career choices, I’m just saying, with the experience I have at this point, I’m passing along an idea.

What about that third option?  Be in the student section in Madison, Wisconsin.  Be at the ASU tailgate parties.  Would that be more fun than being on the team?  I don’t know, but my guess is that it isn’t far behind.

And so, Saturday, I had my very first big college football game tailgate-athon.  And as I suspected… it was a pretty. good. time.  ASU 9 USC 14 — that’s my ranty advice to the mid-level-talented up-and-comers.  See ya tomorrow!

Lesser in size, larger in “sweet”.

Behind us, USC fans aka gang members were cooking some form of flatish meat. Me: “What’re you cookin’ there?”  Cook: “Flat meat”  Me: “Makes sense.”

“Come back later for the picture, it’ll look better!”  Really?  Better than “GDEV?”  I’m skeptical it could.

Obviously I don’t run the camera, or it’d have been a football – not marching band – pic, but that’s how close we sat.  Thanks Unc.

*****

Beer recommendation for November:  From Four Peaks Brewery: 8th Street Ale.  Located in Tempe, AZ, the beer is copper in colour, smooth and delicious.  Getcha some.

*****

Get a mba degree online  to further your career after college.

Absolutely Zero Common Thread

By the way, congrats to the World Series Champion New York Yankees.

*****

Anze Kopitar is killin’ it so far this year, isn’t he?  The unfortunate news for the Kings is that he can’t keep it up, strictly based on the fact that he’s on my fantasy hockey team, and that’s his jinx.  I’m sure he’ll suffer some rare injury that requires the entire removal of his frontal lobe, or he’ll contract some other selfish condition that’ll really damage my fantasy stats.

*****

Best picture ever:

What of it?

*****

I like that the Minnesota Wild logo is shaped like some sort of a cat, because it reminds me I’m not the only person who occasionally makes really bad decisions.

*****

I’ve realized that when I’m older, I’m going to have old-guy-eyebrows that young folk will describe as “unruly”.

*****

Kevin Weeks on NHL on the Fly is indescribable.  Not because he’s so good, or because he’s so bad, but because I literally can’t figure out how to describe him.  I think I like him, but he’s clearly as camera-comfortable as the Bruins offense is dangerous. (Oh, and shout-out to my boy Carey Price, the best fantasy goalie in the league… when playing the B’s).

*****

Big weekend for the kid.  I’m going to Ralphie May tonight:

Here would be a clip if Ralphie could put together one full minute of clean(ish) comedy for me to run.

Then ASU/USC tomorrow:

Might be fun.  I dunno.  We’ll see.

*****

Though I agree with New York Times hockey blogger Stu Hackel 98% of the time (some of the most comprehensive NHL coverage around, with a nice dash of opinion) we disagree on one thing -- he thought that the suspension (the rest of the season) was too long for the hit shown below.  A fair argument, but I liked the decision.  Check out Stu’s thoughts on a major league cheap shot in major junior, who knows… you may think it’s charging-with-zero-respect-for-anyone too.

I do agree with him that suspending a player for “as long as the person he injured is out for” makes zero sense.

‘

The kid was in critical condition in intensive care with a fractured skull after.  What’s alarming too, is that the kid who destroys him hits the next guy he sees too, which to me is a step below pulling out his bicep after and flexing.  Even worse, he has the f**king audacity to leave the game with his gloves on.  F**k me, I’m fired up thinking about it.  Congrats tough guy.

*****

Need a different type of violence to feel better?  Enjoy the best hair pull in the history of pulled hair:

‘

I found that fun, for some reason.

*****

I’m sure it’ll be tweet-fest ’98 from me at the ASU game -- if you don’t already follow me on Twitter, you can do so by clicking here.  Have a great weekend folks!