Adventures in Road Hockey: PITB Is Unstoppable, Vancouver Wellwoods Runners-Up at Nationals

The Vancouver Wellwoods, PITB's adopted women's road hockey team.

In case you live in a cave (or another country), you probably already knew that last weekend was the 1st anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympics, that awesome party we hosted last year. To celebrate and relive the fever of those awesome two weeks, Vancouver residents reconvened on Granville street for festivities and, appropriately, hockey. PITB was there, as our pal Richard Loat, founder of Five Hole For Food, invited us out to take part in a Canucks' bloggers mini-tournament with fellow blogs Head to the Net, Canucks Corner, and Canucks Hockey Blog.

Needless to say, we wrecked house. Our team (comprised of Cinnamon Toast Funk bassist Jason Vander-Hoek, my boss Jared Ginter, and Skeeter in goal), was, in scientific terms, hecka boss. And speaking of bosses, it turns out mine rocks at road hockey. Also, Daniel was a freaking wall. Even I had an honour roll moment, thoroughly undressing CHB's JJ Guerrero before going forehand-backhand on their stunned netminder.

As Bruce Ng said, it was as if the rink was tilted (also: it was). Additional observation: Richard Loat is big, but he doesn't play big. Quit being such a perimeter player, Loat.

But enough about us. Last weekend's real road hockey newsmakers are the Vancouver Wellwoods, PITB's adopted women's street hockey team. If you'll recall, the Wellwoods were headed down to Victoria to vie for the Redwood Cup in the national road hockey championships. After the jump, the ladies in baby blue tell you all about the tournament in their own words:

--------------------

Well, we’re back. And no, we didn’t bring home the National title, the thousands of dollars, or the obscenely large trophy. I figure Welly wouldn’t have wanted it that way--it would have been far too cliche and predictable. What we did do was have a fantastic weekend playing our collective guts out on the streets of Victoria, against quality female teams from all across the country.

True to our motto, we didn’t train or practice at all for this 5-games-in-2-days marathon. We’re all busy girls with full time jobs - Julia “Bergy” Staszewski is an up and coming lawyer, Laura “Kos” Kosakoski is in her first year of medical school, and Kelly “Sunshine” James spent the past two months in Patagonia with the penguins! So really, we wouldn’t have had time to train, even if we wanted to.

DAY 1: ROUND ROBIN

Let me make one thing clear about street hockey: it’s not ice hockey. And our failure to realize that probably what cost us our first game of the tournament. As ice hockey players (we’re all UBC Thunderbird alumni) we kept trying to make too many cute, off-the-curb breakout passes instead of just airing the ball out of our zone. I found myself making sliding motions that, instead of propelling me across the crease, simply removed the skin from my knees. On the ice you can coast a bit, but on dry land you constantly catch yourself standing still. The team we were playing, the Victoria Extreme, are an actual ball hockey team, so they already knew all of this. They won the opener handily, 4-2.

My knees! The Road Warrior pads do nothing!

After game one, we a) ate a bag of bagels, and b) put our heads together to come up with a better game plan.

Editor's note: eating and thinking--how Wellwood of you.

The team we were playing next, Regina, was the team that knocked us out of the tournament in 2009. We decided that we had to open up our game to generate more chances off the rush, which meant we’d also be backchecking like we’d never backchecked before. It payed off, and the girls found their scoring touch in the second half. We took Game 2 by a score of 6-1.

It was a beautiful day at this point, and Wellwoodian spirits were high. The sun was out, lots of fans had gathered to watch the afternoon games, and “Dog Days are Over” was pumping out of speakers lining the harbour (which, by this point, was festively sprinkled with dozens of colourful, floating hockey balls!). It was a great day for hockey, and we had one round-robin game to go.

Game 3 against the Calgary Mudpuppies was a tough one to take because we played our best game of the tournament and still came up short. The girls worked hard in the corners, and blocked a TON of shots, including a nasty one that Kali-Ann Cameron took up high off the chest. Cammy is definitely the Ryan Johnson of the Wellwoods, in that she loves to block shots in the most horror-inducing way possible. I remember one time a guy shot her so hard in the stomach that the first words out of his mouth were “Oh God, you weren’t pregnant were you!?!”

Editor's note: that guy needs to practice speaking to women. Also, he seems to have a lot of faith in the strength of his shot, considering he asks this question in past tense.

She’s a tough cookie. Anyway, that Calgary game was probably the most evenly matched female street hockey game ever played, a nailbiter right to the end, and was decided on the final shot of the shootout. Ping! Post and in. I hate that sound.

Our 1-1-1 record was just enough to get us 3rd place, and a bye into the semi-finals on Saturday. We were exhausted on Friday night... in our postgame hot tub sesh we sat there and marinated in stunned silence with thousand-yard-stares on our faces. We went out for burgers, sampled some local microbrews, then we all passed out watching Criminal Minds in our hotel room at 7:30 p.m. We are WILD.

Editor's note: I've long suspected that Wellwood prefers Law & Order.

DAY 2: THE SEMIFINALS

The alarm clock on Day 2 was immediately followed by a symphony of groans. Everything hurt. For once, I felt glad to be a goalie, because even though my muscles were killing me, at least my legs weren’t rainbow-coloured like the other girls’. Our semi-final game was against Victoria, the team that beat us in our opener before we had our heads screwed on properly. And unlike Friday, it was NOT a beautiful day out there. There was some serious weather going on. Taking the advice of a team that had already played, we wrapped hockey tape sticky-side-out around our running shoes for extra traction.

“One, two, three, WELLWOODS!”

Rather than sum up the semi-final, I’ll just recommend you check out the footage. The first half of that clip is the men’s semifinal, but if you skip ahead they filmed a lot of our game. At 49:30ish you’ll hear us get an excellent shoutout on HNIC. Surely Kyle Wellwood must be aware of us now! Other highlights include Kos’s beauty of a tying goal at 56:50, and of course the shootout at the end, where Sunshine sniped blocker side to seal the victory. I love shootout victories because I get to execute the glove-and-blocker-throw celebration. PITB was well represented at the semis by @beninvictoria, who braved the rain with a sign that said “Wellard”. Is that a Wellwood/Ballard combo or something? I can never keep up with the Internet.

Editor's note: One Bulie is hardly "well-represented." But thanks to Ben for being our Victorian ambassador.

We only had forty minutes between the end of the semis and the final against Calgary. We used the time to try and dry off, which in retrospect was 100% pointless. While we were inside, the rain turned sideways and got angrier.

It was wet out there.

I think there were two interesting things about the final game. One was that there was live play-by-play commentary over the speakers. It’s a strange feeling to play hockey and be able to make a play and hear it evaluated with your name mispronounced all at the same time! The other interesting thing is what happened to Kim Allan’s face.

“Why so serious?”

This is Kim Allan, and her face doesn’t always look like this. Despite getting her teeth loosened by a high stick in the first half of the final, she stayed in the game and didn’t miss a shift. The Calgary player was very apologetic after the game, so there are no hard feelings, but it was still a gruesome moment . Being girls, we usually wear full cages, so eating a hockey stick is a relatively rare occurrence. It’s three days later and she’s still tweezing fibreglass shards from the inside of her mouth.

I guess I’m obligated to mention that we lost the final by a score of 5-1. But it was 2-1 with three minutes left, so it was actually a really close game! Ben, who donned a stylish poncho for this one, can vouch for that. Calgary scored on a penalty shot to make it 3-1, then I got pulled in a desperate attempt to come back, and it backfired on us. I don’t want to talk about it. Too soon, too soon.

As runners-up, we got our hotel rooms comped for the weekend and a nice buffet breakfast on Sunday morning (mmmm.... Victory Bacon...). Even though we didn’t win Nationals, we had a great Saturday night out on the town, and then finally it was time to drag our hung-over bodies back into the team bus (read: my Ford Taurus wagon) and board the ferry back to reality. What a weekend, though. It was awesome to have a good old fashioned hockey roadie with some of my best friends.

That’s the greatest thing about the Wellwoods, really... when push comes to shove, I know every single one of those girls has my back, and vice versa. I’d take a bullet (or a mouthful of fiberglass) for any of them. And teams like that don’t just come along every day.

“When the wind blows hard and the sky is black, Wellwoods fly together!”

Thanks for reading, and keep following @TheWellwoods because you definitely haven’t seen the last of us. "Soft hands, Sharp minds, and Overall Adorableness!"

Editor's note: many thanks to the Wellwoods for being the best group o' ladies since the cast of Designing Women.

5 Reasons Harrison Mooney Loves the Canucks

"Five Reasons I Love the Canucks" is a feature at Nucks Misconduct, inspired by Puck Daddy's "Five Reasons..." series. It features Canucks fans explaining, in their own words, the reasons for their passionate support of the team, and offers readers a chance to contribute their own stories to the site.

Here are five reasons I, Harrison Mooney, co-founder of Pass it to Bulis, love the Canucks.

1. The Worst Jelly Beans I've Ever Had

I have a family friend to thank for the seeds of my Canuck fandom. A huge fan who just wanted to spread the disease, he gave me a Canucks-themed gift for Christmas when I was six. The gift was a massive beer glass with the Canucks logo on it, full of jelly beans in Canucks colors. At first glance, it was a sweet gift. It would hold, like, a gallon of chocolate milk, and in order for me to drink out of it, I had to mine the metric ton of candy within it.

I later realized the gift had more to do with trying to convert me than with whether or not I would enjoy it. Consider that the Canucks colors, at the time, were yellow, orange and black, which meant that one-third of the jelly beans were black. Who gives a kid that many black jelly beans? Ask any person the worst flavour of jelly bean, and they'll tell you: black. Black jelly beans are the worst thing in the world.

The problem was that I loved candy so much that I loved the principle of candy more than I loved specific candies. Once I had worked through the scrumptiously tangy yellow and orange jelly beans, I realized I only had two options: eat, like, fifty black jelly beans, or throw perfectly good candy away. So I ate those jelly beans. I sat there for one committed afternoon, eating some awful candy, telling myself, you will eat and enjoy every last terrible one, and you'll be the better for it. I believe that some of this forced enjoyment transferred over to the team that was implicit in my self-torture, and through that afternoon of anguish, I trained myself to like the Canucks. How else to explain my love for a team that never wins anything?

You can read my other four reasons at Nucks Misconduct.

An Alibi is Born: Photos From the Nucks Misconduct Tweetup

From left to right: Richard Loat (@mozy19), Sean Zandberg (@nucksmisconduct), Harrison Mooney (@passittobulis), Yankee Canuck (@nucksmisconduct), Daniel "Skeeter" Wagner (@passittobulis), Chris Golden (@lyteforce), Brian Wawryshyn (@CanucksCorner), a guy, Katie Maximick (@canucksgirl44), J.J. Guerrero (@canuckshockey), Tony Smolock (@smoboy), and fellow person of colour Chuckles Canuckles. Maybe. I'm terrible with names. If you are mislabeled, please let me know in the comments. Please. I feel really bad about this. Thanks to the very kind Ian Walker for snapping the shot. No thanks to him for saying I look like Carlton Banks from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.


In case you missed it, tonight's Canucks game was a real turd, perhaps even a festering one. The Canucks stunk up the place, falling to the Blackhawks 7-1. They literally stunk up the place. I imagine Rogers Arena had that hideous sleep smell that bedrooms have on clammy Sunday mornings, because a wave of narcolepsy swept over the Canucks during the first intermission. They continued to play while they slept (somnambulism), but it was apparent to all concerned parties they were riding a flying sleigh bed to slumbertowne.

Ian Walker says he once saw Bret "The Hitman" Hart plays the genie in a theatrical version of Aladdin. That sounds atrocious, but I figure I would have been more impressed with his play than I was with Vancouver's play tonight.

Thankfully, the evening was salvaged by the Nucks Misconduct tweetup, which brought together a litany of Vancouver's finest blogging talent. As well as the abovementioned hosts, folks from Canucks Corner, Canucks Hockey Blog, Canucks Army, and Nucks Misconduct were all in attendance. Also, the Vancouver Sun's Ian Walker for some reason, yours truly, and fellow Bulie Skeeter, my hetero blog wife. We crammed into our designated corner of the Forum Sports Bar and proceeded to bond over our common affliction: Canuck Badness Madness. The Canucks were bad, and we were mad.

It's bizarre to get together with a bunch of strangers you feel like you already know. I was reminded of that scene in the X-Files when Scully meets all those women who had also been abducted, and they all recognize one another, and discover they have microchips implanted in their necks. That's what this was like, except with bloggers and, for some reason, Ian Walker.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and everybody was great. I look forward to the next time we can all get together.

Of note: if you're waiting around for tonight's I Watched This Game, it's not coming, sugar. It'll go up tomorrow afternoon when I am much less yawny. My yawns are three minutes apart, which means my bedtime is about to crown. I go now to birth sleep.

McKenzie, Cox, and the Difference Between Bloggers and Journalists

Harrison touched on Damien Cox's recent words regarding Tyler Dellow and his blog. These comments received some backlash, as many thought he was being somewhat harsh. Cox has since deleted the tweets and issued a retraction. Still, his comments managed to stir the pot with the tired, old debate about a blogger's role in the hockey writers' community. The debate, as I said just a second ago, is tired and old, but recent events have required that the dead horse be given one more hard kick in the name of holding "real" journalists accountable.

The story about the Colin Campbell e-mails has shown not only bloggers' potential for great journalism, but actual "journalists'" potential for shoddy disappointment.

Bloggers haven't been given a fair shake. We're more than "web/twitter groupies," as Damien Cox called us. While it'd be fair to say individual bloggers reach fewer people than individual sportswriters, bloggers do have a great deal of influence, as Tyler Dellow's blog showed. The reaction to his blog was instantaneous. He essentially broke a story that TSN, CBC and others had to comment on. That's big. No one can realistically say that Greg Wyshynski isn't a big voice in the hockey world. Still, even he doesn't give himself enough credit. He said this a couple hours ago on his live chat:

"I think we're more like entertainment writers. That isn't to say we're not journalists. It's to say the guys who roll up their sleeves and start preaching about hard-nosed reporting are talking about covering a form of entertainment -- not Afghanistan."

He's right on both counts -- he's writing about a form of entertainment, and that doesn't mean he's not a journalist. While his blog is more editorial than news, he still holds himself to a standard of factual consistency. He's been known to fix any mistake he makes. This is what journalists are supposed to do.

Journalists are supposed to be better than bloggers. I can see right now a bunch of comments telling me that isn't necessarily true, and they'd be right, but it's supposed to be true. I can happily say that I think over 100 people read my comments on the Colin Campbell emails. Bob McKenzie and Damien Cox have thousands upon thousands of readers. They should be held to a higher standard.

Edit: a portion of this article has been removed due to its inaccuracy regarding newspaper headlines and who is responsible for writing them. It has been fixed based on comments and criticisms we have received.

It's clear from his tweets that Damien Cox believes in a higher standard:

"All this 'news' abt Colin Campbell and internal NHL emails was reported months ago by The Star's Rob Cribb" "Cribb did a series of stories. Did background reported. Also asked Campbell for comment. That's called journalism."

But journalism also includes investigative reporting of the sort Tyler Dellow did, when he uncovered and investigated the e-mails nine months later. It was a lucky find, but what he did with it was both journalistic and skilfully so.

Dellow could only do this because the information was public. Rob Cribb could have done it nine months ago. And unlike Cribb, Tyler Dellow probably couldn't call Colin Campbell for comment and expect him to respond. Journalists have the name recognition and the widespread readership that allows them access to the people they cover, and yet they squander this by merely calling for quotes rather than doing real investigative work. Cox, your thoughts?

"It's an interesting comment on these media times, including the fact some 'bloggers' are twisting this to suggest the 'main stream media' is out to protect the establishment and figures in power. Why these people weren't outraged and up in arms when Cribb was writing his stories and The Star was publishing them is unclear. If you employ the logic of the bloggers, their silence was evidence that they were the ones protecting the establishment."

Is it really unclear why the people weren't up in arms when Cribb wrote his stories, Cox? Here, let me help: his stories didn't demonstrate that Colin Campbell clearly had a grudge against Marc Savard and that he was taking an active role in decisions regarding those who referee his son's games.

Journalists have a massive influence and therefore a massive responsibility to their readers. They must know the facts and be clear in their reporting of them so readers finish their articles being more informed than they were before. To borrow a phrase, "That's called journalism."

If Colin Campbell is returning your call, and not mine, then I expect you to adhere to a higher standard than I do, and when you fail, you offend me and everyone else who would love to have your job and do it better. When it comes down to it, a sportswriter's job isn't based on his hockey knowledge. Most sportswriters don't know more about sports statistics, rules and history than the average diehard fan, and the information is readily available to anyone with google. The sportscasters watch the same games we do. The thing that sets sports reporters apart is supposed to be their ability to communicate clearly and their journalistic experience. When they fall down on that job, they're cheapening the profession. Not everyone can go to Afghanistan to write a three-part story on the war, poverty and terrorism, but any sports fan can watch a hockey game and report the score.

That's why it's infuriating to see a paid professional sports writer who doesn't know the difference between compliment and complement. It's why it bothers me so much to see bad, over-used headline puns on the TSN front page. And it's why it broke my heart to see Bob McKenzie say something that wasn't true, and then make no correction when it was pointed out to him.

Bob McKenzie's take on the Colin Campbell e-mails was wrong on many levels. It addressed the wrong issue of the Savard-Cooke hit and lack of suspension, and Campbell's role in issuing suspensions. He never addressed the issue of Colin Campbell using his influence to protect his son from referees.

Worse, he was factually incorrect:

"As for the emails, [...] nothing was ever acted on, that we're aware of, because the referees that Colin Campbell complained about to Walkom, they're still working in the National Hockey League."

His argument was that these e-mails weren't a big deal, because they didn't lead to anyone's firing. As I've said before, these e-mails were used as evidence to show why Dean Warren was fired. In other words, it's the official position of the NHL that, contrary to McKenzie's assertions, the e-mails were acted on and resulted in the firing of Dean Warren, which is a very big deal.

In the blog post I originally made, I made a factual error, as well. No one messaged me about it, but when reading Tyler Dellow's follow-up, I realized I'd made an error and went back to fix it. Bob McKenzie, on the other hand, has had days to fix his error, and has several people informing him of it, including myself, and has failed to make any kind of correction.

I've always loved Bob McKenzie, but he should know better. He pointed out in a tweet today that he follows Canadian Press style. That's great. But if you're going to boast about following the same stylistic rules as the collective of Canadian journalists, can't you follow the same journalistic principles when it comes to making sure you don't accidentally misinform people, and that you issue a correction whenever you become aware of your mistake? Sadly, this whole issue has been eye-opening for me. If Bob McKenzie isn't going to behave like a real journalist, why should I take him more seriously than, say, Matthew Barnaby, who's at least played the game in the NHL?

To a degree, I understand. Bill Daly chose to speak to TSN about the Colin Campbell e-mails first. That's a big scoop for TSN, and you don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. That said, if a few early quotes are the price of your journalistic integrity, there wasn't much to begin with.

The point? I've given two examples of bloggers who were acting more like journalists than the real thing. Rob Cribb, Damien Cox and sadly, Bob McKenzie have fallen down on the job. It's bloggers like Tyler Dellow who have done the actual investigative work, and it saddens me that the real journalists aren't willing to show the same journalistic integrity and discipline.