Watching Giants GM and ex-player, Todd Kelman stand next to Bruins president and ex-legend Cam Neeley at the Bruins arena announcing this game seems somewhat surreal. When the Giants arrived in Belfast in 2000 a lot of people wrote the sport of as a novelty believing that the big crowds that came along to sell out the arena in the first few season would not last. But while the crowds are not quite at the sellout level they once where, they are still big and now, after ten seasons of hockey and 610 games, to see the Giants now only still playing and even winning (this years playoff champions), it is superb to see that they have grown to the stature that they can invite and host NHL calibre clubs to Belfast. I wouldn’t want to serve up humble pie to those non believers back in 2000 because it was understandable to believe it probably wouldn’t last this long, but I hope they are impressed with how well the team has done in the end.

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Reports have been doing the rounds today that the Boston Bruins of the NHL are to hold their pre-season training camp in Belfast and play a pre-season exehibition game against a German DEL team in the Odyssey Arena. Now it’s unlikely I’d be able to get back to see that, but if you do get the chance you should grab yourself some tickets. Okay so it won’t likely involve the Belfast Giants in any way, but who thought the day would come when an NHL team took to the ice in the Odyssey Arena? It’ll be a pre-season game sure, but the quality levels will still be high and it’ll be a big chance for the Giants fans to see some top quality hockey.

There is no news yet as to when exactly this will take place and as such no news has been released on ticket prices and when they would go on sale. I imagine the tickets will be a little higher than a standard Giants game and I would like to think regular Giants fans will get the first refusal for I’d say tickets will go quickly.

Reporting this is hardly reporting considering the news broke almost a week ago but I figured I’d mention it in passing anyway, if only for record sake.

Theo didn’t make the Calgary Flames NHL team. He was cut in the final few days of camp after putting up four points in four games as well as a shootout winner. It wasn’t enough for the Flames management who were only going to sign Theo if he could play on the top two lines. It appears he couldn’t in their eyes. Theo addressed this at the start of the week and decided he would call it a day on his NHL career and comeback attempt but was happy to have been given the shot, to have proven to himself he could hold his own in the NHL, to pull on the Flames jersey again and to go out of the NHL on his terms and with class.

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Theo Fleury is continue with his hopes of returning all the way back to the top of the hockey world after a four-year absence by attending the Calgary Flames training camp, the team were he started his NHL career and won his one and only Stanley Cup ring twenty years ago. Reports suggest he turned up to camp in the best shape of his life proven by the fact he had a Vo2 reading of 60 and an 8% body fat count. When he took to the ice the Calgary players seen what the Giants fans knew from a few years back, Theo still had the hands for the game as he impressed all before him. Read More»

I was reading an article from ESPN.com by John Buccigross were he decides to blog on a game between the Leafs and the Red Wings from 1971. At the end of his blog he said the following:

“I was 5 when this game was played, I can understand why, even then, I felt that hockey was a great sport on television. The game was fast, up and down. The players had a ghostly mystique in black-and-white as most of them were stone-faced and expressionless. You had no idea what they were thinking or what they were like. You just knew they were doing something very difficult and dangerous, and the talent and courage they showed was mesmerizing”.

Yes how times change. It’s not black and white anymore, they aren’t so expressionless and we probably know too much about what they are thinking and what they are like, but the later part of the quote most definitely still stands. They are still doing something very difficult and dangerous, and the talent and courage they show is still mesmerizing.

Thinking about it, in a way the entire quote (except for the reference to the age) sums up what got me into hockey in the first place – Watching an NHL game on TV in the late 90′s and for British Hockey watching the Giants second ever home game against Bracknell back in December 2000. I can see – even now – why hockey was a great sport on television and in person. The game was indeed fast, up and down and like something I had never seen before, be it the top NHL game or the relatively lowly (in world hockey terms) ISL game. I didn’t know a single player so they did indeed have a ghostly mystique, even in colour, and they all looked the same to me under their helmets. I had no idea what they were like – who was tough who was skilled? But even at first glance on TV or in the Odyssey I knew they were doing something very difficult and dangerous, and the talent and courage they showed was mesmerizing.

As Buccigross finished up:

“The game grabbed you by the arm and never let you go.”

I love hockey.