Tuesday, March 17, 2009

tuesday practice: meh

i got up early today to attend the morning skate, when i realized that it wasn't until 2pm... so i set off doing a whole bunch of other stuff and ended up being late.... typical. ;)

i'm thoroughly amused by the fact that i've spent countless hours on the saddledome's second tier watching the rookies/prospects and training camp sessions but i've never bothered to attend an actual practice until today... well, now i know why: there was nothing really to note whatsoever...

i suppose that's a lie, i had my eye squarely on rhett warrener, who is not only practicing but giving and receiving hits (nothing major, but no third-colour jersey to dictate "hands off"). he's definitely a step behind, but i wouldn't be totally shocked to see him crack the lineup before the season's end (cap space permitting ---i don't know the rules after the deadline). as i've noted in the comments on various sites, this prospect does not make me a very happy WI. his current defensive play involves very little man-taking and a whole lotta stickwork (read: own-goals and tripping/hooking calls). not comforting...

other than that, vandermeer looks like the slowest guy out there, dion is hands-down the loudest, and everybody else seemed about as happy to be there as ME. i'm not sure why i find jordan leopold so totally invisible, or why every move jamie lundmark makes catches my eye. the drills they were doing seemed rote and without urgency, and included a heckuva lot of sloppy passes... keenan et al also seemed rather bored... perhaps it's because i have nothing to compare it to but this did was not the kind of practice i'd imagined would occur the day before a game, when there's a team on their heels in the playoff race...

it's scary, a little.

hopefully there was a lot of video-watching and Xs and Os on a whiteboard in the past couple of days, cause none of that was apparent here....

ugh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds a lot like a pre-game warmup. I hope you're right that the real work is done with the video (and when you're not spying on them!).

Kent W. said...

Clearly they didn't know you were there. Im sure if they had you would have seen a lot more showboating/ battling/macho BS designed to impress you...

walkinvisible said...

my nails were painted yellow... it was the most obvious i could get.