This weekend OFB embarks on a roadtrip we’ve sought since our start — to Hershey, but hauling along with us a hearty contingent of D.C. hockey bloggers. We’ve long wanted to take our new media party up to Chocolatetown for a weekend and see if we could just blow the lid off the terrific puck party up there, and given who’s joining us this weekend, when the Bears will host Lake Erie Saturday night and Albany on Sunday, we like our chances.
The party: Eric McErlain, founder of Off Wing Opinion; Corey Masisak and Michelle Scalise from Comcast Sportsnet; and Jon Press, founder of Japer’s Rink. Our Gary Kriebel will be perched down low snapping scores of photos during Saturday night’s game at Giant Center. Masisak was up at Giant Center last weekend covering the Bears, and will be making a return engagement with us. We’ll generate video files as well. And in a fun bit of warehousing of our new media products this weekend, we’ll have for Facebook users a central access home, a Hershey Bears Weekend page. The Hershey Bears’ Jess Mikula, who has her own blog, Thoughts on Goal, will help out as well, and she’s even baking cookies today for the arrival of the D.C. bloggers.
We’re highly likely to catch up with John Walton a bit once his radio and blogging labor is completed on Saturday night. And Gabby co-author and Bears’ beat reporter Tim Leone will impart his wisdom to the blogger newcomers, perhaps even regale us with some tales of covering the Bears in great old Hersheypark Arena. This morning Leone noted that Hershey has won 23 straight games with Chris Bourque in the lineup.
It’s a pretty special time to be making a visit to our farm club. Like the Capitals, the Hershey Bears in mid-February rank as the best club in their league. They’ve won an incredible 18 consecutive games at home — a streak that began all the way back last November 29. That’s just one victory shy of the AHL’s all-time mark for excellence in home ice play. Perhaps even more incredibly, the Bears have won 24 of the past 26 games they’ve played — the best 26-game stretch in franchise history. And if that weren’t impressive enough, they also own two separate double-digit win streaks: 12 wins in a row beginning December 12 and ending on January 9; and 11 wins in a row from January 16 through February 12.
The Bears sit perched atop the AHL’s East division with 84 points — 22 points better than second-place Albany. They are on pace to obliterate their all-time best season of 2006-07, when they won 51 games under head coach Bruce Boudreau. During that historic season the Bears at this juncture has 32 wins. This season’s club already has 41. Wow.
We think we’ll have just a few good storylines to follow. And the roadtrip will help us get a much-needed fix of some high-quality live hockey, in one of the best of all hockey settings.
One Comment
Very cool idea. It’s definitely cool to see how much closer hockey bloggers are than other sports. Hope everyone has a blast.
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