Posts tagged playoffs
Run Run Run
Mar 29th
Last night was crazy.
I had two campus rec intramural playoff games, one Volleyball and one floor hockey which were at almost overlapping times. I decided to play the volleyball one because if we won, then we’d make the final which was the same night. So I went there and we lost really fast. It was 8:00 – about the time our floor hockey game was to start. So I ran over to the bus stop and saw that the bus to get over there was there! I hopped on, and got to the gym to find my team down a goal with 3 minutes or so left. I grab a guy’s stick and play the remaining two minutes straight — unfortunately we couldn’t tie the game up. *sigh*.
So then I go home and sit down at my computer where I code a script that will help the development of the poker bot I’m working on … and don’t finish that until 3 in the morning. I’m TIRED.
So if you’ll excuse me, maybe I’ll go take a nap.
Heraldk
The Ryan Smyth Trade
Feb 28th
Ugh. I hate think that we’re giving up on the season. Last year’s playoff run was so much fun that I was really hoping we’d be able to get at least one playoff series this year. However, with the Ryan Smyth trade that happened earlier today before the trade deadline, Kevin Lowe is throwing in the towel for this season. The oilers *might* still make the playoffs, but that’s looking pretty unlikely given how they played tonight against Phoenix.
Reading the Edmonton Oiler forums is mildly entertaining though. People are so attached to Smytty … and I admit I was too. But fans are so betrayed that Smyth was traded … but what they don’t realize is that Kevin Lowe was put in a rather awkward position. The Oil weren’t in good shape to make the playoffs, and the contract negotiations with Smyth weren’t going so hot. So what do you do? Keep him for the rest of a season that is unlikely to be a playoff year, and chance that he won’t re-sign at the end of the year? Or get what you can get for him and attempt to sign him in the offseason if you’d like to (or go after a higher impact guy if one is available). Seems like a pretty clear decision to me!
The age of franchise players is almost over. The number of players who actually stick with one team their entire career are diminishing quickly. Smyth is really one of the last of his kind … so I’m sorry fans — you’re gonna have to get used to this.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, we can take a look at the trade. I think Kevin Lowe got an amazing deal. He picked up two players who were drafted in the first round, and a first round pick in the upcoming draft. That means we get THREE first round picks in the upcoming draft! Sounds like we’re in the position to either get some really good young talent, or trade some young talent for some current talent. As much as I hate the idea that my dear Oil are giving up on the year, I can’t complain about this trade that much.
Heraldk
Torino Journal: Day Four and Five
Jul 6th
Yup, my journal is coming slowly but surely. Soon, I’ll find myself catching up on my boston/new york journal! Uhoh…
For previous entries in my Torino Journal, see Day One, Day Two, or Day Three
We got up the next morning for the first day of the conference. The conference was held at a different location than the olympiad so we needed to find our way to a new location. Unfortunately, we got turned around and missed most of the first talk. The conference was held in a really cool room with two statues at the front of the room. It totally didn’t feel like a place you’d attend classes, but I gather that’s precisely what one does if taking classes at this university.
The room was situated in a building which had an inside courtyard. In fact, there was quite a blurry line between inside and outside. As soon as you step outside your room, you may have a roof over your head, but the balcony you happen to be on is filled with fresh air from the outdoor courtyard. The building was totally beautiful and I wandered around the area taking photos of the various statues that lined the walls of the area (during breaks of course!).
After the morning conference talks were over we traveled down the the oval to begin the olympiad (making a quick stop for lunch). After making a couple preparations, we thought we were ready. We beat the Australian program with no real trouble in those two games, but then we lost two games against the champion from the last olympiad. Argh! It turned out we had a couple of rather embarassing bugs. Frankly, none of us really could believe that we had missed them. Oops! Shows the need for some real play testing hmm?
After the competition we madly tried to fix the bugs. They were really dumb, but also quite elusive and took us a long time to solve. By the time we had tracked down the problem it was quite late so we decided to return to our hotel room. Once there we left to get some food and that outing turned out to last quite awhile as we enjoyed quite a bit of red wine, and some tasty Italian cuisine. I wish I could get late night food like that here in town!!
We got back to our hotel really really late, but still had to fix the problems we had discovered. Argh! We ended up crashing before everything was fixed, and the next morning missed the conference as we attempted to get the program up and running in a state we were comfortable with. Turns out that didn’t really happen.
Finally we had to return to the oval so we packed up our program, and headed down there. The competition started up and we lost our games to the champion ensuring that we were fighting for 2nd place. Easy, we thought …
Turns out that the Australian program had a learning algorithm in it and it was much tougher after playing the other games during the tournament. Our program was a little shaky, and we actually lost the first game against the program! Uhoh. We played the next game, hoping to win so we could avoid a playoff to decide the winning program. At this point we were pretty tired and really didn’t want to spend that night looking at our program and getting it ready for a playoff!
Our program looked to have a good start, but then it got itself into trouble. Enough so that it actually figured it had lost the game. Thankfully, the part of the code that handled playing “tough” moves in a lost position saved our bacon as the other program didn’t realize it had won (it wasn’t a trivial win) and messed up so we were able to recover and win the match. Whew!
Having got past that scare, we journeyed a little ways to another little restaurant for dinner which served us another wonderful meal. Boy were we ever being spoiled with good food!
We returned to our hotel room to relax and play some cards. Then we fell asleep tired, but ready to get some rest for the next day which we planned to go see some sights!
The conclusion to my journal comes next time!
Heraldk
First Oilers Playoff Game
Apr 26th
Last night I was able to go to my first ever playoff hockey game, and boy was it a blast! The crowd was loud, half drunk and cheering really hard for the hometown Oilers. It was so easy to join in the loud cheering that I no longer have much of a voice today. The Oilers played an impressive game and deserved to win. They played an amazing first two periods of hockey. In the second period, Detroit just couldn’t get anything going, and we walked all over them. Detroit managed to come back in the third which set the stage for a nail-biting overtime period that was almost too much. We sat on the edge of our seats for the entire time standing up everytime the Oilers came close to scoring. Finally, the Oiler’s put the winner in and we all cheered like mad (I dunno where I found the voice to cheer!).
There are three players that I think deserve special mention for this particular game. Chris Pronger, Michael Peca and Brad Winchester. Chris Pronger is a no-brainer. He played a ridiculous 47 minutes last night! With the game going a little shy of 90 minutes, there is no arguing that Pronger is a huge reason the Oilers are doing so well.
Second, Peca. I was immensely impressed with his play last night. There was a huge number of key little defensive plays that I picked up on during the game and I was just so impressed.
Third, Winchester. Where the hell did this guy come from? He played an incredible game, particularly in the first two periods. He had a huge number of offensive chances. He was on the ice for at least 2 of our goals, and he made some very impressive heads-up plays. This guy is going to be huge in a year or two. Heck, he’s huge NOW!
There is only one thing I really didn’t like about the playoff game experience. Many fans were boo-ing in the middle of the US national anthem. I’m sorry, but that’s just not classy. It sickens me that fans think this is a good idea. Have some respect people! Okay I’m done.
Heraldk
Playoffs!
Apr 22nd
When the Oilers are in the playoffs, this is my favourite time of the year. Well, maybe not my only favourite time of year … but it certainly ranks high!
The Oiler game last night was exciting playoff hockey. Despite the disappointing finish, I think the Oil can certainly recover from the loss and come out strong tomorrow. I’m frankly confused with the “afternoon” game tomorrow though. The game starts at 11:00 am mountain time, and the only reason I can think of that they have it that early is because they want to put the triple header of hockey all day on Sunday.
But hockey players are used to coming out to play in the evening. The Oiler game is in the MORNING for us Albertans. Pro or not, those hockey players are going to be way out of their normal hockey game routine … and I have a feeling we’re going to see a sluggish game tomorrow morning despite the importance of the game.
Why is it so important to have a triple header of hockey? Frankly, I don’t know.
Anyways, now that I’m done ranting, I watched the Montreal-Carolina game tonight, and was really impressed. I’m kind of a closet Montreal Canadien fan … they’re my favourite team from the Eastern conference and I was glad that they made the playoffs. I was even more happy to see them come out and play a really strong game against Carolina, which is apparently one of the best teams in the East.
Hopefully Edmonton can get their cylinders firing up and take on Detroit with all the skill I know they posess. I’d love to be cheering Edmonton and Montreal all the way to the stanley cup final!!
Heraldk
Oilers Make the Playoffs!
Apr 13th
Its been an up and down season for my beloved Oilers. At times it has been damn frustrating to watch the team choke against weaker teams. At others, we seem to pull out all the stops and are able to come up with a big win here or there. They just never seem to make it easy on themselves. They’ve got a lot of talent, and there really should be no doubt that they make the playoffs.
If only it were that easy.
Tonight was the 2nd last game of the season. Thanks the Shark’s beating the Canuck’s last night, it put us in the position to win a playoff spot – if we won our game and Vancouver lost.
Let me just say that the game was a little stressful. To my eye, the refs seemed to miss several penalties. Oh well! The game went down to the wire (which so many of our games seem to) and Ales Hemsky scored the winner with 30+ seconds left to play. A little scoreboard watching later, and San Jose beat Vancouver 5-3. So we’re in!
I’m hoping to be able to get to at least one of the playoff games this year. Tickets are gonna be in high demand though, so it’s going to be really hard to even get one pair of tickets. *sigh*. Wish me luck!
But we’re in! Yay!
Paper Push
Mar 28th
Well, lets see how this goes.
Darse and I are working on a paper that is due on Thursday at some undefined time on that day. The nervous thing is that this paper is much less complete than the last paper I worked on. There’s *a lot* of writing to do yet. So the next couple days are going to be pretty busy for that! After that, I get to really start concentrating on the Hex codebase in a push to get our hex program ready for Italy (which is looking like a pretty sure thing, as far as these tihngs go). I’m pretty excited!
But first, this paper! This has been a very busy week with many things getting my attention. I had a playoff intramural floor hockey game on Monday, and the playoffs for volleyball are on Thursday. On top of this maddeningly busy schedule, I’m still attempting to make it to the gym most days of the week … which is helping burn me out faster than before. Ugh.
So … wish me luck on getting through the week!
Heraldk
Big trades for the Oilers
Mar 10th
Well, hockey season is super exciting this time of year. The trade deadline was yesterday, and our Edmonton Oilers are looking poised to make a push higher into the standings and deeper into the playoffs. Here’s the trades we made:
To Minnesota: 1st round draft pick, conditional 3rd round draft pick
To Edmonton: Dwayne Roloson
Edmonton gets a pretty good goaltender and they don’t even have to break up any of the team to do so. This really is about as good as it could’ve got since so many teams are looking for goaltenders. Not only that, teams that were supposed to be offering goalies decided not to trade them after all (Buffalo, Phoenix, etc). So in theory, Edmonton now has their goalie situation sorted out. Here’s hoping!
To Boston: Marty Reasoner, Yan Stasny, and a 2nd round draft pick.
To Edmonton: Sergei Samsonov
In this trade, the Oilers get a speedy winger who won the 1998 calder trophy, and can score goals. In return, they don’t give up all that much at all. I have never really been impressed with Reasoner (though I have had no reason to dislike him). So we give up some prospects for a fast player who looks to fit right into the Oiler style of hockey … sounds like a good deal to me!
Assuming the team continues to play as well as they have (lots of blocked shots, 2nd fewest shots on goal in the NHL, decent scoring power) … we should see the team finish strongly in the last 20 games of the season and I am really looking forward to seeing them go deep into the playoffs.
Gooooo Oilers!
Heraldk
Floor Hockey playoffs
Nov 17th
So I’m a member of the computer science grad school floor hockey team. We’re playing in a division that isn’t high on the competitive scale, but of course everyone likes to win. We finished the regular season (all of three games) with an 0-3 record, but I don’t think that record was fully deserved. We actually played pretty well, and didn’t lose by more than 2 goals on any of those games. For those unfamiliar with the campus rec floor hockey league, the games tend to be high scoring affairs with many lopsided wins happening. Our games we played had scores of 3-1, 5-4, and 5-3. Amazingly low scoring, tight games for the league! Had the ball bounced in our favour a little more we would’ve potentially won all three of our regular season games.
So last night we played our first playoff game. If we won, we would go on to the final. We came out firing … scoring three goals in the first period. We only had 7 guys besides our goalie, so we tired ourselves out pretty fast. But after getting up 3-0, we were able to hold the opposing team to only one goal in the 2nd period. Our goalie played fantastic, and we ended up winning 4-1. Several hilight reel saves from our goalie and some pretty clutch defensive plays including a penalty kill in the third period were what backstopped our win.
Oh, and I scored my second goal of the season, which means I’ve now scored more goals this season than all others combined. Haha. I’m not exactly an offensive player. In fact, I’m lucky that my shot this time around actually made it in, because I had a huge amount of net to shoot at but I hit the post instead and it bounced in from there. *whew*. I like to play a defensive minded game where I knock the ball off my opponent’s stick and send them running back for it. I leave the fancy plays for those who can make them 
So we’re on to the final next week. Wish us luck! We could win our second campus rec t-shirt in as many years!
Heraldk
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