Things are a bit slow around here while I’m on vacation, but Papercraft Friday continues! In honor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa that’s dominated the sporting news lately, I picked this nice football money box bank from Canon Creative Park to keep you in the mood. U.S.A. soccer fans may be disappointed, but the games roll on!
Not keen on this one? Want more? Check out other Papercraft Friday posts.
A few weeks ago, Paperkraft.net featured a fun model from Kirin Beverage Company in Tokyo, Japan. It’s a tiny foosball table, also known as table football or table soccer depending on where you live. I like little models that have working parts. The base of this model is no larger than a sheet of paper, but it has a lot of detail. Get it know via Paperkraft.net.
After a rollercoaster of a season, the St. Louis Blues clinched a playoff spot in the Western Conference this evening with a 3-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets. A loss by the Nashville Predators against the Minnesota Wild earlier in the evening helped seal the deal. It was do or die…. had Nashville won and St. Louis lost, the Blues would be out of the playoff hunt.
Old time Blues fans will remember when it was almost a given that the Blues would make the playoffs. (Some would says it was also almost a given that they would bow out before seeing the Cup too.) But hard times fell on the Blues, and they haven’t had a playoff bearth for the past 5 years. In the preseason, some “experts” were picking the Blues to be in last place this year, because the team has been rebuilding from within and going with a lot of younger players. But the Blues proved them wrong with a stunning late season comeback.
The Blues were in last place in the Western Conference on February 15th, and have been the NHL’s best the second half of the season at 24-9-7. As a fan, it’s been great to watch.
St. Louis Blues rookie center T.J. Oshie has drawn quite a bit of buzz locally since the start of the season. He’s been pretty solid in the first seven games, with one goal, two assists, seven hits, nine takeaways and two giveaways. There is one thing that he’s not happy with, though. His portrayal in EA Sport’s NHL ’09 hockey video game. According to an article on STLtoday.com:
“When I play NHL ‘09, I play as the Blues and my guy is just terrible,” Oshie said, laughing. “I feel embarrassed when he’s out there. He’s slow, every time he gets touched he falls down.”
For those of you like me who aren’t video-game junkies, the games today actually rate the players’ skill level in real life and then program those individual players to have a certain skill level in the game.
What can Oshie do about it? Can he play the game as a different team? Or if he plays as the Blues, perhaps he can call EA Sports and get his skill level improved?
“If I play a different team, I’m betraying (the Blues),” Oshie said. “I’m hoping that I just pick up my game, get some hits and they update the game where I’m a little more solid on the puck.”
It’s funny to hear a professional hockey player talk about playing a hockey video game. And if you did hear that, it’d likely to be some veteren star like Mario Lemieux talking about how excited he is to be on the cover. Rarely do you hear about how non-cover atheletes feel about their portrayal. But you KNOW that they call check themselves out. I think that’s the sort of question I’d be likely to ask first!
Brett Hull was one of four players announced yesterday for the class of 2008 U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony will be held in Denver on October 10th.
St. Louisans will always consider Brett Hull a Blues player. He rose ot prominence in the NHL with the Blue Note and played 10-1/2 years in St. Louis. In his first full season with the Blues (1988-89), he scored 41 goals and received the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy. The next 3 years he scored over 70 goals a season, including the 1990-91 season when he won the Lester B. Pearson Trophy and the Hart Memorial Trophy as NHL’s MVP after scoring 86 goals. He scored 50 goals in 50 games twice in his career, the only player other that Wayne Gretzky (who did it three times) to have done that more than once.
He scored an amazing 741 in his 20 year career, third all time in the NHL, and recorded a total of 1,391 points. He went on to win Stanley Cups with Detroit and Dallas, and was a 9-time All Star. He also won an Olympic Silver medal with the U.S. team in 2002. In 2006, his #16 jersey was retired by the St. Louis Blues and raised to the rafters, and it marked another milestone: the only time in any professional sport that a father-son combo had their respective numbers retired. Congrats Brett!
Kudos also go out to Brian Leetch and Mike Richter of the New York Rangers, and to Cammi Granato, the all-time scoring leader for the U.S. women’s hockey team, who were also announced for the 2008 class.
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