Mizblog

After Krav Maga yesterday, I drove up to Bakersfield with my girls and my brother Rob to visit my good friend Diane and her girls, and to watch an AHL hockey game. The Ontario Reign were in town to face the Bakersfield Condors and it was a great excuse to make the drive and visit. Diane got us seats in the lower level, adjacent to the visitor’s net. It was great! I hadn’t seen a live professional hockey game since I was a boy scout, so it was great to experience the game as a real activity with real people playing it, rather than just a television spectacle.

I went to the Reign’s first game to scout the Kings’ young prospects and see what they were like. Some things I noticed – Backman is really short. Auger is freakin’ HUGE. Zykov was most noticeable when he was dumping the puck in and going for a change, though he did have one rush up the middle that started with some fancy moves and got angled off into the corner by the Condors’ defense. Kempe was similarly incognito. Mersch was a wizard out there, twice stealing the puck from the Condors’ goaltender during a penalty kill, and using some sort of magic to send the puck on net with surprising speed and timing and angles. The rest of the offense looked professional, I guess. They blocked several shots on the PK that looked quite painful.

LoVerde is the captain of the Reign and he exudes confidence, calming things down on the back end. McBain was crafty and solid on the blue line. The rest of the defense was solid, always present to clean up messes in the slot. Outlet passes were generally crisp and quick. Budaj was a wall in net, and all the Condors’ screen chances that he didn’t stop were shot or deflected wide before they got to him (hence the 5-0 shutout).

The Condors’ shooting was terrible. It could have been a 5-2 game with a little better shot accuracy. They reminded me a lot of the Kings in that regard.