Giveaway: 20 Years of the ECHL

Mancuso takes readers on a tour that has seen the “East Coast Hockey League” transform from five teams in four states into the “ECHL” with 25 teams across North America.

The book has more than 200 photographs and interviews with league founders Henry Brabham and Bill Coffey as well as former commissioners Patrick J. Kelly and Richard W. Adams and current commissioner Brian McKenna. The interviews help provide insight into the important role that the ECHL played in minor professional hockey in North America, introducing it into four states and 25 cities while returning it to 21 other cities including the historic expansion that added seven West Coast teams for the 2003-04 season.

The author profiles 50 of the most outstanding figures in ECHL history as well as 50 outstanding ECHL alumni who skated in the NHL and 20 of the greatest ECHL head coaches that have moved up the professional ranks.

So how to enter? Easy - go to this thread and make a post. It can be anything, “I’m in” works just fine. Two posts gets you dq’d. Lurkers - it can be your first post, we’re cool with that. Register if you’re not a member already. I’ll ship to anywhere.

Gotta have the book now? The ECHL is selling it directly on their website.

Contest rules | Entry thread

Slow St Patrick’s

Just two games last night, only one fight, but it was a good one.

Daniel Carcillo took on Rick Rypien mid-way through the first period of the Canucks 3-1 win over the Coyotes.

Carcillo racked up 21 PIMs last night.  Two of them led to the Canucks third goal.  Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky said Carcillo’s a target:

“I thought Danny played a tremendous game,” Gretzky said. “His penalty late in the (second) period where they ended up scoring their third goal, I thought the call wasn’t warranted. It was two guys pushing each other and Danny gets the extra penalty. He’s definitely a marked man.”

Welcome back Boogey

Derek Boogaard played his first game last night since Jan 22.

Fighting Canes

With Wade Brookbank and Tim Conboy on the roster the Carolina Hurricanes have the most fighting majors since 1997-98, the first season the team played in Carolina.  Thanks to Luke DeCock of The News & Observer for pointing that out.

Commenting fixed

Thanks to those who sent me email about the blog commenting being down.  It’s been fixed.

Video added

Daniel Carcillo vs Rick Rypien Mar 17, 2008

Some reads

Pronger stomp part of NHL culture: Stewart
Okposo prepares for NHL debut | Isles’ Kyle Okposo ready for debut
New lease on NHL life
Sharks Shelley got ‘too excited’ on play that led to penalty

hockeyfights.com on Twitter

Not sure what RSS is?  You can get the latest news and alerts from hockeyfights.com on Twitter.

Twitter is known as a “microblogging” service.  Basically, you can write short posts (140 characters or less) via the web, IM or SMS (texting on your phone).

hockeyfights.com friends Kukla’s Korner is also on Twitter.  So is On Frozen Blog (Twitter).

There are also accounts for the Detroit Red Wings and Edmonton Oilers, however I do not know if these are official accounts.

I have my own account, and you can also follow MMA on Tap via Twitter updates.

If you have your own Twitter account, feel free to drop it in the comments.

An Update on Updates

So a big weekend and no updates yet, let me explain: I moved yesterday, and while the move went as well as a move could go, the cable situation was/is lacking.  That doesn’t mean a complete lack of videos, I was able to get a couple of things here and there, and thanks to a couple of friends, I’ll be able to fill in at least a few things within the next couple of days.  Expect a log update and the first few vids later Monday.

Youtubin It

The above is a screenshot taken earlier today.  It shows Youtube’s most viewed channels for the day.  At one point, the hockeyfights.com channel reached the top spot.  That’s with no video of Richard Zednik’s injury, which I didn’t think was appropriate for this channel.

During hockey season, this site’s channel is frequently ranked in the top Youtube channels.

On Target

The Anaheim Ducks, who have become a favorite of many visitors over the past two seasons because of their willingness to drop the gloves, have two players going to this year’s All-Star Game: Chris Pronger and Ryan Getzlaf.

The above video talks with both players during the making of an ASG commercial. Pronger talks about his first All-Star Game and the bragging rights between the winning and losing conferences. Getzalf discusses how respect can be earned by a player being named an All-Star.

Versus will be running an ad campaign on hockeyfights.com starting tomorrow to help promote the 2008 NHL All-Star Game, which takes place this Sunday at the Philips Arena in Atlanta. For those of you in the U.S., the game will be airing live on Versus starting on Sunday at 6 PM EST.

Vacation Notice

This is just a short note to explain why there will be a lack of videos and a few other things for the next week: I’m on vacation.  I’ll be back early next week and will try to update everything I’ve missed out on as quickly as possible.

During my absence John will be taking care of logs and some blog posts.  If you need forums help, feel free to contact Jamie or Bill.

You can always email me, but please realize there will be a delay in response.

Just One

Just one fight last night, Krys Barch going after Denis Gauthier for a low hit on Chris Conner.  Conner was unable to avoid Gauthier if he wanted to play the puck and not completely barrel over a linesman.

The clip:

Denis Gauthier vs Krys Barch Mar 13, 2007

ECHL:

Here’s MacDonald-Huxley from a couple of weeks ago:

Matt MacDonald vs Adam Huxley Mar 2, 2007

Some reads:

Pens’ Laraque sits with back spasms
Violent it is, but it’s hard to beat the NHL for civility

Server update:

The issues we were having have cleared up, many pages should be speedier, I’m working on optimizing the few that still have a little lag.

Hello David Koci

Hope you caught the Hawks-Yotes game last night.  Don’t say we didn’t tell you to.  hockeyfightstradamus.com, that’s us.

In case you missed it, David Koci came into the NHL with a bang.  Three fights and 42 PIMs total.  Two were against Josh Gratton, both entertaining scraps, and the third was versus Nick Boynton, who took exception to a hit Koci threw on Bill Thomas.  Koci picked up a gamer for the hit (along with a charging major) and another gamer for his third fight of the game.

The first fight of that game was actually a non-Koci fight, a good bout between Danny Richmond and Daniel Carcillo.

Earlier in the day Colton Orr took on Georges Laraque.  You just can’t outmuscle BGL.

The clips:

Colton Orr vs Georges Laraque Mar 10, 2007
Danny Richmond vs Daniel Carcillo Mar 10, 2007
David Koci vs Josh Gratton Mar 10, 2007
David Koci vs Josh Gratton Mar 10, 2007
David Koci vs Nick Boynton Mar 10, 2007

The second Koci-Gratton clip has a short interview with Koci that they play during the replay of the fight.

Also earlier in the day Jeremy Reich took on Darren Reid and in the evening Cam Janssen fought Andrew Peters.

ETA on Reich-Reid is mid-day and unknown for Janssen-Peters.  I’ll update as I know more.

The downloads will be added mid-day as well.

Sever issues:

Things are still running, but a bit bumpy.  For the nerd-curious, one of the databases is lagging hard.  I hope to have this cleared up some time this week and it should be very speedy around here afterwards.

Last night:

I went to the Isles-Caps game and sat with the Caps Road Crew.  Good set of fans.  If they can follow the Caps like that, they have to be.  I hope to write up more about the game later in the day either here or on The Ice Block (I’ll link over there if I do).

Some reads:

Janssen puts up a fight
Laraque finally a big hit for Penguins
The legend grows: Bob Probert. A convincing winner over Dave Brown in our final

Chris Simon update:

Still nothing official released about his suspension, but most are accepting the season+seven playoff games.  Whether or not it was a real leak of information, it’s perfect for the league.  They get to gauge reaction and then make the real call at a later date.

Simon also issued an apology.

Our on-going timeline of the incident.

Update 250pm: Added:

Jeremy Reich vs Darren Reid Mar 10, 2007

Update 515pm: Downloads updated.

An Update on Updating

Cable modems are great when they work.  Shame mine’s been absolute crap the past week.

I didn’t get to do a thing tonight until just now and I don’t trust this thing will be good for long.

Tops on the agenda:
- Update log
- Post Reich-Tarnasky fight from last night

After that:
- Get the downloads updated (might be rough if connection is still shakey)
- Update Buffalo-Ottawa post, there’s a ton of articles and blog posts to get to

If not now, then late morning hopefully.  I still have some instigator posts coming too.

Server notes:

Yes, yesterday morning was painful.  Sorry about that.  Some adjustments had to be made to the server setup to get things running smoothly again.  This happened right after I said I’d do the hardware udpates over the summer.  Murphy’s Law in effect.  Updates will be coming soon, but either way, things shouldn’t get that rocky again.

Update 845pm: My connection’s getting better.  Just in time to start to try and get things going for tonight.  If it holds up, all will be updated tonight.  Thanks for your patience.

Quick Update

Just letting everyone know I’m making adjustments to the server setup as quickly as possible to handle all the traffic.  Sorry about the temporary slowdown.

The vids are up on the fight pages:
Jean-Francois Jacques vs Ole-Kristian Tollefsen Feb 22, 2007
Mathieu Roy vs Jody Shelley Feb 22, 2007
Todd Fedoruk vs Tim Gleason Feb 22, 2007
Chris Neil vs Drew Stafford Feb 22, 2007
Adam Mair vs Anton Volchenkov Feb 22, 2007
Ray Emery vs Andrew Peters Feb 22, 2007
Ray Emery vs Martin Biron Feb 22, 2007

Youtube seems to be on and off with the brawl vid.  It’s happened before and generally stabilizes after a short while.

Pop-free

For a while now I’ve been phasing out the pop under ads.  There was one left for a while, and now it’s gone.  hockeyfights.com is now a pop-free website.

If you get any pops while viewing this site, please let me know.

More later…

The First Videos Feed

The first video feed offered up is one for fights only.

Subscribe in a reader

It’s pretty simple: the latest fight videos added to the system, no matter what league and when they’re from.  They’ll appear in the “latest added” order, so you don’t miss a thing.

The next one will be for all videos: fights, games, and anything else added.

Other hockeyfights.com feeds.

Subscribe away.

Introducing Fight and Game Pages

So here it is, the next big update. Every fight and game will now have its own page. More content, better information, more interactive and even easier linking.

Here's the walkthrough:

Fight pages

User reviews

You can now leave your own review for any fight in the log, NHL or otherwise. It's completely optional and right in the voting area.

Relaxed voting

Player ratings are now optional. This is to allow more people to vote on older fights or non-NHL fights when you might not know enough about the player to give them an accurate rating.

Rate other reviews

Give a thumbs up or down to other user reviews. This will help us display the most accurate reviews first.

More results

Percentages for the winner options with the total number of votes.

More fights

If there were other fights from the game or other fights between the two players they're listed with a link to each fight page. Nothing appears if there were no other fights.

Videos

Yup, videos. I'll come back to this one.

Game pages

Fight listing

Pretty simple, if there are any fights in the game, they're listed in normal log format.

Videos

Game-related videos here. Highlights, full game, press conferences, etc.

To be added

If a game has no fights or video, it's pretty naked, not that I think many will click-through to those games anyway, but there is more coming.

User reviews will be added, just like the fight user reviews. Some games will have recaps/notes. Boxscores are probably coming, it's something I'm still working on.

Videos

Back to the videos. It's just what you think it is, video embedded into the page. For the moment, I'm using both Youtube and Google Video.

Indicators

Below any log entry will be an icon indicating there's a video, plus how many user reviews a fight may have.

On any team schedule page, the results will now be a link to the game page. The same video icon is used to indicate whether or not there's game video.

Examples

McSorley vs Probert Feb 04, 1994
Both feeds of one of the best fights of all-time.

Keane vs Walker Oct 11, 1997
Both feeds of a great middleweight scrap.

Mirasty vs Sugden Jan 12, 2007
Some LNAH action.

Toronto at Atlanta Nov 30, 2006
Game highlights, full game video, press conference, fight listing.

Calgary at Minnesota Jan 26, 2007
Game highlights, check clip, fight listing.

Find the latest

On the videos page the last 20 fight and game video additions are listed.

Feed me!

I'm going to make an RSS feed with links to the latest vids - so I ask you this: should I include all video updates or just fights? Yes, I could just make two feeds, but if the overwelming majority just want one, I'll just do that. Feel free to comment or email me.

Before you respond, something to keep in mind:

More videos

Some videos can be player and/or team-related, but not a fight or game. An upcoming feature will be the addition of those videos.

More indicators

Latest videos added will be listed on player, team and league pages.

More lists

Once this has all been live for a little while, we'll have "most viewed" lists.

What's next?

Well, I've mentioned a bunch of the "coming soon" features, but in terms of videos, I'll be posting any big highlights I've missed from this season, some minor and juniors clips, and mix in old school stuff.

Please, please do not make requests. I get a ton, it's impossible to fill them all.

A lot's been done, and there's still a lot to do. Hope you like it, enjoy.

Update 340am: On the videos page the fight pages and Youtube vids aren't replacements, just additions. The downloads are right below, just scroll.

Linking Up

Not much to say about the one game last night (no need to update the videos page), but there are quite a few good things to point you towards.

First, there’s a new Original on the front page, Behind “The Code”, an interview with Ross Bernstein, author of The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL.

Win a copy of the book! Rules | Entries

Blog posts from yesterday:
* Garrett Burnett’s Status
* Grenier Caught With Pants Down

Looking at the MSM:
* Marleau’s fight inspires Sharks
* Enforcer role becoming endangered
* Franke wants UHL to focus on its fans
* Making a case for rivalries

Due to the holiday in the States, many of today’s games start early, wake up.

Big Pimpin’ Without Spendin’ G’s

I thought it wouldn’t be possible to cram any more pimpage today, but it turns out - I can.

You see, Sportsnet Connected pimped the site so much last night that I almost feel a little dirty.  Almost.  But not really.  Or at all.

And there we have it, big pimpin’ without spendin’ g’s.  I haven’t figured out if that gives me a leg up on Jay-Z or not.

Anyway, I’d like to thank Sportsnet, great spot, keep up the good work.

Quick edit: Youtube seems to be burping right now, and the video seems to be on and off.