Play in an annual summer fun ball hockey game. This year with be the 7th game. I have played in every one except the 1st one. Game is played in the East End of Thunder Bay on the rink area of Charry Park. Plaque at park plus image of rink taken from Google Earth below.
Most people involved I met through my cousin Mike. Many no longer live in town and come back from Calgary and other places to visit relatives and friends plus play in the annual game. Dave Scott is the Commish and has a page on Facebook for this game; page is called The Ball Hockey League (even thought it's really just an annual game).
I made up some souvenir tickets for last years game. I got the old paper background from somewhere on Deviant Art. Fonts used were Beauty School Dropout, Georgia, Fake Receipt, and Bellerose. BHL logo I vectorized, made sepia and faded.
This year I have been working on a poster. Main part of poster is taken with permission from some artwork entitled 'Hockey Team' by AngusMcLeod that I found on the Deviant Art site.
I cropped out two of the players from a jpeg of his artwork, cleaned up some jpeg residue, and tried to fill in the areas where necessary. It's pretty well finished; only thing that may change is putting a date on it when a date is chosen for the game. Poster is supposed to look a bit like an old time boxing poster.
Fonts used were Fulton Markers Regular, Acknowledgement, and Commercial
Script BT. Top corners are just some clip art corners.
Dave and his brother Kevin had provided souvenir shirts and jerseys in many of the previous years. Last years was this one.
I no longer have a Spiders replica jersey (sold it years ago) but I still have a picture of it. The Spiders played in the IHL for one season 1995-96 at the Cow Palace (same arena as the Shamrocks from decade before).
When I had it I was thinking of customizing it as one of my favourite players, who was the player/coach for the team but never did.
Here's a pic of the front and back of a game worn Langway jersey.
On one jersey, hockey, or other online forum (maybe game used universe, maybe somewhere else???) someone had a picture of a prototype for the Spiders numbers. Apparently they didn't go with this option for the numbers because of the additional cost.
The Spiders were going to move to Victoria, B.C. but the deal fell though due to Victoria not replacing it's aging arena.
Decided to use the squirrel from the Expo 67 parking lots signs for some DIY jerseys. Had a white, gold, and maroon jersey. Didn't have much maroon twill left so made a white squirrel. Sewed the white squirrel on the jersey but was kind of small on so decided to add something to it. Found a town in Ontario (Exeter) that has white squirrels through some Flickr images. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiless/2686726915/in/set-72157614394297544
Wasted too much time looking through fonts. Ending up using 'City of' for the Squirrels, 'Grange' for Exeter. When added the acorn on the back also added 67 in a font (Consort-RR Bold Condensed) like the one used by the Expos (as a nod to the Expo 67 signs).
Only maroon jersey I had laying around was an old maroon, green and white CCM jersey. Made the squirrel much bigger and put it on that one. Jersey ended being to small to fit over my hockey equipment - will probably split the seam down the armpit and add some white or green or white&green material to enlarge it. The #12 on the back has a heat pressed #1 and a sewn on #2; I suspect I put the sewn #2 on because the 2 was coming apart when I got the jersey.
Wore the white jersey for the first time last Tuesday at hockey and got one goal playing forward on a shoveling lob shot off a pass and one goal playing defence on a shot along the ice from the point in a low scoring 3-2 win for the white side over the dark.
Haven't posted in a while. Am probably going to start to run out of jerseys to post unless I include some jerseys I don't have. If you don't already have your own blog, feel free to email me with some of your DIY or favourite personal hockey jersey and some info and I'll probably post it all here. Maybe I should start posting some of my wife's crafts or some other stuff.
Usually wear one of a pair of a set of green jerseys at hockey at whatever day is closest to St. Patrick's Day. The green one is a practice jersey. I found the logo online, like it, and decided to made it out of twill and sewed it onto a blank green jersey. The white one I later found on Ebay. Wore them both this past Thursday at hockey.
Also picked up this booklet off Ebay on the San Francisco Shamrocks of the PHL league of the 1970s.
When I am out and about on St. Patrick's Day usually wear my cable knit sweater along with my green Irish hat and if wearing a belt this belt buckle; the hat and sweater probably need a good cleaning. I have some Irish heritage on my mother's (Baxter is her maiden name) side. Apparently generations ago those ancestors lived around Cork in Ireland.
Yesterday was St. Urho's Day. http://www.sainturho.com/ . The Thunder Bay links are ones I sent to this website, and the button is one I found at a local thrift shop.
I guess that's all for today. Going to have supper soon and maybe do some work on a DIY white, maroon and gold squirrel hockey jersey. Will post some pics when further along with it.
After leaving the beer leagues, went back to playing 'scrub' aka 'pickup' hockey. My dad put together hockey that ended up being on Tuesday & Thursday afternoons at the Fort William First Nation Arena. We usual play at the larger Rink#1 but due to tournaments and other events sometime play on Rink#2. With him being away in Arizona almost half the year, I eventually ended up being the one running it most of the time. It's an older group consisting of players mainly in their 50s and 60s with some in their 40s and 70s and one player in his 80s with a varying degrees of speed, skill, and hockey sense.
The most recent pics I have at the moment are from 2012. Here's a team pic.
Here's a few "action" shots from around the same time.
Quite a while back I bought a number kit in the Tiffany font style for cheap. Decided to copy the numbers and stick them on one jersey of mine and put part of the bought kit on another jersey.
The first jersey was a purple and grey jersey. Sewed a Reading Royals of the ECHL crest on it. Photocopied my bought number kit and used it to make a template to make the numbers in silver and black.
Wanted a "matching" white jersey to wear on the ice. My Baltimore
Bandits replica fit the bill. The Bandits played in the AHL in the mid-nineties for 2 seasons. Used some of the font kit and made some
more numbers with the following results.
Not even close to the style of numbers Baltimore used in the AHL but in my opinion seems to work well
Not a very long post today so I'll add a couples quotes pulled from a book in the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg I just finished reading. Quotes from the character Walter Slovotsky; not part of "Slovotsky's Laws". Many of those can be found here: http://sneakysquirrelblog.blogspot.ca/2010/12/slovotskys-laws.html
"It's a sin to let good food go to waste, and I like to pick my sins carefully"
"The time before dawn is when I like to start staggering toward a bed to sleep in, not staggering out of it."
Planning to go off to the last Lakehead Thunderwolves home game of the regular season in a couple hours; after last night they are now tied for 3rd in their division with Guelph.
[* Edit - They won 9-3; they were up 8-0 after 2 periods. Had seats to the left of Lakehead's goalie. Frequently saw the mascot Wolfie nearby as there was a kid's birthday party a couple rows in front of me. Here's a pic of the Waterloo Warriors goalie that played tonight. Their jersey pattern is somewhat similar to your Ryan Connelly's original Invaders jersey (though not as nearly as nice - no real logo, black instead of brown, and oddly an added number on the top of the chest when there are already sleeve numbers). At the game noticed the Warrior's goalie has a Warrior brand stick; by coincidence or design stick almost the team's name]
Finally on this Groundhog day while walking back to the
car in the cold after the game was done, still suffering from my cold or
bad allergies or whatever I have, this quote from the movie Groundhog Day came to mind and seemed appropriate at the time: "I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."
In old SIJHL news the Duluth Clydesdales folded a couple weeks ago and the league is now down to five teams. They finished with a record slightly worse than my beer league Polar Mechanical Flyers did their last season (2-32-2 vs 2-26-2). http://tbnewswatch.com/sports/259992/SIJHL-revokes-Clydesdales-franchise
After the loss of a few regulars and no one else wanting to keep the team going the Bandits folded. For the next season, 2004/05, I played for Peter Plummer's B-division team: Buzzy's (after Buzzy's Jerzee City) Wild. We had jerseys in the Mighty Ducks style but with a screened crest, that was sewn on, of the Minnesota Wild's logo but in the Ducks colour scheme.
The team he was also running on the A-Side was the Wolves. They had acquired a team set that the Fort William Wolves had used when they were in the SIJHL (the team had changed names to the North Stars). The jerseys for that team were in the Islanders 'fish stick' style with the odd shaped numbers but with a front crest of a Wolf's head.
The following season, 2005/06, I spared for the 'Make Be Leafs'. I used a blue and a white Nordiques jersey when playing for that team. I later acquired a team jersey at a local thrift store.
After the Leafs, I ended up the next two seasons on the Polar Mechanical (previously Galaxy) Flyers. Many of the team had the Galaxy orange jerseys. Others had different orange jerseys. I made up a few jerseys for myself and sold a couple to some newer players. I am beside the goalie in the picture wearing a jersey with a yellow bi-plane in a circle with the Polar Mechanical logo beneath.
I sewed a Philadephia flyers crest on a jersey and made and sewed on #3's. Plus I made a Polar mechanical logo on one jersey similar to Philadephia's logo by turning the 'P' in Polar Mechanical's logo sideways and adding a 'M'.
My dad or wife recorded a few clips of a game. Maybe on his video camera; more likely on a digital camera they had at the time (considering how short the clips are).
After the 2007/08 season with the team ending with a 2-26-2 record and
0-4 in the playoffs the players decided to not play in the league past the end of that season. With
the team having the oldest average age of players, the loosening of
age restrictions in the league, and the league dropping from two division down to one,
it really wasn't as much fun for the team anymore. I looked into the team joining the 35+ age Centennial League but their 4 team league did not want to expand. I played with the Flyers
in 2008/09 on 'scrub' aka 'pickup' hockey where the Flyers team played
against a Hansford Insurance team Thursday nights. I think they still
are doing so.
After 2009 due to regularly working nights, I was unable to join a league team even if I had wanted to. Even though I was one of the younger guys on the Flyers, I was probably well above the average age in the league now and not exactly anywhere near in top shape anyway.
