It seems as though my “3 Things.” posts are dawn to tragedies. Volume II, it was Wade Belak (RIP). Volume III, it was Lokomotiv (RIP) and now Volume IV is being published on the 10th anniversary on September 11th, 2001. I was too young to remember the horrible events of that day, so I won’t talk too much about it. All I know is that those events were some of the worst and most shocking events to take place in North American history. Hopefully no more tragedies take place and Volume V can be more cheerful.
1. AWH is still looking for staff + other logistics stuff.
AWinningHabit is always looking for new people to join our fansided family. Anyone can write no matter how old, how young, really ANYONE can write if you’ve got decent writing skills. Please contact me or Steven if this is something that interests you. As per the logistics stuff, You’ve probably realized that I’ve been posting more than my Tuesday and Friday quota. That being said, I’ve decided to boost my quota to 3 days a week. So from this week on you can expect posts from me every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.
2. I’m building a Habs “Shrine” in my room.
I’d like to refrain from calling it a “shrine” because usually the term “shrine” is associated with what stalkers build in their rooms, which makes me feel like what I’m doing is creepy. Is it creepy? Maybe. But it is still really fun to go around your house and scavenge up all the memorabilia you have lying around. Mostly I only did this to distract me from the fact that Hockey was over and it wasn’t coming back for months; It worked for about a week, but now I still find myself asking “Is it October yet?”
I’ll continue buying Habs stuff and building my “Montreal themed corner”. If it’s something that interests you, I’ll be posting a finished product (If I ever finish) on my Twitter @JScaresHabs.
And for anyone who is wondering what is on the shelf: 2 hats, a deck of cards, a mug, a watch, a puck from the forum and a piggy bank (my house key also has the Habs on it, but I need that)
3. Adjustments I’d like to see in NHL 12.
Because NHL 12 is coming out in a few days, I decided to put together a list of the things I’d like to see changed from NHL 11. As it turns out there are 3 things on the list. That means 3 things within a “3 things” posts, 3 thingsception?
a) There are no ghosts in the NHL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ8-QERgu_o
So why do things like that happen? Mike Fisher shouldn’t be allowed to swing his stick right through Hal Gill’s chest. Yet, NHL 11 shows us that he can. If the players actually had substance, that play turns from a sweet batted-out-of-the-air goal to aggravated assault with a blunt object. If the NHL games want to become more realistic, this needs to be fixed.
b) Custom goals against frustration moves.
In NHL 11 they added a feature when you can control your player’s celebration after he scores a goal, so I thought why not do the exact opposite, and allow the users to express the anger they feel through a user-controlled fit of rage. The possibilities are next to endless, you could have the player bombard the ref for calling it a goal or sarcastically wave his arms in a “no goal” manner. You could have your player slam his stick on the ice, break it over his knee or over the crossbar, or you could even pay homage to Keith Ballard and break the stick over your goalie’s face. Really anything would be acceptable, I think it’d be a fun feature to include, maybe even if it’s successful, users could come up with their own and send it in to EA to program, then put them up for download in the Playstation store/Microsoft store. That’d make it the real custom celebration.
c) “The Price move”
You probably remember the preseason game in 2008 against Detroit, where Carey Price made a unbelievable save where he swatted in out of mid-air. (In case you don’t remember, here it is.)
As we all know this was an amazing save, so great that EA payed tribute to it by programming it into NHL 09. It continued through the games and does appear in NHL 11. Scratch that. It happens every single time a goalie gets a piece of the puck and it deflects high. At first I thought it was cool that our goalie made such a great save, that it is programmed into a game, but I soon realized that it was the most annoying feature in the whole game. Every time you take a hard shot that deflects high off the goalie, and you think that it’ll be a goal for sure, but then “Oh, look the backup goalie on the Japanese national team can perfectly replicate the 2008 save of the year, that makes sense.” Seriously it needs to go, or even better, make it so only Price is able to do it.
I hope some real hockey news comes out soon, then my “3 things” post won’t have to contain such silly topics. Until then… follow me and Steven on twitter, @JScaresHabs and @StevenEllisNHL