My Fandom Obsessions

what have you done to me!! i cannot articulate how Not Into Sport i was prior to this! anyway if you have any books u can recommend about hockey so i can read them for my Essays, please do... i guess...

More broadly, here are some posts that have collected hockey books that might be of interest:

@starrynet 's rec list of fiction/non-fiction + more recs in the replies/reblogs my rec list for an earlier jes anon requesting hockey writing @sequestering 's rec list for the same anon

you can also dig around my cte tag and find links to articles that would likely tie into your interest on disability, but a few articles as a jumping off point:

Eric Lindros is worried about everyone's concussions but his own | Michael Rosenberg Enforcers: Soul on Ice | Kent Russell [this essay rewired my brain] ‘What hurts now?’ For retired NHL goalies, the answer is often: everything | Scott Cruickshank [non-paywalled link] John Branch wrote a brilliant book called Boy on Ice, but this interview on NPR talks about some of the disabling aspects of hockey, specifically for athletes in an enforcer role

PENGUINS. all of them!

(not precisely to scale, but close)

i saw you in latvia and knew how lucky i was that i was going to be your teammate

geno escaping his hometown team to play for the pens

me three years superleague

“two-headed monster”

it’s me and geno

always for pittsburgh, always with sid

russia with geno

sid comforting geno post-olympics

2022 geno contract negotiations stalemate

not my wife, not my family, but he…

i hope nikita thinks of him as family. i do

Can you elaborate on the 'tiny mack spins'??? when does he do this? why?

Thank you for all the time and effort going into your posts 😚

why do players spin??

mostly to protect the puck and create space!!

when they turn or spin, they put their body between the defender and/ or puck + which makes it harder to steal.

it’s actually pretty hard to do though and takes some fancy footwork. most players can turn, but tight little ' ballerina' spins under pressure aren’t super common (the best at this ive seen is sid and patrick kane)

kinds of spins;

a) one spin

sometimes they spin once, getting out of a postion or to keep possession of the puck and protect it with your back

this is one of my favorite sid moves, he does it so often its called the 'crosby turn' :

example of mack doing the same one sid does;

b) two spins;

the second spin however resets the play or changes direction again & can be very confusing for defenders

a half double spin (going halfway on each);

a complete double spin;

when you see someone spin twice in tight space, it’s usually a sign they’re really comfortable with the puck and good at working in small areas.

mack doing his famous 'complete double spins';

here he goes backwards, *receive* large spin;

i also think its this skill that makes mack so good at outrageously sharp turns without loosing speed;

bonus: even the dogs are besties!

oh man you could NOT have asked me a better question. i do think the main thing that separates them is a sort of air of meloncholy that surrounds connor, whether that’s fairly earned or not.

sid is intense and dedicated and extremely competitive, just like connor, but he’s also affable and endearing. connor is not. i don’t mean this to say that connor isn’t friendly or happy or likeable, because he definitely IS, but i think connor struggles with public social interactions in a way sid never really has. connor’s certainly gotten better as he’s gotten more used to it, but i think he comes off as someone trying to be those things and often falling a little bit short. i think connor’s very serious in how he presents himself where sid can be dorky or goofier (and part of that is i think that sid has achieved success in his career via stanley cups/olympic golds/etc that connor has not and this means he can relax a little bit and chill out). all those stories about connor being very intense about winning and the pressure of greatness from a very young age seem to line up with this for me. i think connor loves hockey and he enjoys his life but i think he’s just an internally serious and quiet person in a way i don’t think sid is and this can come off as melancholy or socially awkward, especially given the pressure on connor to succeed and the struggles his team has faced during his career so far. basically i think sid would’ve been an average high school student popularity-wise if he hadn’t been exceptional at hockey but i think if connor hadn’t been exceptional at hockey he would’ve been bullied pretty severely. does that make sense.

I think one of the things that shields Sid is his deep abiding love for Being One of the Guys. Even at his most awkward, what he wanted most of all (after winning) was to be loved and accepted by his teammates. He wanted to hang out with them (ideally if they also would practice insane hours with him) so so so badly. And he was good enough at hockey that they would put up with his dorkyness.

We know that it wasn't smooth sailing, the early Pens teams were not universally nice to him, especially the older guys, to the point where Mario had to kind of mediate, and when Mario was out apparently it would get kinda toxic. I think about that sometimes-- like poor Sid, he's trying to live up to the hype and he's not just getting shit on by Flyers fans, the call is sometimes coming from inside the house. But he did have multiple friends on those teams among the younger guys, and those guys trained him pretty early on to associate teasing with affection. So even while he was getting tormented by opposing teams and fans, and maybe even by his own team a little bit, I think he had some social armor and confidence that came from achieving his true heart's desire (being a beloved part of a team).

Obviously Connor likes his team and all that, but I do think that deep down he's not a Make Me One of the Guys person like Sid is. Connor imprinted on one sarcastic German almost immediately and said to himself, basically, 'as long as this surly fridge on stilts lets me sit next to him at the lunch table I do not have to care about anyone else in this building. Oh no they made me the captain I have to care. Oh no oh dear oh no. Woe and such.'

Like who is Sid's best friend? It's Geno. Well but it's also Tanger. It's Flower. It's Army. It's Nate. It's Kathy. It's his precious child Bryan Rust or more specifically Bryan Rust's mustache. It's his trainer Andy. It's not Mitch Marner but Marns would like to get up in there. It's Mario but in like a weird dad way. Etc.

Who's Connor's best friend? Leon. Don't we mean Lauren? No. It's Leon.