NHL All Star Skills Competition

Some times, you are just in the right place at the right time.  While I was in Austria for the Downhill, Andy asked if I would do the NHL skills competition in Raleigh North Carolina.  I was on the fence about it, as we had been really busy and I did need to get home.  In the mean time, I recommended that Ken from North Bay, ON have a crack at it.  You can read Ken's blog here.

Long story made short, late on Friday I grabbed a flight from Buffalo to Raleigh the got me to my hotel about 3am Saturday morning.   After a few hours sleep, Ken and I had a rehearsal at 8am to test the fastest skater and the hardest shot.  This was videoed and you can see some of it on the NHL network, including JR missing the net completely and blowing all the wires out of the radar magic box.

Carleton makes a big save with a rebound

One cool thing you didn't get to see on TV was the team Mascot's game.  Imagine all these guys running around in full costume and playing hockey.  Some of them can skate and play hockey as well.

Now, I've always wanted to take pictures from the corner of the ice in an NHL hockey game.  Here was my chance.  But, I got the mascots.  ;)

Showtime!  Timing is 99.99% boredom and 0.01% shear terror.  We got 100% of the 0.01% for this event (not that the organizers could tell).  Ken describes some of this in his blog.

Chara with a warm up shot

Ken also built and designed the interface box that works with the radar gun.  All I can say is that his code running in assembler is pretty darn fast.  The radar gun spits out lots of speeds.  Ken's box has to analyze all the data and save the highest reading and then send it to the display.  Since I was shooting pictures at a 8/second rate, I could tell that the update to the Alge display was there about the same time the puck started to slow down as it hit the back of the net.

Zdeno Chara and Ken debating hardest shot

Every event has a highlight of some sort.  We got to brush elbows with some pretty cool guys.  All were very friendly and you could tell they love the sport.  Just after Chara does his record breaking shot (105.9 mph/170kph) he came over to sit on the boards by the timing box.  He even asked permission.  :)   He and Ken get into a discussion who the record holder was and by how much.  Eventually Chara did set Ken straight on his facts.

I was able to grab Ken's camera (actually, it was his son's) and get this picture for Ken.  I'm sure that he will have it printed and framed for his (Ken's) own personal birthday present.  

I have more pictures here.

Ken had the trip home from hell.  We were both at the Airport in Raleigh at 8am Sunday.  I had an 8:30 flight, while Ken had a 2:30pm flight.  He did try to get his flight changed, but no luck.  When he got to JFK they had cancelled the next flight to YYZ which delayed him an hour.  That caused him to miss his flight to North Bay, so he had to spend a night in a hotel at YYZ.  Last I heard, he got home about 8:30am on Monday, in time for him to go to his real job.  BTW, Sunday was his birthday!  Happy Birthday Ken.  Join the timing team and see the world.  You've now made it to the big leagues.