George Parros: Ducks hit some turbulence
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The hairs on the back of my neck are standing at attention, which can mean only one thing … it’s blogging time once again! I was so excited that I couldn’t even nap on the plane today … but maybe it was also due to the nonstop turbulence that we had all the way to San Jose. Not only has the recent weather slowed down my commutes from L.A. to Orange County (why is it that nobody can drive in rain out here?), but now it is affecting our flights.
It’s a good thing that Teemu didn’t join us for this first leg of our two week, six-game road trip because he does not handle turbulence very well. There is no way we could have completed a card game because he constantly has to leave his seat for one at the front of the plane. The new resident ‘bad flier’ of the group was our equipment manager, Doug Shearer. He was in such rough shape. He pulled the old ‘parakeet maneuver’ and draped a blanket completely over his head. I can’t say that I have ever seen that one before.
Despite the rough ride up to NorCal, we arrived safely and hope to kick off this monster road trip in the finest of fashion, with a win at HP Pavilion. This is always a tough environment to play in. The building is loud and the Sharks always play well to their home crowd. Your Ducks have been playing well lately, however and I would expect that to be the case tomorrow night.
Personally it has been a trying few weeks for me. That is usually the case when one finds himself on the IR. It’s not anywhere you want be during the course of a season. I am hoping those days are coming to an end though and am looking forward to joining my fellow brothers in battle.
In my absence there has been no shortage of fisticuffs, though, with many different guys shedding their gloves for a five-minute vacation in the box. But these tough guys (Troy Bodie, Mike Brown and others) have been setting a new trend as well … scoring! They have all been banging pucks in. Bodes just had a big game-winner for the boys the other night against Buffalo. It has really helped our squad to get scoring from all four lines and the back end as well. Hopefully that will continue to be the case in the coming weeks.
We have a big playoff push here and every point counts, so follow along and hopefully watch us claw our way into contention. I’ll be blogging from the road next week as well, so stay tuned out there in cyberland.
Over and out,
George
The Times is pleased to have George Parros, the Ducks’ enforcer, writing for us this season with his thoughts on the ups and downs of life in the NHL.