A Few Small Tidbits

I know, I know. It's Utah week. It's the beginning of a new era at Michigan. You're not thinking about hockey, and I don't blame you. But I have a blog to update once in a blue moon, so here are a few tidbits:

From what I've heard (and it seems to have been confirmed in this USCHO thread), the hockey band will be moving from their perch on the south side of the press box to a new location in section 19. The plus side to this is it will allow for the band to increase in size. 30 members is what was reported by one of the band members at USCHO. My concern is that putting them in section 19 will make it hard for the students in section 14 to hear them. But the sound resonates so much in Yost, I'm not actually sure that'll be a problem. It's not like everyone can discipline themselves enough to cheer in unison to "The Victors" anyway. There will also be a new band director, who reportedly knows more about hockey than the previous guy. But don't get your hopes up. He's probably still not going to be allowed to dance. Because it's a tool of the devil, you know.

Mike Cammalleri is happy to be back playing for a Canadian team. So is Todd Bertuzzi, but we don't really care about him.

Mac Bennett played in the BeanTown Classic Hockey Tournament. His team went 3-2 and won one of the fifth-place games. He had at least a goal and an assist.

Ex-Daily writer, and my old hockey teammate, James Dowd wrote an article about Aaron Palushaj for Inside College Hockey. Here was a quote from Billy Powers in the article:

Michigan assistant coach Billy Powers on Palushaj: “I think Aaron surprised some people last year. When you look at his numbers, he’s always been known as a good offensive player, but was more of a goal scorer. He’s still a kid who can score, but we saw more of his playmaking ability and that he could get the puck to teammates who were in a position to score.”

As I've stated before, I think we'll see a significant jump in goals for Palushaj this year. He was thought of as one of the top snipers in the 2007 Draft and he had just 10 goals last season. With Porter, Kolarik, and Pacioretty gone, that frees up more than 460 shots on goal. There will be a lot of pucks to go around and Palushaj's goal total should benefit.

Old news, but I failed to mentioned that Palushaj had 3-2--5 at Team USA's WJC tryout. I imagine he's a lock for the team along with Matt Rust.

Lastly, The Curse of Bryan Herta update that I know you're all longing for. The Andretti-Green team once again had one of the fastest cars at the latest round of the ALMS. Frenchy McFrench had the Acura in the overall lead for a portion of the race. A radio malfunction (or shoddy pit crew work, which wouldn't be shocking) caused Montagny to fail to pit under a caution. He had to make his stop under green flag conditions and was on pace for a 6th place finish in class until two cars ran out of fuel on the final lap, putting him into fourth place in the P2 class. Yet another disappointing finish. Oh, and the co-driver stuffed the 26 into a slower car, knocking a piece of bodywork off and hurting the handling. That was fun too. Also, Robin Miller from Speed TV has reported that Acura is dropping the AGR team after the season. So that's kind of funny.

The Curse of Bryan Herta

There's really nothing going on in the hockey world right now, is there?

Louie Caporusso was invited to Canada's World Junior Championship tryout camp. That's something Michigan Hockey-related. (HT: NorthernWolverine) I've even got a little analysis for you! There were 44 players invited to the camp. Caporusso was named as one of three replacements added after it became apparent that Steven Stamkos, Zach Boychuk and Cody Goloubef wouldn't make the camp. I'd say that doesn't bode too well for his chances of making the team unless he absolutely blows them away.

Also, as WCH reported, Bob Z's cousin Austin Czarnik has committed to Michigan State for the 2011-ish season. I don't know if we were recruiting him or not, but it's always disappointing to see a relative of a Wolverine end up somewhere else. Same deal with Bryan Rust and Kenny Ryan.

Now for the weekly "Curse of Bryan Herta" update:

The American Le Mans Series was off this weekend, but the IndyCars were in action up in Edmonton. Out of the four Andretti-Green Racing cars, Tony Kanaan had the best finish. He was 9th. Golden Boy Marco Andretti wrecked yet again (I believe that's six times this year), this time taking out teammate Danica Patrick. Danica somehow resisted the urge to charge down to his pit.

The poor results let to an hour-long team meeting after the race. Good times!

Is it wrong that I'm taking so much pleasure in the misfortunes of Andretti-Green Racing ever since they let Herta go? I love Tony Kanaan, but the rest of them (especially the ALMS car) can finish at the back of the pack and I'll love every second. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Since releasing Herta, the ALMS car has finished multiple laps down in both races and Marco Andretti has wrecked three times, with a best-finish of 17th. The only thing that could make this better is if the Indy 500 was yet to come, so we could hear the May staple, "Andretti is slowing down on the backstretch!"

I love it.

I'm a Bad Fan

I've been reading The Fort over on Rivals, and everyone is so geeked for the start of the football season tomorrow. And I just can't do it. I mean, part of me is happy that football is back and that starting next week, my Saturdays and Sundays are booked for the next four monthsm, but I can't get excited about App State.

It's just another no-win game. Win big and yippee do, it's App State. If it's close and we win, we're all pissed it was close and no one much cares that we got the win, it's more relief that we avoided a monumental upset (see Ball State last year). Lose and the world ends. Where the fun in that? When all you're basically hoping is that nothing goes horrifically wrong and that you get out of the game without any injuries, the only thing to be pumped about is that baseball can now fade into the background again.

I'm in Michigan right now. I could hop in my car tomorrow morning, drive 45 miles to the west and I'm sure someone would be willing to give me a ticket to go to this game. But I can't do it. If it makes me a bad fan, it makes me a bad fan. Call it my own silent protest that we couldn't even manage to find a Division 1-A opponent to schedule. I'd prefer to save my first real football watching experience of the year for Oregon next week.

Instead of attending/watching that game, I will be heading down to Belle Isle for the American Le Mans Series race. My favorite driver, local boy (and unforunately a Bucknut) Bryan Herta, is starting third and was fastest in practice. Those cars are fricken cool and they're going to slice and dice their way around that circuit. It's going to be an absolute blast. I'll be checking the score on my phone at every opportunity, but I have no doubts that I made the right call about which event to attend this weekend.

By the way, the City of Detroit owes a big thank you to Roger Penske and to all the volunteers working out there at the track. I was there today for Free Prix Day and the island is in amazing condition. They've made a ton of improvements (mainly the paving of the paddock) to the track from six years ago when CART left the city. The volunteers were all great, the circuit should provide for better racing action, and God the weather was perfect. It's looking to be a great weekend down there, and it's another event to bring some positive pub to the city. Everyone was raving about what a beautiful setting it was for a race. I'm so happy that Penske was able to get the race back in the city. I swear they should just make that guy Mayor.

The one downer thusfar is that the shuttle system today was an absolute debacle. Rather than just getting on the bus and going to the track (like 6 years ago), they decided to start charging $5 apiece for the ride, which is fine, especially if they are only charging $5 for parking. But the execution was all wrong. It's like Alex Mitchell missed a block on our famed short-side sweep on third and one.

They were only set up for one person at a time to move through the line, despite a line of a couple hundred people (and multiple buses just sitting there, waiting to take people to the track). In an effort to speed up the line (which didn't work), one worker passed out bracelets. The next person came through and put them on each person (I'm 25, I can do that myself). Then you got up to the lady selling the bracelet and you had to read her the number off your bracelet so she could record it in the book (why? I don't know. It seems that since they were sequential, it'd be easy enough to keep track of which ones had been purchased). After that, a person next to her would give you a ticket that corresponded to your bracelet number (which was never used for anything). You were finally allowed, then, to proceed to the bus. It was the most inefficient thing ever. You've got 5 or 6 people working there. Just open up another point of sale or two!

The only thing that I can come up with is that they were worried about corruption or something (but for the $5 bus fee?) and this was a system of checks and balances. I'm not sure what the big deal is though. The bracelets were in sequential order. The city should know how many are being passed out. It'd be pretty easy to determine how much money should be in the kitty at the end of the day. Hell, give bracelets to the people at each parking lot and have them collect money as you're pulling into the lot. It's not that hard.

One person asked if we could buy bracelets for the rest of the weekend as well (so as to not have to go through this process again). The reply was no, but that that was a good idea and maybe they should think about doing that next year. Yikes.

Then we got on the bus. Our driver drove about 15 miles per hour (including during the trek onto the highway). He then explained that the driver of the bus behind him did not know the route and so he had to show him the way, and couldn't lose him. Shouldn't "knowing the route" be a prereq for something like that? Just asking. Like, maybe take a spin down there the day before so it doesn't become an issue? Or, they have these things called Garmins. They're pretty useful.

As well organized as this event seems to be, I'm fairly confident that they'll get it fixed for tomorrow (having more people at the point of sale would be a BIG help). But if they go with the same process, it's going to become an absolute disaster as 52,000+ people each day make their way down to the island.

Once on Belle Isle, though, it couldn't be more perfect. They've got stuff there for everyone. Moonwalks, slides, slot car racing, Playstations, autograph sessions and Disney stuff for the kids, there are concerts, the paddock, and booze for adults. And they found a support race (the ALMS) which is absolutely perfect for this track. I forgot how much I really do enjoy going to the races there. And even if the improvement to the track don't end up adding passing areas, for the ALMS cars it won't matter. They'll pass anywhere and everywhere. It's going to be awesome. The tighter the track, the more fun the racing gets because the LMP cars can't afford to dick around with the GT cars for too long. So the pressure is on to get past them, and get past them now.

So while hundreds of thousands of people are yelling "GO BLUE!" tomorrow, my alma mater will be in my thoughts, but I'll instead be yelling "GO BRYAN!" in what promises to be a much more exciting event. Just get through this "Functional DNP" without any injuries and then I can kick into football form next week. I've waited this long, I can handle seven more days....especially when all it means is that I'll miss a very vanilla 49-9 nailbiter. And the meltdown that's sure to ensue because OMG WE DIDN'T THROW DEEP ENOUGH!!!!11!