With thanks going out to Friends of The Show Ali and Julia for hooking us up with the link, here is Geno Malkin's first English FSN Pittsburgh commercial:
I just want to take a second and offer my sincerest thanks to all of you for your support over the past week. The service was awful but in a twisted way, it was also beautiful. There was actually some laughter through the tears as the speakers related some silly stories about what nicknames he had, how he was somehow always Mr. Fix-it, and how his then-future-father-in-law didn't like him at first because the first time they met Fred told him he was going to marry his daughter. He was loved and it showed. I will return to The Show full-time tomorrow with a recap of the game, and over the weekend I'm going to go through the backlog (including SO MANY Roaming Penguins pics!) in my inbox and hopefully get it all posted.
Thank you all so much for your kind words and your patience. :)
Stagerat, Jenn Casey, and Adrienne F. sent in the link to a sweet new commercial starring our title man. The commercial is called simply "Cup." Enjoy:
We never want you in that photo again either, Sid.
Maria T. found this piece on NYTimes.com which describes how Siddo shot the new "Cup" commercial and how the NHL is using The Kid to market the sport.
Retired TSCS founder Jes Golbez found an awesome photo of what may be the funniest sign I have EVER seen at a hockey game (WARNING - Do not view with liquid in your mouth):
Stagerat sent along this article from St. Louis Today that says that the Pens' rise to the top over the past few years is the blueprint for success for any struggling hockey club. (Although, the author isn't so naive to think that having the Saint and Geno wasn't a big part of the Pens' big comeback.)
Lauren H. and Rachel C. sent in articles about the Pens' Swedish scavenger hunt and their tour of the Vasa Museum. (Make sure you keep checking Dan Potash's Swedish photoblog. He's a beast - he's been updating it constantly, and there are new pictures of the scavenger hunt, a hockey game the team watched, and a practice.)
Nikki spotted this street sign in Cape Cod:
71Crush sent in this photo that was featured in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Stephanie C., her son, her dad, and none other than Roaming Petr Penguin took a trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium on September 19th and then to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum on the 20th for her son's fourth birthday. Stephanie's own words introduce each photo below.
1. "Ready to go to the zoo!"
2. "At the zoo's main entrance:"
3. "With the newest elephants, babies Angelina and Zuri. They're a little hard to see in this photo, but it was pretty crowded, so it's the best shot I could get:"
4. and 5. "With his penguin pals!" [snoop: How awesome is it to see a Roaming Penguin with a real penguin?! :)]
"We had a lot of penguins swim up to Petr and give him a good checking out, as photo no. 6. shows:"
7. "In the children's play area, there's this thing, See If You Can Jump As Far As... and then it lists various animals, and how far they can jump. Turns out Petr can jump as far as a penguin!"
8. "A sign in the Children's Museum entrance. Petr says, 'You're welcome!'"
9. and 10. "When Fred Rogers retired, he and WQED donated much of the original Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood stuff to the Children's Museum. Here's Petr with a lovely photo of Mr. Rogers and the show's band, and with the original Make Believe inhabitants!"
11. "Petr trying out the fun pincushion wall:"
Only a few more installments of TSCS's Quote of The Day left in this offseason!
"Any discussion on hockey goaltenders must begin with the assumption that they are about three sandwiches shy of a picnic. I can prove this. From the moment Primitive Man first lurched erect, he and those who came after him survived on the principle that when something hard and potentially painful comes at you at great velocity, you get the hell out of its path. Goalkeepers throw themselves into its path. I rest my case."
~ Jim Taylor, columnist
Thank yous all around to Stagerat, Jenn, Adrienne, Maria, Jes, Lauren, Rachel, Nikki, 71Crush, and Stephanie for their respective contributions to today's post! :)
Well, I hope all of you had as wonderful a holiday as I did! :) I honestly didn't intend to go missing for so long, but I had a very full extended weekend of friends, family, and last minute fun to close out the summer. Now I'm relaxed, rested, refreshed, and READY FOR OCTOBER!!!
It looks like I didn't miss too much in the way of Pens news, but you can bet your life I've got tons of stuff from all over to share with you to pass another day until training camp kicks off. First up, Friend of The Show Paula H. found the video of the commercial where Wayne Gretzky counsels Canadian golfer Mike Weir about the playoff beard:
Friend of The Show MichelleInNovaScotia found this item that claims Tim Horton's co-founder Ron Joyce took Le Magnifique and the Saint for a boat ride, during which Mario had to put the kibosh on the daredevil in our Siddo (from The Times & Transcript):
Sleuth is skating all over the place this week, this item relating a tale from a recent sailing trip Mr. Tim Horton's, a.k.a. Ron Joyce took aboard his mutli-million dollar yacht from his Fox Harb'r complex in Nova Scotia to Charlottetown, P.E.I. That trip's already been reported. Now Sleuth's sources tell him that among guests aboard the boat for that jaunt were none other than Pittsburgh Penguins owner Mario Lemieux and his star player and Nova Scotia native Sidney Crosby.
Keep the risk-taking to a minimum, Kid!
But the story only begins there: it seems that some other young and adventurous passengers were having fun by diving off the yacht into the waters of the Northumberland Strait, and Crosby was makin' to do the same when his boss, Lemieux, stepped in and laid down the law: it seems when you have a multi-million dollar investment in a player, you get a little antsy about what many would consider risky behaviour. . . And so young Crosby stayed safe. . . and dry!
New Friend of The Show Debra S. sent in some pictures she snapped at the NHL Store in NYC. (Check out Hossa's new number...)
A while ago, Friend of The Show Ali W. mentioned in the comments section of a previous post that she has a Penguins 2008-09 Season Countdown posted on her dormroom door. She sent in some photos of that and her dorm's other Pens adornments for us (her captions tell us all about them):
"Here is the sweet countdown on our door. People who know absolutely nothing about hockey stop in all the time and ask about it. They wonder what the Penguins are... It's really quite sad."
"The 'WALL OF FAME'!!! That's really all I need to say about this one. :)"
"My awesome garbage can. :)"
Sidney Penguin must like the northern New York/Canadian border area. His most recent stop was in Welland, Ontario, Canada...
Click for a closeup view of Welland.
...where he spent a busy couple of days with Friend of The Show Stephanie B. taking road trips to Niagara and Toronto. Once again, I'll let her captions explain each photo:
"This is Sidney P. sitting on a dock of the Welland Recreational Waterway. Until 1970 when the new canal was built, the Recreational Waterway was a main 'highway' between lake Erie and lake Ontario for large ships. Referred to as 'the old canal' by most residents, it is an important part of the city's history, and hence an important place for Sidney P. to visit. (He went in the paddle boat while he was there!)"
"After Sidney visited the old canal, he made about an hour and a half journey to Toronto to the Air Canada Center for a Celine Dion concert!! He can be seen here chillaxin before the show..."
"...and then is shown with another famous Canadian in the background!"
Now it's time to close with TSCS's Quote of The Day:
"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
~ Wayne Gretzky
In this photo taken on January, 18 1997, Gretzky (who played with the New York Rangers at the time) congratulates Mario for a goal scored during the 47th NHL All-Star game at the San Jose Arena in San Jose, California. (The Eastern Conference won.)
Many, many thanks to Friends Paula, MichelleInNovaScotia, Debra, Ali, and Stephanie B. for their contributions to today's post. :)
It will probably come as no surprise to anyone here that the Saint leads all Eastern Conference players in voting for this season's All-Star Game. The number of votes he's gotten so far (94,118) is almost double that of the next highest number of votes received by Montreal Canadiens defenseman Andrei Markov (48,134). Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara currently has the third place in the votes race. From SBRForum.com:
Crosby, Ottawa Senators right winger Daniel Alfredsson (41,198 votes) and Philadelphia Flyers center Daniel Briere (32,751 votes) are tops among Eastern Conference forwards. Washington's Alex Ovechkin (30,686 votes) and Tampa Bay's Vincent Lecavalier (28,615 votes) are currently on the outside looking in among forwards.
Markov (48,134 votes) and Chara (45,949 votes) rank first and second among Eastern defensemen while Toronto's Tomas Kaberle (36,125 votes) and Buffalo's Brian Campbell currently stand as the third and fourth leading blueliners.
The New York Rangers Henrik Lundqvist leads all goaltenders with 30,324 votes. New Jersey's Martin Brodeur (29,631 votes) and Philadelphia's Martin Biron are the second and third leading vote-getters.
On Monday morning, Sid took part in a photo shoot for ESPN Magazine's 10th Anniversary issue (which doesn't hit newsstands until March 2008!) and later shot his first U.S. Gatorade commercial at the Mellon Arena. Let's just say the wardrobe was a little out of character for Sir Sidney...
Crosby has a reputation for being exceptionally accommodating and tolerant at these types of things, but rarely do most people get to see or hear about them beyond the finished product. That's in great part because Crosby shies away from talking about them, although in response to a question last week he said they can range from 30 minutes to several hours.
"It's just part of it," he said somewhat sheepishly after the morning shoot. "I'm not coming to the rink hoping to have my picture taken."
Crosby is no ham, judging by this photo shoot.
The stylists, Rachel Thomas and Khalilah Williams, showed Crosby two black jackets, one leather.
"I'll wear whatever you want, but I wouldn't usually wear this stuff," said Crosby, who arrived in jeans, a T-shirt, a gray hoodie and a Reebok ballcap.
If his RbK clothing line is any indication of his personal style, he's Mr. Casual with a preference for T-shirts, sweatshirts, and sneakers over button downs, neckties, and loafers.
That wasn't the only "wardrobe malfunction" (← what a stupid term, eh?) of the day: Evidently, the theme for the photo shoot required Sid to be dressed in black from head to toe. He was given a pair of black slacks and a pair of black jeans, neither of which accommodated his tree trunk legs. He ended up wearing the jeans he came to the arena wearing, which will likely be darkened later using photo editing software for the magazine. You can read all about what went on at the photo shoot (and get a few details about the commercial, too) in this article from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Sometimes I forget that my readers live in places that are much, MUCH farther away than the greater Pittsburgh region (as Ticketmaster likes to call it). As a result, a lot of you don't get the Penguins games on TV. In my last game recap, I referred to Maxime Talbot as "Borat." Considering the reason I just stated, I should probably explain why I called him that.
You see, FSN Pittsburgh features Penguins players in its commercials. The players read the following statement from a teleprompter: "Hi, I'm insert player name here. You're watching FSN Pittsburgh. Penguins fans first!" Some of the players (Marc-Andre Fleury and Ronald Petrovicky for example) like to mix it up by saying the phrase in their native tongues. Other players make no effort to hide the fact that they're reading from a teleprompter. My husband and I like to pick the worst one of the bunch based on how obvious it is that the player is reading from a teleprompter and how little emotion is conveyed through the player's voice. Last season, it was a dead even tie between Ryan Malone and Mark Recchi.
This season it seems that FSN Pittsburgh has decided to give the players a bit of creative control. For example, I haven't switched my television station away from FSN for almost two weeks because Big Georges Laraque warned me not to touch the remote, and now I'm too scared to change the channel. Sir Sidney's commercial has him attempting to intimidate me with a stoney faced "glare," but it just doesn't have the desired effect because of his baby face. (Try again in a year or two, Sid.)
THIS is the Sid everyone fears.
Which brings me to Mad Max's commercial. It starts out with Max reading from the teleprompter. It is so bad that you can actually see his eyes moving back and forth while he's reading. His voice NEVER changes pitch. It's completely monotonous and doesn't even change when he comes to any form of punctuation. So I look over at my husband and just as we're sharing that "This is the worst one this year - maybe the worst of all time" look, Max bursts into laughter and asks if he can reshoot the commercial because he sounded like Borat. Instantly, it became the best commercial ever.
Just so you know, I looked everywhere on YouTube for some of these commercials - even the ones from last season. Alas, I couldn't find one. If/when I ever figure out how to get video off my VCR onto my laptop, I'll post this commercial on YouTube myself so you can see it. (Actually, I now think I know how to get the video off my VCR onto my laptop; I simply need the proper equipment and the time to get set up. If I can pull it off, you all will be able to see this commercial AND Sid's In My Own Words programs - I didn't forget about it!)
Moving on: Longtime friend of The Show and fellow Crosby blogger Eric B. of The Sidney Crosby Spotlight wrote a GLOWING review of TSCS. Check it out and see if you agree with him. Thanks, Eric!!! Your compliments are very much appreciated. :)
And I know - this post wasn't REALLY about Saint Sid today, but hopefully I cleared that issue up for you guys. I leave you today with this gem that I found on YouTube while I was searching for the commercials. It is the video the Pens played at the home opener on October 6. It's six and a half minutes of Penguins goodness, chock full of highlights from the past and the present, as well as this year's player introductions. Enjoy!
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