Milwaukeehockey.com

Home sweet home

October 13, 2007

It was great to get back to the BC last night, as the Admirals skated to a 4-2 victory in the home opener against Quad City.

This was the first ever game between Milwaukee and Quad City, but the Flames had a familiar lineup with 15 players returning from last season, when the team was in Omaha. Considering how well Omaha manhandled Milwaukee last season, last night's impressive performance carries even more weight.

The Admirals showed plenty of speed in the offensive zone, and effectively kept the Flames from having many quality scoring opportunities in the first two periods. Sure, there were some awkward passes and clumsy moments, but that happens in the beginning of every season. These guys have the potential to be friggin awesome as they get familiar with each other.

And off the ice, I have a list of things I liked...
- The roster handout at the turnstile has been expanded to include player stats. Very nice.
- The intro music. Saliva's "Ladies and Gentlemen". Great choice, can't believe I didn't think of that one myself. It was followed up by another hard rock song that I didn't file to memory. Hockey and rock music are a perfect marriage.
- Jumbotron sponsor ads featuring Roscoe (eating at Subway, seeing a movie at a Marcus theater). That shows that the Admirals marketing team isn't satisfied with just selling a place to display a corporate logo on the sideboards. Those ads give the sponsors more bang for their buck, while providing something different on the jumbotron for the fans to soak in.
- Change of colors for the numbers on the jersey sleeves. Last year, it was black on black and next to impossible to read. This season, the black sleeves feature white numbers that are easy on the eyes.
- Late in the second intermission, the lights in the arena were turned off to excite the crowd as the final period was about to get underway. That was unexpected, although the presentation could use a little work. The jumbotron and graphics ring showed a pulsating #3 for about two minutes. Nice idea, but it needs more than just a 3 graphic to be effective.
- And although I was initially disappointed by the small size of the opening night crowd (5,882), it was about a 1,000 more than what last year's home opener achieved. In fact, it took until mid-December (and a $2 ticket promo) to get a crowd over 5,000 last year, so this year appears to be off to a good start.

And two things I didn't like about last night...
- The new electronic parking meter on State Street wouldn't take my quarter. I felt like giving the new ATM-like machine the Hanson Brothers treatment, but instead I swiped my credit card for the 40 cent transaction and walked away muttering under my breath.
- I'm not a fan of the socks worn by the Admirals. Normally, I pay little attention to the design of a hockey sock, but these are so different than any I've ever seen. White socks with vertical black stripes along the sides. Admirals radio announcer Aaron Sims describes them as resembling a baseball player's stirrup sock. With the 'culture shock' of the new Edge jerseys for the fans to absorb this year, it's not the best time to roll out an experimental look like that, in my opinion.

Last night was the first real 'test drive' for my new camera. I used it in preseason, but the lighting is much better at the BC, so I was anxious to see how the first batch of pics would turn out. I experimented with the settings, and will continue to fine-tune them in future games, but I was happy with the outcome.

On the front page to this site, you'll see a thumbnail link to a Photo of the Day. Until today, it's been a Photo of the Week since August. And unless I find more free time, I'll be creating a slide show once a month, instead of for each game. I know that disappoints many of you, but it was a very time consuming task last season... pick out the decent photos, crop them, airbrush out the underwear dude ad, resize them, upload them, create the slide show, and update the index page. I simply do not have that much free time this year.

I will include as many photos in the monthly update as I can... ideally a dozen or so from each game, maybe more. I'll upload the Photo of the Day either before going to bed or first thing in the morning.

A quick side note about the Photo of the Day before I finish this entry up... Many browsers resize large photos to fit the size of the window. I'm displaying the photos at a size of 1024x768 pixels (larger than most browser windows). Internet Explorer has an option to turn off the resizing feature:
Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Enable automatic image resizing (unchecked)
If the photos appear awkward, that may be the problem.

posted by Todd # 8:18 PM

Comments:

I was at that game too and i agreed with the things you liked and disliked (besides the parking meter)
although one more new thing i disliked was that they changed the score music! i thought kernkraft400 was a perfect song for that but now they changed it to some song i could barely even hear

# posted by

Anonymous : October 14, 2007 5:43 PM

The other hard rock song that you couldn't file to memory was Master of Puppets by Metallica!

# posted by

Mitch : October 17, 2007 3:55 PM

o wait nevermind i emailed the guy and i guess they agreed to change it back

# posted by

Anonymous : October 21, 2007 1:08 PM

I was at the game too. I didn't like their into very much. It used to be so fast pace and exciting and now it's kind of slow. Oh well I'll have to get used to it!!!! I also love all of our new players. I LOVE them all!!!!

# posted by

ads#1 fan : October 23, 2007 5:12 PM

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