Frozen Four Unis

The wonderful UniWatch blog does a great job in reviewing all 16 teams’ uniforms that made it to the Frozen Four (Sixteen). Eri Kiribuchi’s Bemidji State makes the list, but Paul Kariya’s alma mator Maine doesn’t (though it does in the comments). Lots of great classic looking unis (some resembling NHL unis) all around, with some horrendous alternate jerseys. Why do you need alts for college hockey? Marketing rules.

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UAE wins 2009 Challenge Cup of Asia

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – After last year’s inaugural tournament in Hong Kong, the 2009 IIHF Challenge Cup of Asia was hosted and won by the United Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates was eager to host the tournament in their capital where it was up to 38°C (100°F) outside and made it a successful event for the Asian teams that do not compete in the World Championship program.

The last two games for gold and bronze were broadcast live and one of the highest Sheikhs – the National Security Advisor and the Chairman of Abu Dhabi Sports Council, His Highness Sheikh Hazza Bin Zayed Al Nahyan – was in attendance for the Emirate’s gold medal win.

The United Arab Emirates, coached by Serb Marko Zidarevic, won its group by beating Macau (7-0), Singapore (4-2) and Hong Kong (5-1) before downing Malaysia 3-1 in the semi-final.

Thailand was undefeated in its group against India (14-0), Malaysia (8-2) and Mongolia (5-3), and also won its semi-final game, 6-4 against Hong Kong.

It all came down to the group winners. After a scoreless beginning, Arthit Thamwongsin opened the scoring for Thailand in the second period but it finished with a 3-2 lead for the Emirates. Thailand equalized in the last stanza but the Emirates scored two more times to win the game 5-3. Juma Mohamed al Dhaheri was their hero with a hat trick, his second of the tournament.

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http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/news/news-singleview/hash/2087f58310/article/uae-wins-challenge-cup-of-asia/955.html

Didn’t think the hosts had it in them to pull it off against both Thailand and Malaysia, and a great job in hosting the tournament as well! Hopefully the competition will expand in the future with Taiwan rejoining the fray and new entrants from the Middle East as well. Here’s also an interesting blog by a Malaysian player who participated in the tournament.

World’s Most Alienating Airport

Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

ストラスバーグ待ち

2008年北京五輪米国代表唯一の大学生であり、今年のメジャードラフト1位指名候補（確定でしょう）のスティーブン・ストラスバーグがまたやりました。

これで今シーズンは先発６回、毎度２桁奪三振をあげていて、42 1/3回投げてなんと８８奪三振です（５勝０敗）。

まあ、大学野球はアメリカでもレベルの差が結構あったりするので、プロでこうはいかないでしょうが、この奪三振率だと大学野球の記録を余裕で更新します（しかも記録保持者は救援投手）。

Leon Boyd, the Dutch-Canuck Blue Jay

A couple of interesting posts from the Canadutch blog of Leon Boyd, the Dutch-Canadian pitcher who was the closer for the both Dutch wins over the Dominican Republic in the 2009 WBC. One about the daily routine in the Toronto Blue Jays camp in Dunedin, Florida, and another with a collection of links and photos to interesting articles about his Dutch exploits.

Eri Yoshida’s debut with video

Eri Yoshida made her regular season game debut for her Kansai Indenpendent League team Kobe 9 Cruise in their season opener at the Osaka Kyocera Dome on Thursday 27 March 2009.

She came into the game in the 9th with her team leading the Osaka Villicanes by 5-0. She walked her first batter on 4 straight knuckleballers, then mixed her fastball and knuckleball to strike the next batter out on 5 pitches.

Cranes Win! Seibu goes into history

Monday 23 March 2009, Higashifushimi, Tokyo.

Game 7 of the 2009 Asia League Ice Hockey Finals. The full house witnessed history.

This was going to be the final game for the Seibu Prince Rabbits (formerly Kokudo and Seibu Railway hockey teams) no matter the team won or lost against the Nippon Paper Cranes. The two teams have been waging an epic battle for the championship with Seibu coming back from being down 1-3 in the series to force the deciding game.

In fact, the Cranes themselves came back from being down 2-3 in their semifinals against Anyang Halla of Korea to reach the finals, and before that they dispatched the other Korean team in the league, High1, in the play-in round of the playoffs with a 2 game sweep (best of 3). Meanwhile, Seibu swept the semifinals against the Oji Eagles, but all games were decided by a 1 goal margin (excluding the empty netters).

Game 7 started off quickly, like Game 6, on a Cranes goal as Darcy Mitani opened the game in the 4th minute with a power play tally. But unlike Game 6, the first period did not turn into a wild goalfest, and both teams played solidly, though not without chances.

Crane (and former Seibu/Kokudo) Chris Yule sitting alone in the Cranes bench after the first period.

The Cranes added 2 more goals in the 2nd period and seemingly already wrote the end of the history for the Seibu hockey club. But captain Takahito Suzuki came out huge for Seibu as he scored with 4 seconds left in the period assisted by retiring Kiyoshi Fujita (thanks Ryan! you were the best player in the league for a long time, Theo Fleury of Japan in the best sense, and lots of fun to watch, you’ll be missed) and Daisuke Obara. This was a huge goal as going into the second intermission being 2 goals or 3 goals down makes a massive difference to team morale. 

In the third period, Seibu continued to pressure and kept on peppering the Cranes net with shots but Cranes goalie Hisashi Ishikawa totally stood on his head as he saved 54 of 56 shots (!) on net to earn the victory and championship for the Cranes.

Congratulations, the 2009 champion Cranes! And thank you Seibu for all the memories! (and hopefully the team will survive in one form or another and elite level hockey will be played in Tokyo next season.)

Playoff MVP Hisashi Ishikawa who backstopped the Cranes to the championship capped off by his herculean efforts in Game 7. Ishikawa played 14 of the Cranes 16 playoff games, and was a well deserving recepient of the award.

 

Joel Dyck Oshiro holding up the AL Championship trophy properly (that is, sideways)

More random photos and videos from the game follows this break:

あと一球！… Japan Wins!!

So, Japan repeated as WBC champions despite manager Hara’s bumbling lineup and in-game decisions. What was double play machine Johjima doing hitting cleanup? Korea ended up avoiding Norichika Aoki (the best hitter in Japan) to pitch against Joh in several occasions. And what was jetlagged Kurihara doing in DH? Thankfully he was pulled as soon as Bong left the game. Hara also played the game like it was a high school baseball game, automatically trying to bunt over any runner on base with no outs, even if the bunter rarely, if ever, bunts, like Nakajima, Inaba, and Johjima (well, the latter may be forgiven because of the GIDP possibilities  😛 ) and they are more of power hitters usually. 

Then Hara left superb starter (and should have been tournament MVP, though Dice-K got that probably for marketing reasons) Hisashi Iwakuma in one inning too long even though Japan was loaded with bullpen options with fresh arms. Iwakuma got out of the 7th inning by giving getting 3 big fly outs to the outfield. Iwakuma is a groundball pitcher, so obviously by this point in the game his pitches were hanging high and he had barely any juice left in the tank, and it showed when he came back onto the mound in the 8th. Hara also could have gone with Sugiuchi in the 9th as he had also been super during the tournament, not allowing runs in any of his appearances, and Darvish can be shaky when he first gets into the game (like Matsuzaka) like during the loss to Korea in Round 2. But Darvish is often electric so he can’t be faulted on this.

So, Japan could’ve dominated (and it showed with all the runners LOB, Japan self-destructed time and again), but barely squeaked out the win. Maybe it was just all a ploy for Ichiro’s heroic game winning hit that drove in 2 runs? Ever the showman, everything was set up for Ichiro in the end  😛 (though the decision not to walk him with the 1st base open with 2 outs was puzzling, Ichiro kept on fouling off every pitch, even obvious balls, in typical Ichiro fashion until he got a pitch he liked, in the finals, he was zoned in. He wasn’t gonna be semi-intentionally walked.)

Anyways, I watched the game with friends including Deanna at a sports bar in the bustling Shinjuku district. The bar was absolutely full, some people were wearing suits obviously skipping work (though, probably the whole country was at a standstill, especially in the late innings) and some fans also had old school Daiei and Kintetsu (Nori Nakamura!) unis on, which was awesome. Here’s the video from the game winning moment when Darvish struck out the last Korean hitter.

PS This turned out to be a fantastic heart wrenching rubber match of a 5 game Japan-Korea series.. but if the organizers would just remove the meaningless seeding games at the end of rounds 1 and 2, this would’ve only have been the 3rd meeting between the teams, which would’ve been acceptable. Instead Japan played Korea 5 times, Cuba twice, and China and the US once in this World Baseball Classic. I’d like to see each team play a wider variety of opponents.

Anime characters are white?

Makes some good points but also some silly points (facial contours, big nose). Worth a look anyways, as it’s a response to the typical assertion that anime characters are the Japanese idealization of caucasians.

2009 AL Finals Game 6

The Seibu Prince Rabbits, in their final season of existance, were down 1-3 in the Asia League Ice Hockey Finals against rivals Nippon Paper Cranes. Facing elimination and in front of the Cranes fans of Kushiro, Hokkaido, the team pulled through with a 7-4 win to bring the series back to Tokyo. Seibu eradicated their scoring draught which only saw them score 4 goals in the 3 straight losses in the previous 3 games.

Then yesterday was another do or die game for Seibu, as the Cranes were ready to clinch the AL championship in Tokyo.

The game started off chippy with 10 penalties being called in the 1st period, and it was a wild beginning too with 5 goals being scored as Seibu took a 3-2 lead heading into the first intermission. Seibu’s first goal was a nifty wraparound/bounce off goalie’s leg goal by Obara. And Prpic and Rochefort’s power play goals were perfectly executed with the players set up in the slot with passes from the goal line.

We were expecting a high scoring and a rough game based on the first period (much like the first game of the series), however things calmed down in the second and the game became a tight affair. Chris Yule, of long time Kokudo/Seibu fame, tied the game in the middle of the second with a power play goal. And the game became deadlocked even though speedy Seibu forwards created many scoring opportunities by blowing past (or trying to) Cranes defencemen. They also managed to hit the post with a shot on one play.

But, as things were increasingly looking like they were heading to the NHL style endless overtime (20 minute periods, sudden death), Chris Yule took a fatal tripping penalty with less than 2 minutes remaining in regulation. This gave Seibu a crucial power play at the end of regulation, and with less than 1 minute to go, captain Takahito Suzuki took the puck from the neutral zone, flew past a Cranes defenceman, neatly tucked the puck in to avoid goalie Ishikawa’s poke check and deked him out at the same time and put the puck in the net for what proved to be the game winner. Seibu 4 – 3 Cranes!

The Seibu Prince Rabbits club survived to see one more day, and today is the deciding Game 7 of the Asia League Ice Hockey 2009 Finals at Higashifushimi, Tokyo. Seibu has the chance to finish their history with an exclamation mark tonight at 7pm.

Some photos and videos from the game.

Seibu wins!

Cranes fans also brought their big flag, this one saying 最強 (saikyou = strongest) which looks way more badass than the Rabbit logo adorned Seibu flag.