If hockey won't come to me, I'll go to hockey.

This past weekend I made the second of my usual twice a year trips to Toronto, where, after a fun evening with my good friend Chapel (wherein he bought me dinner as a prize for winning his playoff pool this past season), I met up with fellow HLOGger Sherry for second time. Last time we were able to take in a Bulldogs playoff game; this time the two of us made our way to the Hockey Hall of Fame. I'd been there once before, but not since it moved to the new building, so I was excited to see exactly what it was comprised of now.

First, I was unsurprised to see that the Wings were the team whose jersey was featured in the Central Division display, but I was more surprised when I walked around to the back of it and saw this:

What, didn't have any extra Stevie Y.'s or something? I wonder if he knows.

Sherry and I also decided to try the goalkeeping and shooting games they had - I managed to beat her in both, though not by much (I did do better at the trivia game, but it was pretty much sheer luck). I was only able to score three goals on seven attempts against Eddie Belfour (for shame), and only stopped two out of five (though it would have been three if I hadn't kicked one in with my own foot). To her credit, Sherry was playing in a skirt - but then again, I was playing in very hockey-inappropriate sandals, and both of us were using a stick about a foot too long.

When I stepped into that net, I must have started thinking to myself, "what would Conklin do?" There wasn't enough room to run behind the net and commit a grievous error, so I apparently had to think more like Cam Ward and flail at a shot I actually stopped until the puck went in the net.

If you're interested in any of the other pictures from the weekend, and the HHoF, my photo gallery is here. If you're looking for more stupid pictures of me proving that I should definitely stick to watching hockey rather than playing, however, you're out of luck, as those are all on Sherry's camera. We had a lot of fun even if we sucked.

Over the course of the weekend we also watched a chunk of Miracle and considered liveblogging it - but through a combined laziness and lack of internet in the room we were in, ended up sparing you all.

As August wears on there is less and less hockey news available, and more and more anticipation for the new season, but here are some odds and ends to help tide you over:

• The Red Wings are going on with that silly "Fire on Ice" theme heading into the season - and they've created possibly the most hideous splash page ever to go along with it. Does anyone else think it looks like viewing an image on a monitor that can't display quite enough colors to show it properly? Anti-aliasing is good, I promise.

• If you can manage to brave the site design, however, you can purchase preseason tickets starting August 30th. Tickets are also still on sale for training camp in Traverse City (September 13-18).

• The Sharks took a page out of the Wings' book with a splash page of their own. It's almost as ugly, and yet it's a thing of beauty - bet you can figure out why. (In other news re: the Sharks endearing me to them, check out the Cheechoo/Teemu ska song, if you haven't yet.)

• The LA Kings sign former Toronto backup J.S. Aubin (crickets chirp).

And finally, with the offseason being quiet and horrendously boring, you'd think we'd hit a lapse in crazy search terms - but nope. Amidst the armies of people who still want pictures of Lauren Pronger and information about Rod Brind'Amour's girlfriend, my latest favorites have been "js giguere pool party" (I hope he invited The Aquabats), "dominik hasek laptop" (the man just learned text messaging last season, let's not go too far now), "fake teeth in ontario" (....what?) and, the current winner, "let down your hair I want to comb it" (uhhhhh, that's the last time I make those "Mr. Babcock I want to comb your hair" comments).

Everybody Hates Pronger.

After seeing Margee's latest post inspired by all odd the search hits she gets (more importantly, the post itself was a nice montage of should-be-shirtless hockey players, but I digress, as that doesn't go to my point), and Earl Sleek's collection of most common searches for the month over at Battle of California, I realized it had been a while since I'd looked up ours.

Having done so, and thrown out the boring ones, I've found that most likely 50% of hits on our blog come from people who hate Chris Pronger. In fact my number one most common hit last month, after the inevitable "no pun intended" was indeed "I hate Chris Pronger". Followed by variations on such things like Pronger sucks, rumors, affairs, trades, Edmonton, Lauren, and Christy Chorley.

But that's boring, and we've all heard it before, right? Don't worry, I've got some better ones:

"Where does Chris Pronger train?": Fairly innocent, sure, but don't let Lauren find out you're googling that. I doubt she can get past the idea that there's someone out there who doesn't hate him yet. Besides, you probably don't really want to know, anyway. I'll be she's there supervising.

"Chris Pronger ugly picture": Has been brought up many a time before. But there it is yet again, and I have yet to feel capable of passing up a reason to throw out this picture.

"Pronger kicked out of hockey": We could hope. I'm willing to bet we couldn't get so lucky.

So okay, I've seen better. And really, none of those are all that hateful, right?

Unless you're the guy out there searching for "Chris pronger heart stops beating". Sorry we couldn't help you out there.

(And while we're on the topic of search results, anyone who wants to clue me in on why people care if Rod Brind'Amour has a girlfriend - I hear I'm not the only one getting those - , just who is using the word "hunk" in relation to "Sean Avery", and most importantly, just what the story behind "pittsburgh penguins goalie that ran over cats" is, now is the time to do it.)