Blowing ain't as fun as it used to be...

...when talking about blowing a 3-goal lead.

Dear Tri-City Americans,

You cannot only play 25 minutes (1st period, OT) of good hockey and expect to win.  You also cannot give a team like Red Deer (or any team for that matter) 14 minutes of power play time.  You respect your coach, show it by not sitting back on a lead, listen when he's trying to motivate you.  He kinda knows what he's doing.

Sincerely,

Schultzie

Good on hometown kid Justin Feser for notching two goals right away, the cheering from all his fans in the building was great to hear.  After the 1st period however, Rebels took over the game.  Good on Mike Brown I guess for trying to get something going with an attempted tussle, but it didn't have the desired effect.

Feser said the Americans took their foot off the pedal after their third goal.

“We pressed early but Red Deer played a pretty solid game,” he said. “They played hard but we let off the gas a bit the last half of the game and just couldn’t pull through.”

“That’s the way it looked, but I thought we just ran out of gas and I’m still trying to figure it out,” said Tri-City head coach Jim Hiller. “We looked tired. We just couldn’t skate and they (Rebels) just outskated and outworked us and earned the win.”(Red Deer Advocate)

Shouldn't look tired kiddos, got to chill in Edmonton for a couple days, no reason to be tired.  Also, should not be getting outworked.  Period.

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I have been accused of being opportunistic.  Awesome.  Then let me take this opportunity to point you in the direction of these t-shirts that my amazing design team has come up with.

For each one sold I will donate the profits to the Tri-Cities Cancer Center Foundation.  In addition, between now and the Breast Cancer Awareness game night (February 12th) I will donate all profits from all designs on my Zazzle site to the Foundation as well.

I'll be honest, the profits are not great, only $2-$3 depending on style of shirt, but that's because I have to go through Zazzle.  I cannot afford to make a bunch and hope they sell to people, so this is how it has to be done.  I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from buying shirts because of that, but wanted full disclosure that the full amount you pay for the shirt will not be donated to the Foundation.

I encourage you also to buy it sooner rather than later if you want it in time for the game, shipping from Zazzle seems to take a good week, and the game is in 2 weeks.

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Apparently I am part of a "power couple".  Not sure how powerful we are, though the behbeh Baum Squad does think I own all of Twitter... Anyways, check out what the boy wrote up about the pressure former American Carey Price is facing.  You can find it on Kukla's Korner.  That's right THE Kukla's Korner.  One of the contributors, Patrick Hoffman, links to Scotty's great article, also found here.  But if Kukla's is not part of your daily hockey reading, it should be.

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It's Neal Prokop's birthday today!!  For his present, I will give him the gift of NOT making a sign that says "Let's Prokopulate!"  Nor will I make one that says "I'll Neal for Prokop."  So anyways, Happy Birthday Neal!

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Tomorrow night's liveblog will include the Craig West Drinking Game (TM).  For example, take two drinks when he says "Nervous time" and the like.  If you've got any suggestions for the game (I'll be posting it tomorrow), drop me an email or put it in the comments :)