As promised, yesterday (Saturday) brought about a hockey doubleheader for me, starting with the 45th annual FDNY v. NYPD hockey game, once again, like 2016, @ MSG, except unlike that April, this game was in the afternoon, making me get up quite early on a Saturday morning (not like I haven't ever "fallen out of bed", metaphorically speaking, and accidentally ended up awake at, say, 8 A.M. on a Saturday morning before; just that I basically had to be over @ MSG by 12 noon at the absolute latest!) to head over there, and, indeed, just within the first minute of the game being started, the NYPD opened the scoring, only for the FDNY to counter just a few short minutes later, along with there already being a fight, and many penalties, all within the first ten minutes or so of the game having been started! The rest of the opening period went at a rather slow pace compared to the start, with only a few penalties being added on, but the hitting and "extracurricular activities" after whistles constantly went on throughout the game, making the entire game incredibly tense!
After the FDNY team celebrated its own 50th anniversary, along with, obviously, the 45th FDNY-NYPD game, during the first intermission, the FD ended up taking the lead a few minutes into the middle period, although the PD ended up answering that goal almost immediately afterward, along with a large "gathering" shortly thereafter, leading to a tripping penalty against one of the FD players, along with a bunch of roughing penalties called against players on both teams, and the FD used the open ice created by all those "coincidental" penalties to re-take the lead after 40 minutes and many more hits/penalties during the middle frame!
Just like the first minute of the game, it only took a short time into the final period for the PD to score again, this time to tie the game yet again; things slowed down for a few minutes once again after that, until the FD took yet another lead on the scoreboard, only for the PD to come up with yet another answer to once again tie the game, and that was how regulation would end, leading to... five minutes of overtime? ...nope - instead, the game went straight to a shootout, with the PD being considered the "home" team, and electing to take the second shot in each round of the shootout - the FD opened the scoring in the shootout, and a few saves ended up getting made each way before the PD scored to send the shootout into its "sudden death" segment, when the team that both scores and, also, stops everything the other way ends up winning, and, indeed, the FD ended up being that team during FD-PD game #45, winning the shootout, 2-1, and the game in general, 5-4, with, again, incredibly physical play, and many penalties on the afternoon!
This year's game, in lieu of having more "safety/security" company-oriented sponsorships, ended up being quite "risqué" in nature, instead - Budweiser, through its various initiatives, such as its disaster relief "canned water" donations, and the "original" Hooters location on 33rd and 7th, almost directly across from MSG, partnered to sell "buckets" of beer and wings all day (I didn't partake in that promotion myself, but anyway...) for $25, giving every $5 back to various selected FDNY and NYPD charities, which got promoted endlessly throughout the afternoon - the Budweiser/Hooters 33rd "beer and wings" promotion and the actual charities alike, so every stoppage that wasn't filling the Garden with music/sound effects of some sort seemingly filled it with announcements about charities/post-game party gathering locations - most importantly, the PA announcer wasn't a bumbling idiot, like last year's announcer during the game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, so while all those announcements might have gotten repeated seemingly a million times each, at least they were coherent this year, even when they did occasionally interrupt the music...
FD-PD highlights (from Instagram, in no particular order):
(also, in a first, the game was broadcast, albeit only locally, and only on radio, and ESPN NY radio, which provided the live broadcast, was wise enough to upload some audio of the live broadcast, in quite a few parts, but still, more or less, the complete broadcast nonetheless!)
After catching the excitement of the most recent annual FDNY-NYPD hockey game, I scrambled to get (back) to Bridgeport, Connecticut, this time for the 2018 NCAA hockey East Regional championship final game, to determine just a single team heading to this season's championship weekend out in Minnesota in a few weekends' time - this year's regional final matchup (relatively close to) around here ended up being (#2) Notre Dame and (#7) Providence, and unlike Friday's semifinal, when it seemed as if nobody showed up for Notre Dame against Michigan Tech, while everybody showed up for Providence against Clarkson, the crowd seemed a bit more evenly split between Notre Dame and Providence fans, including both schools' bands, and, just as the NYPD had taken only about a minute to open the scoring shortly after 12 noon, it only took Providence a tiny bit after 6 P.M. to do so, scoring within the opening two minutes of its game, although getting outshot during the rest of the opening 20 minutes, with Notre Dame doubling up Providence's shot totals after the opening 20 minutes, but, even then, it seemed as if Providence was getting better looks on net with its shots, while Notre Dame was just taking "potshots" from wherever in on the Providence net, trying to create pressure...
The middle 20 minutes, however, saw Notre Dame slowly pick up where it had left off during the intermission immediately preceding them, as Notre Dame suddenly starting getting second and even, occasionally, third rebound chances around the Providence net, including a few shots that just "whistled" wide of goal, or were even put wide purposely, only for a rebound or two to result from the initial shot(s) on goal by Notre Dame, yet it still ended up taking almost the entire period for any of Notre Dame's chances to result in the tying goal, which also got helped by a rather wacky goaltender interference penalty, when one of the Providence skaters almost went "up and over" the crease, getting a piece of the Notre Dame goaltender while doing so, leading to the tying goal during the resulting "man advantage" for Notre Dame, which led to the final 20 minutes only continuing the pressure on the Providence net...
The final 20 minutes only frustrated Providence, since the game ended up tied during the second intermission, instead of seeing Providence continue to hold the lead into the final period, which did, in fairness, see Providence catch up to Notre Dame in the shot department once again, although Notre Dame turned up the pressure even more during the latter stages of the period, when it looked like the game would be headed to as many un-interrupted 20 minute overtime periods as necessary, until boom - Notre Dame stunned Providence with a bounce off the end boards right in front of the Providence net that ended up getting converted for an incredibly sudden 2-1 lead for Notre Dame with only seconds remaining in regulation - 27 of them, to be exact, and although Notre Dame took its team timeout immediately after the go-ahead goal, Providence ended up being too stunned to get much of anything on net within the final 27 seconds, resulting in Notre Dame not needing overtime in order to advance to the 2018 NCAA "Frozen Four" national championship weekend in Minnesota early next month!
The game itself almost felt like a typical Yale home game, even, considering Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT) co-hosted the weekend's games alongside Yale, despite the games being played in Sacred Heart University's home building (speaking of which, SHU recently released artist's renderings of what appears to be the "blueprint" for a new on-campus rink...), with Yale's PA announcer making the trip; he seemed to adopt a sort of "in-between" tone to his announcements during the game - in between his "Yale goal" and "(visiting team) goal" announcement styles, that is, along with taking advantage of there being a video board to narrate a few of the NCAA's highlight videos, since the NCAA basically takes "total control" of the venues in which it hosts its postseason games, from in-game replays, to intermission/TV timeout video segments, and the usual Yale home game intermission tunes also appeared, from the arena "taunting" the officials near the end of the first intermission by playing the "Imperial March", the evil "theme song" from all the Star Wars movies through the decades, and, also, near the end of the second intermission, bringing the "salute to the Hartford Whalers" from New Haven to Bridgeport by playing "Brass Bonanza", that famous "goal/theme song" from the dearly departed former NHL franchise - I must admit, though, that even after attending Harvard @ Yale near the end of the 2016-17 regular season, along with Quinnipiac @ Yale about a month and a half or so ago, and hearing those things on-campus in Yale's own home rink, that I was still surprised to hear/see such things over in Bridgeport, even despite Yale being considered one of the "co-hosts" of the weekend's games!
...in football news, did you see that the L.A. Chargers raised their already absurdly high season ticket prices to even higher levels for 2018 than 2017?
...now, in this week's edition of "classic retail commercials", I present to you an entirely Toys "R" Us collection of classic commercials this time around, in honor of the soon-to-be (in a few months, if not weeks) former company:
1970s:
1980s:
1990s:
2000s:
2010s:
Well, I couldn’t help myself last weekend, either, and paid what could very well have ended up being my last visit to any Toys “R” Us locations anywhere, anytime, anymore, given that the company just announced the impending shutdown of all of its U.S. locations, and got one of the last few remaining Geoffrey the Giraffe 🦒 plushie dolls anywhere around here, specifically 12” in size, and, also, specifically, in the “new” Times Square location that basically “traded places” with the Gap/Old Navy locations that took over from the old Times Square “mega” store that Toys operated right nearby between 2001 and 2015...
The place was arguably more crowded than prior to the liquidation announcement, and the company sent a bunch of people in Geoffrey costumes out to various locations, including that corner of Times Square, so the mood within was almost as “celebratory” as it was “nostalgic”, with people recalling their own memories of visiting various locations, and buying certain things - for me, my buying habits there evolved from LEGO sets and Thomas the Tank Engine 
products to 
later on (no 
, though - each of those that I remember ended up starting around $100, so those were always out of reach for us...), including getting a few of those items there “brand new”, from the Nintendo Game Boy/DS lines to the XBOX 360 (in fact, I did that, and then immediately headed over to the Meadowlands to catch the Devils in action once more before they left for Newark, which had already been announced by then (2005-06), which, from what I recall, they ended up winning against the Boston Bruins that night), so while a little gaming session with one of my cousins ended up getting put on hold that night, since, again, I was at the Meadowlands, that ended up “intertwining” two of my biggest lifelong passions - attending live sporting events, and helping retailers such as Toys “R” Us hang on just a bit longer, particularly along routes 80/4/46/17 here in Jersey/Times Square/even once up in Montréal, following the Devils up there one weekend, yet arriving way too early that particular Saturday to immediately head inside the Bell 
Centre for the actual game that night, so, after eating at this pizzeria part-owned by local businessmen and a few Montréal-born/raised NHL players, over in the Anjou neighborhood of Montréal, which resembles our highways, in a sense, with many more shopping 🛒 centers than skyscrapers around there, we spent a few minutes in one of the company’s locations on l’Ile de Montréal, before returning back downtown to head inside the Bell Centre for the game that evening!
(likely my last-ever "TRU" purchase: 12" Geoffrey the Giraffe plush (I surely hope some organization ends up taking him in, if not the entire brand...); location: Times Square - 1466 Broadway, Manhattan, N.Y.C.; $9.99 + 89 cents with the 8.875% sales tax = $10.88 total)
RE: the current situation @ Toys "R" Us, the final liquidation events began this weekend, with some locations starting at "up to" 10% off MSRP, while others already jumped to (up to) 30% off MSRP, but "therein lies the rub" - other places not currently liquidating their stores might already have discounts on top of discounts, so, say, for instance, "TRU" might have something dropped from $60 to $50-some, while Best Buy or wherever might have the same thing for, say, $30 or $40-some, so, you know, "buyer beware" with those liquidations!
Brussels-National (BRU) 9/2
