These Guys Like Pucks

With the ongoing experiments being done on our favorite piece of hockey equipment, the next experiment might result in the mushroom cloud seen to the left. We've seen our trusty scientist on YouTube, known as CarsandWater, put a hockey puck through a number of rather extreme tests already, and our amateur physicist is back with another grueling test for the little puck that refuses to be destroyed. The red-hot ball of nickel was no match for the vulcanized rubber of the hockey puck, and we saw it withstand the super-cooling of liquid nitrogen as well. Today? CarsandWater turns up the heat in a big way.

If you really want to turn up the heat, thermite is an appropriate compound to use. Industrial uses see thermite used for welding together railway segments and for welding together electrical and telecommunication lines on towers. The high temperatures that thermite burns at can be used in small spaces, making thermite welding a safe and easy job when done right.

The most common type of thermite, as seen in our video below, is iron thermite. Iron thermite can reach temperatures of 2500°C when ignited, so to say that this little experiment is far more dangerous than the last two would be an understatement. When lighting the iron thermite, a ribbon of magnesium is inserted into the thermite and lit on fire. As it burns down, it heats the thermite causing a chemical reaction that gives off heat. A lot of heat, apparently.

What will it do to a hockey puck made of vulcanized rubber?

Well, the puck certainly took a bigger beating than in the previous experiments, but it didn't actually lose its shape. As stated in the red-hot ball of nickel experiment, vulcanized rubber can withstand higher temperatures, but who knew it could withstand 2500°C?

If you're keeping score, that's Puck - 3 and Science - 0.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Sweet Home Chicago

It's hard to believe that it's been 77 years since the Stanley Cup was given to the Blackhawks in the city of Chicago. 77 years ago, the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup against the Toronto Maple Leafs in four games after winning the best-of-five series by a 3-1 count. It was their second Stanley Cup in franchise history after the Blackhawks had won in 1934, but this one had a little more drama than the first in 1934. A goaltending controversy surrounded the Blackhawks after starter Mike Karakas broke his toe, and there was a ton of doubt that the Blackhawks could even skate with the mighty Maple Leafs.

April 5 saw the start of the Stanley Cup Final as the Blackhawks visited Maple Leaf Gardens. Chicago skated to the 3-1 victory in Game One, shocking the Maple Leaf faithful to take a 1-0 series lead. Toronto responded in Game Two by pressuring the Blackhawks all night long in a 5-1 victory to even the series at 1-1. However, the shift to Chicago saw the Blackhawks play extremely well as they played a magnificent game in winning 2-1 to take a 2-1 series lead and pushing the Maple Leafs to the brink. And Game Four would see the Blackhawks close out the season by winning the Stanley Cup in a 4-1 victory to take the series 3-1.

The controversy surrounding the Blackhawks and their goaltending started when Alfie Moore took to the ice in Game One. Moore was a member of the Pittsburgh Hornets and donned the pads because replacement goalie Paul Goodman didn't arrive in Toronto in time for Game One. League President Frank Calder allowed the 3-1 victory to stand with Moore in net, but ruled Moore ineligible for the remainder of the series due to him not being affiliated with the Blackhawks in any way. Goodman finally arrived and lost Game Two in Toronto, but Chicago got Mike Karakas back in Games Three and Four as he played net with a steel toe covering his skate to protect his broken toe! The rest is history as Karakas gave up two goals in two games to help Chicago win!

The Blackhawks, however, recognized Alfie Moore's efforts in their win by giving him $300 and a gold watch after the series - a pretty awesome gesture by the Blackhawks for the one game of service Moore provided. Bill Stewart, a rookie head coach in the 1937-38 season, became the first American-born head coach to win the Stanley Cup, and he would be the only American-born winning coach for the next 53 years until "Badger" Bob Johnson won the Stanley Cup in 1991 with the Penguins! Forward Carl Voss became the second player in history to have his name added to both the Stanley Cup and the CFL's Grey Cup as he won the Grey Cup in 1924! The other person? The legendary Lionel Conacher whose brother, Charlie Conacher, was the captain of the Maple Leafs in 1938!

Here are a few pictures from the archives of the Chicago Tribune from that season.

Tonight, the Chicago Blackhawks won their second Stanley Cup on home ice with a 2-0 victory over another team in blue-and-white in the Tampa Bay Lightning! The Chicago Blackhawks are your 2015 Stanley Cup Champions!

More on this in the coming days, and the HBIC Playoff Pool will wrap up this weekend. Stay tuned, everyone! Prizes will be shown off when they arrive in my mailbox this week!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Want More Puck?

There is no end to the madness found on YouTube. As we saw last week, I posted a video brought to us by CarsandWater that showed the amateur Mythbusters using a red-hot ball of nickel to try and destroy a hockey puck. Well, the minds behind the CarsandWater are back, but they are going in the opposite direction with their love of hockey puck destruction this time. If heat won't destroy a puck, will cold do it? Let's find out!

I will admit that the moment I found this video that I had immediate reservations. Pucks are frozen before games and rarely do we see them break. I have seen a puck split in half when playing outdoors in extreme temperatures, though, so when the idea of liquid nitrogen was brought forth I figured this may have some legs. However, we'll have to see how the experiments fare in this video.

The experiment is simple: super-cool a hockey puck using liquid nitrogen and then drop an 83.5-pound weight on it to see if it breaks. Pretty simple, right? Let's go to the video!

The first attempt didn't go so well, and it was most likely due to the fact that only half the puck was immersed in the liquid nitrogen. Super-cooling only half the puck would cause the puck to explode as it did within the glass because half the puck's molecules were contracting at a rapid rate while the other half wasn't. Physics says that something's gotta give, so the puck's molecular structure breaks under the stress.

As you can see in attempt #2, putting the entire puck into the liquid nitrogen causes no explosion of the puck as there isn't this massive internal conflict between the molecular structure of the puck. The result is that the amateur scientist in the video gets a super-cooled puck! And, as you witnessed in the video, neither being on edge nor being flat affected the puck's structural integrity when the weight was dropped on it.

While there aren't many things in this world that are indestructible, you can feel safe while watching a hockey game in knowing that the puck won't fly apart if it clangs off a post or hits the glass. Kudos to Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Defending In A Different City

For a team that missed the playoffs, it's always a comforting feeling when that team's AHL affiliate posts some big success on the farm. The Los Angeles Kings missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season, but the Manchester Monarchs closed out the Utica Comets to win the Calder Cup tonight as seen to the left. That's AHL Commissioner David Andrews handing the Calder Cup to Monarchs captain Vincent LoVerde after they downed the Comets in Game Five by a 2-1 score. This won't be the same celebration, though, as any other team before this Monarchs team.

There were cheers. There were celebrations. There will be a parade in Manchester, New Hampshire. The players will clean out their lockers and go home for the summer in preparation for the following season where they will defend their championship. The difference, however, is that they will defend their championship in another city as the Monarchs will no longer be part of the AHL.

The Monarchs are one of the teams whose AHL membership has been transferred to a new city - in this case, Ontario, California - in order to move the AHL affiliates of the west coast NHL teams close to their NHL parent team. When the players make their way back to the rink, it will be on the opposite coast as a member of the Ontario Reign rather than the Manchester Monarchs. Something just doesn't seem right when you say "the defending Calder Cup champions" when talking about the Reign. Sure, the majority of the players won the championship, but Manchester was where it was won when the team was named "Monarchs".

In any case, the Monarchs closed out this series with a new goaltender as starter Jean-François Berube was injured in Game Three with a sprained ankle. Patrik Bartosak took over at the 7:51 mark of the first period in that game after having played a grand total of zero minutes in this year's Calder Cup Playoffs. While he played well in Game Three, the Comets struck three times to win 3-2 to make the series a 2-1 Manchester advantage. Would the goaltending change be the Achilles' heel for the Monarchs?

You already know that answer, so let's take a look at where things changed for the Monarchs.

Game Four was an absolute rubber factory in the Utica zone as the Monarchs peppered Comets' goaltender Jacob Markstrom with 33 shots in this game. There were another pile of shots blocked and a number that missed the net that made things look more respectable, but the Monarchs simply overwhelmed the Comets in this game. Two goals on sixteen shots in the first period got them out to a good start, but the Comets chipped away before the end of the first period to knot the game up at 2-2. Four straight goals from the Monarchs over the next 27:27 put this game out of reach for a comeback as the Monarchs skated to the 6-3 win with Bartosak winning his first-ever Calder Cup Playoffs start.

That set up Game Five with the Calder Cup in the Utica's Verizon Wireless Arena. The Monarchs were the AHL's best team all year, so winning was expected despite the battles they found themselves in during these playoffs. Adrian Kempe and captain LoVerde scored 3:07 apart in the first period to stake the Monarchs to a 2-0 lead while Bartosek, making his second start in the playoffs, was perfect through 59:45. A Cal O'Reilly goal with 14.8 seconds remaining cut the lead to 2-1, but the celebration on the Monarchs bench had already begun.

Your 79th AHL Calder Cup Champions are the Manchester Monarchs!

Jordan Weal, a third-round selection by the Los Angeles Kings in 2010, was named as the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the MVP in the Calder Cup Playoffs after posting a playoff-best 22 points on 10 goals and 12 assists. The Monarchs captured the first Calder Cup in franchise history, and most likely the last in the city that the city of Manchester will see. The Monarchs went 15-4 in the playoffs on their run to the final, dropping two games to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the opening round before going 12-2 in the next three rounds.

A special mention should be made for Paul Bissonnette who signed with Manchester last fall just to continue to play hockey after failing to catch on with an NHL team. BizNasty played 11 games in the Calder Cup Playoffs, but failed to record a point. He finished as a +1, though, proving that he wasn't a defensive liability in his time on the ice for the Monarchs. Kudos to Paul Bissonnette as he'll have some new hardware on his fingers after helping Manchester to the Calder Cup championship!

In a couple of months, the defending Calder Cup champions, the Ontario Reign, will take to the ice... despite the fact that the Reign never won the AHL championship trophy.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Moving On Without Jackman

Patrick Kane probably has a lot on his mind right now aside from free agency and who is headed there. After all, there's that little matter of the Stanley Cup he's playing for, and I'm sure that's front-and-center for him right now. However, if he picked up the newspaper today, he may have smiled as he read that Barret Jackman and the St. Louis Blues are parting ways as the Blues look to overhaul their roster this summer. The bruising defenceman is the first of what is expected to be several moves by the Blues this summer to get younger and faster to compete in the Central Division. Many may not like this move, but we're in the era of tough personnel decisions now. Jackman was one of them.

Jackman was drafted 17th-overall by the Blues in 1999, and has played all 803 of his NHL games in St. Louis. He trails only Bernie Federko in games-played for the franchise, but that number will cease to climb as the Blues informed the long-time, rugged defenceman that they were not going to re-sign him this summer, allowing his to become a free agent for the first time in his career.

"I think I saw it coming," Jackman said to reporters on Friday. "They really like the way Lindbohm has played, and Bortuzzo has earned a spot too. So I knew I'd be on the outside looking in. I've been very fortunate to play with the Blues for as long as I have. I still feel like I've got a lot to give. I wish it was with the Blues, but it's a business. Some things don't work out, but I'm definitely very pleased with the Blues' organization for everything they've given me and for being honest with me too. They really don't have a lot of room for me. I don't fault them for this. It's probably the same move I would have made."

The 34 year-old completed a three-year, $9.5 million contract with the Blues this past season, but has seen a decline in recent years with regards to footspeed and offensive production. His work off the ice in the community, though, has been highly-praised, and he regularly gave his time to events and charities around the city of St. Louis. Clearly, this wasn't going to be an easy decision for the Blues' management to make.

"What we said is we're going to get to July 1," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong informed reporters. "We wanted him to be able to look at the market, and if it works out for him with a different team, we understand. But if it doesn't, depending on what his options are, we want to speak to him again in July. So it's a little premature for me to do the post-Jackman era conversation. What we talked about was making sure that he understands that July 1 is going to come up and be prepared to talk to teams. As we're going through the process, we can talk at that point."

Basically, the Blues want him to come back, but it sounds like they prefer he return at a significantly lower cap hit than what he was previously making. The Blues love his tenacity and leadership, but even they saw his decline as Jackman aged, making this decision one of looking to the future rather than rebuilding or tinkering with the team.

There will be teams who will come calling on July 1 for Barret Jackman. Almost every NHL team can use some more toughness and leadership from a veteran blueliner, and many will be interested in seeing if they can use Jackman as a defensive defenceman who can be paired with a younger offensive player. If Jackman is willing to play for around the same cap hit, expect a bidding war come July 1 this year.

What I do know is that one of the toughest son-of-a-guns will be playing somewhere other than St. Louis next season. It doesn't mean that he won't be back in the Central Division, but everyone in that division can probably breathe a little easier knowing that Jax isn't hunting for the Blues along the blueline any longer.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!