Since the beginning of the season is upon us (and for some teams it has already arrived), this is a good time to ask people to please hold back the urge to throw things on the ice - and please encourage others around you not to do it either. It's dangerous and in many cases it can be detrimental to your team. I don't think we need to rehash all of the cases where things have been thrown on the ice, but this specific point needs to be made. The question was asked about the East, so I'll add that Hockey East officials have been very strict about the rule (no throwing things on the ice). One of the things I have railed against is the occasional tossing of tennis balls on the ice by some Merrimack fans. Several times over the last couple of years, this has occurred and resulted in delay of game penalties for Merrimack - four in one game against BU two years ago, a one goal loss. It's hard to imagine that the fans didn't get the hint after the first penalty, but they didn't - nor when players went over and demonstrated their disgust with the way the fans were hurting the team by throwing tennis balls after each Merrimack goal. Fortunately that incident hasn't been repeated often. The only situation where I condone throwing something on the ice deals with the fish tradition at UNH - for those who don't know, a fish gets tossed out there after the first UNH goal. Only one, by a specially designated fish tosser who was located behind the benches at Lively Snively, and the rink crew is ready and quickly removes it with no delay to the game. No one seems to mind, although a then-assistant coach for Yale may have taken exception about six years ago when the fish tosser slipped and wound up dropping the huge fish on the coach's head. Whoops. The UNH folks have a wonderful sense of humor, too. Back about 7 years ago when I was a manager for Northeastern, we went to load the bus after a game at Snively to find that the fish had been deposited in the cargo compartment underneath the bus where the gear goes. It was funny, but boy did it smell. All the way home. Coldest bus ride I have been on...it was the middle of a chilling winter and we had to leave the windows open just to breathe... (something tells me I should not have relayed that story, given that we go to UNH on Nov 17 and March 2...oh heck, I don't ride the bus up there anymore.) --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93 >> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System << ***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page under construction at: ***** ***** http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html ***** HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.