Baby, It's Cold Outside

Howdy folks. Let's talk about my week.

This Writing First Person class I'm in might be my favorite class I've ever taken at any school ever. And ever. As I said last week, most of what I've written is in my paper and pencil notebook, and even if I took a picture of a page you'd have about as much chance deciphering my handwriting as you would have of taming a giant squid with a whistle and a toothpick. What amazes me most about this class is how good everyone in it is at writing. Some people write great stories, some people write about darkly emotional parts of their past, and some are just really, really funny. Most of what I've written is very lighthearted; even the stuff with deeper subject matter manages to come out humorous rather than emotional when I write it.

One of our assignments was to come to class with a page of first person writing to share and discuss. I brought in that which you can read if you click here and scroll down, though many of you have already read this.

Be on your guard. There are older and fouler things than Writing First Person in the deep places of J-term.

Last Sunday I ran my first indoor track race of the season. It was a 3k on Dartmouth's 200m track, so it was 15 laps long, which sucks. I ran 9:31, which also kinda sucks. But I'm okay with it because it was the first race of the season. I'm racing at UVM tonight, and I probably won't do to well because I've been feeling just a tiny bit sick for the last twelve hours or so.

Oh, and I officially declared my geography major this week. Cool.

And the most important thing ever forever: The NHL regular season begins tomorrow. Ducks vs. Canucks. It's been a long, long time. I typed up my regular season predictions this morning, without thinking about the blog. But now I realize that if I put them here, it'll be easy for me to find them at the end of the season when I want to see how wrong I was about everything. I don't expect any of you to take any interest in them, but they're going here anyway.

East

1. Boston (Able to beat up on Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa all season. Addition of rookie Dougie Hamilton will help.)

2. NY Rangers (Their strength will still be their D and goaltending, but now with Rick Nash they become an elite offensive team as well. Early Cup favorite.)

3. Washington (New offense-minded head coach Adam Oates will help Ovechkin regain form.)

4. Pittsburgh (Crosby and Malkin are both healthy going into the season. It's been a while since that happened.)

5. Philadelphia (This all depends on Bryz, who is sometimes one of the best goalies in the league, and sometimes one of the worst.)

6. Tampa Bay (They upgraded their D and goaltending in a pretty big way over the summer, so it won't just be Stamkos helping them win.)

7. Carolina (New additions Jordan Staal and Alex Semin will complement the offense of Eric Staal and Jeff Skinner.)

8. New Jersey (They lost their best player in Parise, but they've still got plenty of offensive weapons, and new captain Bryce Salvador leads an underrated D corps. Does Brodeur still have it though?)

9. Buffalo (Can the addition of teenager Mikhail Girgorenko replace the loss of Derek Roy? Probably not yet.)

10. Toronto (Randy Carlyle will work this team harder than they've ever been worked, but hat won't solve their goaltending issues.)

11. Ottawa (Jason Spezza and Erik Karlsson will still be elite players, but Daniel Alfredsson is 40 and they don't have much depth.)

12. Florida (Last year was a fluke, and now that Carolina and Tampa Bay have improved so much over the off season, the Panthers don't stand a chance.)

13. Montreal (If Andrei Markov can stay healthy and play well, this team might have a chance of sneaking in. But it's been a while since he did either of those things.)

14. NY Islanders (An already bad team lost one of their best players, PA Parenteau, over the summer.)

15. Winnipeg (They've got a lot of decent players, but few really good players.)

West

1. Vancouver (They can thank the Northwest Division for the top spot, but that doesn't mean they're not still Cup contenders.)

2. St. Louis (An unreal amount of depth at forward and D will keep them near the top.)

3. Los Angeles (Stanley Cup hangovers don't start until the playoffs.)

4. Chicago (They've got one of the most talented and deepest set of forwards in the league, plus a couple of top end defensemen.)

5. Nashville (This season will prove how much better Shea Weber is than Ryan Suter. The Preds will do just fine without him.)

6. Phoenix (The loss of Ray Whitney hurts, but they've got plenty of depth all around, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson will continue to be one of the best D-men that nobody's heard of.)

7. Anaheim (This all depends on whether or not the Big Three repeat their abysmal performance from last year, or get back to how they'd been playing in the years before that. Also, Bruce Boudreau will be here from the get-go.)

8. San Jose (Extremely talented, but with every passing year their window gets smaller.)

9. Edmonton (The ultra-talented Oilers will be Cup contenders in the next few years. Just not yet.)

10. Dallas (Jaromir Jagr and Ray Whitney will make this team fun to watch, and they've definitely got a chance to make the playoffs, but it'll be tough in the always deep Western Conference.)

11. Colorado (If the Avs make the playoffs, it will be because Gabriel Landeskog dragged them there on his 20 year old back. Which is a lot to ask, even for a guy as good as he is.)

12. Minnesota (Zach Parise will live up to expectations, but Ryan Suter won't. And the depth just isn't there.)

13. Detroit (Nick Lidstrom is gone, and the 21-year playoff streak is going. Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg have both seen their play dip considerably in the last two years. And have you looked at their D roster?)

14. Columbus (Yeah, these guys still suck.)

15. Calgary (The only thing worse than a bad team is a bad team whose GM refuses to acknowledge that they're bad, and is therefore unwilling to rebuild. Which is exactly what's going on with the Flames.)