@gregballoch
📻 Laddie on @sportsnet650.bsky.social (weekday mornings 6–9am) 🎙 Play-by-Play Announcer – Delta Ice Hawks 🥅 Goaltending Coach/Scout/Analyst/Nerd 📝 Hockey Writer (prev: InGoal Magazine, Elite Prospects) ⚾️ Lifelong Blue Jays fanatic
The hand-wringing when Vegas was added to the NHL looks hilarious in hindsight. The team wasn’t allowed to make any references or have any imagery related to gambling. This was 2017!
That’s gonna kill them in the playoffs if they don’t smarten up
The "follow anything and everything about a certain topic I love" approach doesn't really work anymore. Leaves you too susceptible to misinfo and scammers. Shrinking things down and vetting the content extremely well is the only way now.
Bringing big “Dad that falls asleep before daughter at bedtime reading” energy these days 🥱
This is terrible for Yariel’s confidence, but tremendous for Canada
Stop putting Frank in a box
Having a competitive local professional league helps
Korea made the final in 09, they clear us by a long shot
Hour 2 Seg 1 today
Team Canada could have used these guys
I was getting over a cold and on the tail end of 15 hours of broadcasting over 2 days, but that wasn't stopping me from delivering the call for this wonderful moment in Delta Ice Hawks history last night
MacKinnon 5 mins after he got off the ice:
Beers for life to whoever scores the next goal 🍻
I don’t think I will ever be able to replicate the noise I made when MacKinnon missed that wide open net
Tie game heading to the third…
This is what happens when you share your facility with the Rays
I don't think I'll ever have that issue tbh. Insane hair genes on my mom's side.
Here’s an absolute moonshot from David Krahn as the T-Birds ended up winning the second game by a 9-1 score
Baseball in February? In Canada?!
Almost time for the 2nd half of a doubleheader between UBC and Lewis-Clark State.
I can’t feel my hands and I’m in a warmed booth, I can’t imagine being a pitcher today.
Turf isn’t enough!
I’m on the mic for the UBC men’s baseball home opener today, so, naturally, the temp has dipped below freezing
Why the hell aren’t they making another Fallout game to release while the TV show is popular? Gonna be another 8-10 years, and the show will be an afterthought by the time we get it.
Try and read the release of the shot like a normal human, and if you see a tip coming, get as close to the tipper as you can before it's too late. Much less fun than being able to see into the future.
I interviewed Dominik Hasek's Sabres goalie coach once and he told me that Hasek would play sequences out in his head before they would happen, and set up where he thought deflections would take the puck. He could read point shots off shin pads and be sitting/waiting for the puck to hit him.
Reacting and stopping a deflection from 5 feet away? Now that's some real superhuman shit.
It’s also just the nature of the position. You’re not physically battling for position (unless the ref sucks) as a goalie most of the time. Size gives you more room for error, but it isn’t everything.
Emerance Maschmeyer and Shannon Szabados (amongst others) played in high-level men’s junior hockey leagues growing up. You don’t really see that with skaters unless their name is Wickenheiser.
Variety of reasons. Part of it is that the goaltending is so good. The top women all train with the men at goalie schools, so they get the same top-notch coaching, and more importantly, are facing NHL-level shots.
