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When it came to tonight’s theme, I didn’t have a clue that some of Miss Kristina’s tracks would be making such a quick return to the rink’s speakers but when I saw that today has Matthew Bellamy celebrating his 48th birthday, there was no way I was going to put up any resistance (pun intended!) to really celebrating the music of Muse!

Matthew is the lead vocalist and also handles duties on guitar and keyboards and is the lyricist for pretty much every track Muse has ever laid down through the years.

What really struck me about Muse when they hit my radar thanks to Miss Kristina recommending them was that my cousin Scott in St Louis also recommended that I check them out and the two of them have very different tastes in music but they both agreed this band was well worth me listening.

And boy am I glad I did because not only does Muse really have some strong rocking tracks that make them perfect for use as “hype” music, it’s the instrumentals that keep me coming back for more and that’s why they’re featured in tonight’s theme with a few extra tracks thrown in for flavouring! 🙂

Bonus Tracks

Nice smooth ice that’s already been taken care of by the Zamboni and no one out there means we’re going to throw out a couple of bonus tracks from Al Stewart which are nice and long to allow me enough time to retrieve the puck bag from the cupboard on the far side of the facility.

Mind you, I was a bit concerned when the little Bluetooth dongle I use to connect the iPad to the rink’s speaker system decided it didn’t want to pair as it had flawlessly for months before. Fortunately, re-pairing the dongle after resetting the Bluetooth radio did the trick… 🙂

Normally these are tracks I like to really crank up but the distraction across the rink in the form of a TV that was tuned to game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final that was already in the first period of action meant that I turned down the master volume on the mixer until it was time for the teams to warm up!

Game 1 Warm-Ups

Zamboni and Game 2 Warm-Ups

Once again, there was a bit of extra duty tonight that took advantage of having a microphone available on the Forest rink so I was monitoring the TV across the rink as well as the TSN app on the iPhone and announcing the goals from game 4 over the 1-MC tannoy as I had for game 1 the previous week.

So let’s see…spinning tunes, keeping stats for the game occurring right in front of me, running the scoreboard, occasionally freeing someone from the home team’s sin bin (my apologies to those incarcerated in the visitor’s sin bin but there’s no way my panoramic heiney is making it over the boards to work the door!), and also announcing the goals from a game on the other side of the continent.

Sometimes it can get a little exciting keeping all of those balls in the air as I’m juggling the various tasks but it’s also rather exhilarating and certainly keeps me on my toes!

I’ll confess that I don’t have all of Carolina’s jersey numbers memorised and very few of the Vegas players so you can see the roster cheat-sheets I had printed earlier in the afternoon so that when I’d see the update on the TSN app, I’d note the jersey numbers on some scratch paper before launching into my best Wade Minter impression (PA announcer for the Hurricanes and all-round nifty individual as is Mini-Minter, his daughter who played for the UNC Tar Heels ladies hockey team) to announce the scoring details with decidedly different levels of enthusiasm based on who potted the goal.

Who knows, maybe that can become a regular part of the Ironclad game-day experience…well, at least on the Forest rink where the microphone actually lives until I can get my hands on a microphone of our own. That seemed to be the consensus of the gents who represented all four teams that played tonight just outside the entrance to The Factory who were quite appreciative of the updates on the tilt in Vegas whilst they were playing their own game.

I guess those afternoons spent in the broadcast booth for Katie’s high school lacrosse team came in handy after all… 🙂

Post-Game