A Few Small Tidbits

I know, I know. It's Utah week. It's the beginning of a new era at Michigan. You're not thinking about hockey, and I don't blame you. But I have a blog to update once in a blue moon, so here are a few tidbits:

From what I've heard (and it seems to have been confirmed in this USCHO thread), the hockey band will be moving from their perch on the south side of the press box to a new location in section 19. The plus side to this is it will allow for the band to increase in size. 30 members is what was reported by one of the band members at USCHO. My concern is that putting them in section 19 will make it hard for the students in section 14 to hear them. But the sound resonates so much in Yost, I'm not actually sure that'll be a problem. It's not like everyone can discipline themselves enough to cheer in unison to "The Victors" anyway. There will also be a new band director, who reportedly knows more about hockey than the previous guy. But don't get your hopes up. He's probably still not going to be allowed to dance. Because it's a tool of the devil, you know.

Mike Cammalleri is happy to be back playing for a Canadian team. So is Todd Bertuzzi, but we don't really care about him.

Mac Bennett played in the BeanTown Classic Hockey Tournament. His team went 3-2 and won one of the fifth-place games. He had at least a goal and an assist.

Ex-Daily writer, and my old hockey teammate, James Dowd wrote an article about Aaron Palushaj for Inside College Hockey. Here was a quote from Billy Powers in the article:

Michigan assistant coach Billy Powers on Palushaj: “I think Aaron surprised some people last year. When you look at his numbers, he’s always been known as a good offensive player, but was more of a goal scorer. He’s still a kid who can score, but we saw more of his playmaking ability and that he could get the puck to teammates who were in a position to score.”

As I've stated before, I think we'll see a significant jump in goals for Palushaj this year. He was thought of as one of the top snipers in the 2007 Draft and he had just 10 goals last season. With Porter, Kolarik, and Pacioretty gone, that frees up more than 460 shots on goal. There will be a lot of pucks to go around and Palushaj's goal total should benefit.

Old news, but I failed to mentioned that Palushaj had 3-2--5 at Team USA's WJC tryout. I imagine he's a lock for the team along with Matt Rust.

Lastly, The Curse of Bryan Herta update that I know you're all longing for. The Andretti-Green team once again had one of the fastest cars at the latest round of the ALMS. Frenchy McFrench had the Acura in the overall lead for a portion of the race. A radio malfunction (or shoddy pit crew work, which wouldn't be shocking) caused Montagny to fail to pit under a caution. He had to make his stop under green flag conditions and was on pace for a 6th place finish in class until two cars ran out of fuel on the final lap, putting him into fourth place in the P2 class. Yet another disappointing finish. Oh, and the co-driver stuffed the 26 into a slower car, knocking a piece of bodywork off and hurting the handling. That was fun too. Also, Robin Miller from Speed TV has reported that Acura is dropping the AGR team after the season. So that's kind of funny.