Full Moon Thursdays & Other Things…

That make me crazy.

Anyone who is a regular on the NYIC message board knows that I have said for years “The Islanders never win when there’s a full moon on a Thursday.” I had tracked it a few years ago and found the odds were always against them. This past Thursday in Boston was no different. The entire day had a bad moon over it, so I assumed the game would have the same outcome as past experiences, and I was right.

My bad Moon day caused various household annoyances; the refrigerator stopped working, our home printer blew an ink cartridge all over the filing cabinet, and my husband’s work camera mysteriously lost two sets of important photos off the media card. It was just a bad and expensive sort of day all around.

It was 6:25 pm when I turned on the TV and played that “Where has Cablevision put the Islanders now?” game. I found the blue screen on Channel 14 saying the overflow game would be on this channel, blah blah, so I put on Channel 414 which is the digital equivalent. Why, I don’t know since the feed has no additional attributes than that on 14, but hell, I’m PAYING for digital cable, I may as well use it. The IO info bar at the bottom said “Islanders Pre-Game 6:30 - 7 pm.” Perfect. I raised the volume and returned to the kitchen figuring I could make dinner and listen to the pre-game show.

At 6:35 pm I started to wonder why I was listening to Marty Broduer. Was this another MSG special they were forcing on us during OUR time??? No. It was the Hall Of Fame show. I grabbed the remote again and started to change channels thinking they moved the show again without telling us, OR, as has been done in the past, just NOT flipped the switch at the right time to air the pre-game.

By 6:45 pm I was angry and irate and looking for someone to call or strangle. Islanders fans were being dissed again, and I wasn’t going to take it! So while I was frantically looking for the Cablevision phone number I also decided to reach out to the two people I knew would have an answer for me, Corey Witt and Jason Lockhart. Yes, yes, yes. I knew they were busy but I was on the verge of screaming. Corey must have sensed my fragile state and emailed me immediately from his blackberry. “No pre-game show tonight. No NYC studio.”

AGGRRRRHHHHHH!!!!! Of course!!! The Brian Leetch tribute! Granted, Brian Leetch was an amazing player, a great man, and I’m very happy that he was honored the way he was. But couldn’t Cablevision get it right and at least CHANGE THE DAMN INFO BAR so that I wouldn’t go into attack mode thinking they did it specifically to screw us? (See? I’m getting myself upset again.) I also burned myself on my oven and dropped dinner. But that’s another story.

Once back on the couch with the laptop, I did find that there is actually a website for the overflow games. They are already scheduled and there are links to where they will be found http://www.nyoverflow.com/. But even this information is buried within their website.

Ok, let’s walk away from the loss before the All-Star game and look towards the future shall we? Give the rest of the team a few days to rest and recover and come back a little less “dinged up” to start the final stretch of games for the season.

For the balance of the season, I’d like to see Aaron Johnson play a little more for sure, and I’d like to see Mike Comrie wake up and be that guy that shocked us during preseason. Bill Guerin is turning into my favorite current Islander for more reasons than I can possible write about; I want to see him get the accolades he deserves. I want to see that smile on Sillinger’s face when his own goals surprise him another 20 times. And of course, I’d love to see Bergie get the points I know he’s capable of.

Good luck this weekend Ricky. I can’t wait to see what ITV has in store for us from All-Star weekend. Enjoy it.