Merry Christmas, You Puckheads!

The Christmas season is all about reflection. Usually that is done with mounds of family around and stuffing yourself with turkey and junk food and gaining about 400 pounds before you have to make the same resolution you make every year when the clock strikes midnight on January first (usually to lose the 400 pounds you gained at the dinner table).

This Christmas season, my wife and I have made the same trip to Minnesota (driving through a nasty snow storm in Wisconsin to do it) to spend time with the in-laws. Being away from the Caps and not be able to see Ranger comeback win at MSG or not being there for Mike Gartner's number raised stopped me to reflect about being a Caps fan and Puckhead's Thoughts.

I have been a die hard Capitals fan since my first game I went to in 1988 (we had another team in DC called the Bullets, hmm, I wonder what ever happened to them). The Caps played the Pittsburgh Penguins in that particular game and I became a fan of the Caps and an enemy of the Penguins in just 60 minutes of playing time at the Capital Center. I remember it so vividly, we sat right below the noise meter. If you remember when it hit 100, the strobe lights on it would blink wildly. Ah, good times.

It is hard to imagine that Puckhead's Thoughts had been around for three plus years. I started at blogger.com Tuesday September 2, 2005. Before that I had one of those geocities pages (that none of you ever saw or knew about). I maintained that on my own since college (roughly since '97 with weekly updates). I think my website was www.geocities.com/sports/colosseum/5540/ or something very close to that. Back in the day when you had 100 megabytes to make a website. Now you have 7 gigabytes just for a free email account. I guess that makes me old.

Since then, this blog has become more comprehensive and more exposed. It's something I have been very proud of for the last three years, and it has been great that a lot of you come here to read my rants, frustrations and adoration about the Capitals. I have gone from posting random messages on fan boards on a Microsoft 3.1 to having my own blog with a steady 580 hits a week. Not bad for doing it all on my spare time. I even have a backup puckhead in Haven joining me this year to help this blog cover more than I could ever do on my own.

This hasn't been a monster blog like On Frozen Blog or Japer's Rink, both blogs I love to read consistently. But it's done alright for itself these last three years. I don't know why people come back to read it, I only write this blog for myself, but I am glad you do. I always welcome comments on what I write (good or bad).

So as I sit to eat way too much food, gain a gazillion pounds and make far fetched resolutions at year's end, I can say that Puckhead's has been a bright spot for me these last three years. I am glad I got to share it with you and I look forward to doing more. Rock the red, game on, and LET'S GO CAPS!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.
Puckhead