[blog] Year 2, Comic 12 – Roadie

★ Notes on Year 2, Comic 12 – Post I: Roadie★ 

STUFF!

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☆ If you live near Austin, Texas, you should totally come to the Webcomics Rampage! I’ll be there, selling Huddles 1 & 2, copies of Year One, magnet sets, and buttons. Huzzah!

☆ So much for shorter blog posts!

✓  Well, that was fun! But what about playoffs? What team is Jack going to be on? When will Jack and Bitty kiss each other’s faces—and more? (WINK.) I’ve been waiting months! Come on, gimme– *slaps your hand and points at you* HEY. Hey!! STOP IT. WE’LL GET THERE.

✓  What’s so great about road trips anyway? Road trips are a HUGE part of the collegiate hockey experience, and travel is big part of professional sports in general. Have you seen Hockey Wives? Interesting show.  A huge theme seems to be how often players are away from their homes and families.  BUT since we’re talking about the guys on the Samwell men’s hockey team, none of whom are married or have kids (I believe), a road trip is more like…a traveling sleepover.  You know when you’re having a sleepover and you lock one of your friends in the bathroom because they’re a freshman.

If you’ve ever been on any type of sports team, you know that all sorts of purely absurd conversations are born at one point in the season, and reoccur again and again and again—in the locker room, in the hotel, at team meals, etc. It’s all about team bonding. Also because everyone is jammed into one confined space, this is a comic where I got to draw every main character at least once.

Here, drop down into this Youtube hole and watch a bunch of NHL 24/7-inspired clips made by college and minor league hockey players/teams. My favorite is from the Harvard men’s 2011-2012 team, which is where I got the idea for Holster wearing a bathrobe on the bus. Bathrobe kid is genius.

1. Harvard 24/7 Episode 1:  https://youtu.be/fAvkfuPszcg?t=3m49s (bathrobes, stories, shoe check around 8:25)
   
2. UNH Hockey – On the Road:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaJpO_vFIkw (THE GOALIE’S PADS haaaaaaaHAHAHAAH)
   
3. Salve Regina University Women’s Ice Hockey: Roadie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWafVOKI7oQ (Their captain is exactly like JLZ, obviously. Also–PROOF: STUFFED ANIMALS ARE IMPORTANT)
   
4. All Access: Grand Rapids Griffins- Road to the NHL: https://youtu.be/FtmeBIsoO_w?t=8s
   
5. Wallace On The Road: The Falcons Trip To Alaska – Part 1: https://youtu.be/Bm_qeuZ2p7Q
   
6. Western Michigan Bronco Hockey Roadtrip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnxJxNKTcu8 (this narrator is pretty much morgan freeman)
   
7. Clarkson Hockey Roadie:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K09fO-m64RI (the last half is just hockey players…dancing)
   
8. Umass Hockey Behind The Scenes: First Road Trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIb2umQlmvw (MORE SHOE CHECKS, weird goalies)
   

✓ Wait wait wait—we’re two points into this blog and there has been no talk about facial hair.  All right, so if you don’t know, there’s a tradition in hockey where you’re not supposed to shave once you make the playoffs. In solidarity, the whole team grows beards or whatever sort of atrocious facial hair a player muster, and do not shave or get haircuts until they’re eliminated. So you get the guys who can grow beards (Shitty, Nursey, Jack, Ransom, Holster), the guys who try but aren’t there yet (Dex), and the young men who would need, like, a month for peach fuzz (Chowder, Bitty). This is why Bitty has his freshman year hair back! He hasn’t been shaving those sides. U_U.   

✓ Wait wait wait—what about shoe checks? I don’t know the origin of shoe checks, but they’re just a thing in hockey? *confused shrug* They happen to Bitty because Bitty is by far the least amused.

✓ And, that conversation. Um. Again, weird conversations–part of hockey? I did a poll a few nights ago to see what people thought. Because it was a poll, I took the opportunity to ask another question.

1. 1. Would you rather discover a person in your attic or 1000 roaches? You do not know if the person is a murderer or not. They might want to harm you; they might not. They might mess with your stuff (move it around when you’re not at home) or eat your food. (2) You open the attic when the roach population hits 1000. This population may move to other locations in your house. You can hire an exterminator.
   
2. Jack Zimmermann’s Playoff Beard?
   

Now, 740 people responded in the hour or so that it was open and the results were interesting. The smallest group was 1000 roaches/NO BEARD with 86 people , and the largest group was person/YES BEARD with 348 people.

✓ And just in case you were wondering about where everyone was sitting:  

✓ Did Bitty bring along Senor Bunny? Yes. Do his teammates know about him? No. Don’t underestimate this hockey team’s ability to chirp a fellow teammate into oblivion. And for some, it would go beyond chirping. This does not happen in the story, but if Jack were to find out:

✓  I hope you like several weeks of playoffs condensed into a single comic, and Shitty and Jack getting ready for the end of their hockey careers. Because that’s what’s coming up in Post II: Frozen Four. Until then!