The Making of a NHL Superstar : Chapter 1

Note: This is the record of my NHL 09 blog of Be a Pro mode.
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Last year, the Pittsburgh Penguins organization drafted a young right wing from Hanover Township, PA. This young forward's name is Kurt Kuklewicz. This forward was on many teams' draft boards, but the Penguins took a chance on this forward. Listed at 5'10" and 162 pounds, Kuklewicz lacked the ideal size of a NHL superstar. This caused his draft grade to drop until the 2nd round. However, scouts rated Kuklewicz as one of the top playmakers in the NHL entry class. Straight out of the Wyoming Valley Wildcats, in the DEL league, Kuklewicz showed poise and clear passing and puck control skills throughout his DEL career. He also showed that he can play defense as well.


OT Magic!- Right Wing Kurt Kuklewicz was pure cash when it came to making clutch plays in his DEL team, the Wyoming Valley Wildcats. He celebrates a goal (above), after setting up a beautiful overtime game winning goal on a pass to teammate Rocco Dimarco.

June 22, 2008 - Kuklewicz signed a one-year 2-way contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins worth almost $1 mil. The 2-way contract made Kuklewicz eligible to play on the Pittsburgh Penguins and their AHL affliate, Wilkes Barre-Scranton Penguins.

October 4th, 2008 - Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins Head Coach, Dan Bylsma invited Kurt Kuklewicz into his office with some great news. He decided to put him on the 3rd line of the team the start of the season, and give him an opportunity to extend his play. Kuklewicz decided to wear the #14 jersey in honor of his lucky number.

October 8th, 2008 - Right Wing Kurt Kuklewicz stepped up onto the ice in a big way in his first ever AHL game. On his first shot of the game, Kuklewicz scored a beauty of a goal. He also tallied an assist to have a 2 point night against the hated rivals of the WBS Penguins, the Hershey Bears.

October 24th, 2009 - WBS Penguins Head Coach Dan Bylsma noticed Kurt Kuklewicz's playmaking abilities and hard, dedicated work. He called Kuklewicz into his office yet again with fantastic news. He would now be playing on the second line in Wilkes Barre. At this point, Kuklewicz led his team in goals, assists and points. If this continued, he would surely be playing with the Pittsburgh team in no time.

November 7th, 2008 - Kurt Kuklewicz already performing in a big way and looking like one intelligent draft pick, gave more reason to why he should start for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The game against the Lowell Devils on this date, went into overtime at home. Kuklewicz was paired on a line with Wilkes Barre Scranton Forwards Paul Bissonnette and Mark Letestu, seeing ice time during the last few minutes of overtime. Kuklewicz rushed into the slot of the Devils with under a minute remaining and received a beautiful pass from Letestu. He fired it pass the goalie's glove side to give the WBS Penguins a much needed win.



Clutch - Kurt Kuklewicz scores the game winning goal against the Lowell Devils at home to improve the Baby Pens' winning record (above).

There will be more to come on Kuklewicz's performance.

The Weekly Top Ten : Video Games

Well ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself for something new on here. I'm referring to the weekly top ten where we give you the top ten reasons to explain a certain topic. We'll kick it off with the top ten reasons why you should play video games.



Reasons to Play Video Games
1o. Have an excuse to tell your teacher or professor why you didn't do your homework.
9. Two words - Big Explosions
8. Where else can you steal cars while listening to Michael Jackson's "Beat It"?
7. Train to be in the navy without breaking a sweat, literally.
6. Personally re-injure Tom Brady's knee to get back at him for his good looks and fancy sports cars.
5. Have yet another reason to kill time and block out your girlfriend when she calls you.
4. Sing Fallout Boy on Rock Band and sound better than them doing it.
3. Pretend to be John Rambo while playing Call of Duty 4.
2. You can kill someone you don't like and not have to go to jail!
1. A video game will play with you over and over again, no matter what time or what place.

Pulling off The Dreaded All Nighter

From time to time, almost all people experience pulling the infamous "all nighter". Whether it'd be writing that 14 page report at the last minute for English, or studying for that three chapter calculus test, there certainly needs to be an organized effort to achieve this monster task. But what is the best way to do it though?

First, if you want to pull an all nighter off successfully, you need to realize that your entire body acts in a cycle. Normally, a person will wake up in the morning, do some repetitive task such as go to school or work, while eating a few times in the morning, afternoon and evening and then go back to bed at night. Then, this process is repeated the next day. This cycle tends to run in a 24-25 hour pattern. This is also called the circadian rhytym. As a result, you need to realize that you will be greatly throwing your body's normally functions off.

Energy is always needed in life in general, so it will be especially important for keeping up at night. Therefore, you want to have a good amount of energy to stay awake. However, having too much energy at one time can be very tiresome for your cells and body. This is why you should ultimately leave the energy drinks and coffee away from you. Mitochondria is a key part of the cell in all animals. They fuel your cells with the energy to do things that involve work and action. You should think of them as muscles after working out in a gym. You do not want to overwork your mitochondria or else you will crash and get tired.

It's perfectly natural to experience a feeling similar to being run over by a mac truck when the attempting the all nighter. This is why you will need to become alert without overdoing it. The best way to do this is by filling a glass with cold water. Afterward, put the glass in the freezer and let it sit for 20-30 minutes while you are doing the work at hand. The water should be very cold as it should be very close to becoming ice. Drinking the water at a slow pace should rejuvenate you in an alert fashion. Always have another glass of water ready and constantly drink it. Also, this is good because it will make you go to the bathroom more, keeping you more alert. Another way to boost the alert level of yourself is to turn the heat off while perhaps leaving a window open.

Another aspect of successfully pulling off an all nighter is to avoid distraction. So, if you're on the computer while doing the work at hand, sign off instant messagers as one conversation could alter your work for hours. Also, you can significantly decrease your distractions simply by going to a place where there are very little. A good destination can be your college library, (if they're open very late) for example.

Do not lay down at any point during your all nighter attempt! While you can say that you're just going to rest your eyes, you will most likely wake up nine hours later and completely miss the deadline of your work. That is certainly not the desired outcome, and it almost always is accompanied with a huge, unreal sense of panic. It is okay to take ten or 15 minute breaks every hour, but avoid taking naps. If you absolutely have to take a nap, set several alarm clocks for no later than 20 minutes after you lay down and DO NOT hit the snooze button ever.

The most common myth about pulling an all nighter is perhaps the impression that sleeping should not occur. Most people tend to think that sleeping after restless hours of studying will erase everything they just learned. However, the opposite effect will happen if one does sleep during this situation. The human brain needs to rest in order to learn. The best way to do this is by achieving REM sleep. Therefore, you should always try to squeeze in some sleep during the all nighter, even if it is for an hour or two.

Meaningless Nonsense : The Absence

So, many people have been getting on my back about not posting any normal, interesting things on this site. Well, I finally was able to get back on today. Now I know what you're thinking. Right now, you're probably sitting at home, at your desktop, thinking "Why the hell has he been out for so long? Was he busy? Has he lost interest in his writing side? Did he sustain an injury?". The answer as to why I haven't been able to "blog" in so long is simple - memory. Yes, that's right, memory has prevented me from blogging. Here is my sad story of this procedure. You may need a box of tissues.

One day, I decided it would be a good idea to create a gmail account on google. So I did that, and I linked that account to my blogspot here. I got more involved with college and didn't log on here for awhile. Naturally, I entered my old email address when things at Wilkes cooled down for me a bit. For some reason, I have about 50 different passwords I use (by accident mostly). Needless to say, I had some trouble logging in. Well it turns out, I was entering my yahoo email to log in during that time frame.

Then it hit me. I realized that I changed my email address. It was like a bright light had suddenly shone on me. While snickering and laughing at how silly of a mistake I made, I started entering my gmail address in. Then another problem hit me suddenly. I completely forgot my gmail username and password. A good reason why this happened is probably because I never used it. Whoops, my bad. For the past month or so, I would make an attempt to remember my username and password when trying to sign on here, and it would fail.

I tried everything to log into my blogger. I desired greatly to entertain people around the entire world with my uniqueness and stories. I had trouble sleeping at night knowing that some of my greatest fans would go to sleep without reading any posts by me since I could not log on.

I had to do something different about this. I tried a different approach. This time I got the 'genius' idea of creating a new gmail address. I kept it simple this time. Surely, I would remember the gmail address now. The result was very disappointing. I did actually remember the address and password for the new one. However, that email address was never linked to my blogspot account, and I simply had no way to do that without actually logging in with my old, forgotten username and password. I was beginning to think I was in a catch 22. I even tried to 'hack' into my own gmail account. However, this did not work. I had no idea what my new, unique username could be.

Today, I was inspired and determined to log onto my blogspot. I tried even more attempts for logging in. I was finally able to find the username that was valid for blogspot. However, I still did not know the password. So, I had to reset my account on here. Only problem with that was that I would ultimately need to log into my gmail account, which I did not know the password for. So I went to gmail.com and clicked to reset my password. Then, a little box came up and asked me the answer to the security question I made that fateful night. It read "What was your first phone number?". I chuckled at how easy the question was, and put in my original home phone number. However, there existed a problem. It would not work. Had I been unconscious when I made the new gmail account? I tried entering it with hypens, with and without the area code, with spaces and even parenthesises. No good. I had completely screwed myself on this one. Then I realized, I had two cell phone numbers which I may have used for the question. I entered every possible combination for them, but still had no luck logging in.

Finally, I realized that I had linked my yahoo email on gmail as a secondary email account. Then, I was finally able to send a reset password link to that email address. Then, I logged into yahoo, and clicked the link and reset my gmail password. After all that hard work, here I am now posting to you all about it. It is a indeed a little ironic, but still pretty funny too. I do not want to experience the effects of growing old! ;-)

Importance of Video Games

All right, let's settle the score right here, right now. For all you nay-sayers that believe video games are a waste of time and provide nothing useful to society, you are wrong. Let me list a few reasons why backed up with some real life situations.

Reasons why video games are beneficial to individuals.
1. Video games can make individuals smarter.
- Playing puzzle games and other games that involve making strategical decisions can create more situations in which individuals have to use his or her brain more. This can create neural connections in the brain in which neurons or brain cells are linked together. The more neural connections in the brain there are, the more advanced the whole unit can become. The neurons are able to accommodate more knowledge and link that knowledge throughout the brain.

Neurons are connected and are able to transmit more signals and receive accommodate knowledge (above).

2. Video games teach the importance of teamwork.
-Playing games can make individuals realize the importance of teamwork. Individuals that are struggling achieving a certain task on a video game, can benefit off the teamwork of other individuals playing the same game. They can then communicate and try to work out a strategy like a team to achieve the same goal together. Through this everyone can learn that working together is beneficial and necessary in many real-life situations.

3. Video games can create leadership abilities in individuals.
-Yes, it sounds crazy but think about it. Dictionary.com defines leadership as "an act or instance of leading; guidance; direction:". If someone is good at a game and leads his team to achieve a certain goal by leading by example or command, then he obviously is demonstrating an ability of leadership.

4. Video games can provide for a very fun hobby.
-Sometimes when you feel pushed around from work or school, you can escape from it by playing video games. It's almost as like you're suddenly in a whole different world, exploring different and new things.

5. It's a good to way to socialize with other individuals.
-If there is nothing exciting to do in town or it's a rainy day outside, how much more exciting will playing a video game with friends probably be?