Welcome to Game 2, where the Bruins and Blackhawks will try to avoid playing five hours tonight.
Game 1 ended at the stroke of midnight, Central time, so it was quite beneficial for the NHL to have scheduled two games off between Games 1 and 2.
We go to Boston after this one, so another three OTs will certainly not help ... unless you're thinking about game use.
I will be authenticating the Bruins' Set 1 Final jerseys again tonight, and 6 periods in Game 1 certainly helped game use.
From the pregame warmup: Nathan Horton is in the lineup, despite the shoulder injury that knocked him out during OT No. 1 on Wednesday.
As they did before Game 1, defenseman Matt Bartkowski and forward Carl Soderberg took warmup. Neither was in the lineup before Game 1 and neither will be in the lineup for Game 2.
Having spent 16 years in NHL dressing rooms authenticating jerseys, I have learned that the equipment managers can be as superstitious as the players they assist. In virtually every locker room, jerseys must be hung and rehung a certain way: With the jerseys centered on hangers, and the jersey facing crest out.
Hangers are precious, too: Most equipment managers make sure their hangers are thick, plastic, and color-coordinated, as in team colors. Rarely do you see a wire hanger in an NHL locker room.
After the game, different story. I am usually handed a laundry cart to be taken to a quiet, spare room. Surgical gloves on my hands, I sift through every jersey logging authentication numbers while the washing machine awaits. Depending upon how quickly things must move after the game, I have several seconds to one second per jersey to read the tag number, log the tag number, and move on to the next jersey.
Occasionally I can examine a jersey for rips, tears and game use. And when a player uses multiple jerseys in a game, I get time to differentiate the period-by-period use, working with the Bruins' equipment team and watching the between-periods machinations when a few players have their jerseys taken to the dryer.
More later, once Game 2's jerseys take the ice for Game 2.
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