By the numbers

OK, so it's not Hurley's cursed numbers:

4 8 15 16 23 42

But it is interesting. The NHL set attendance records all over the place last night. Every team in the league played and every game was a near sellout. Now we're not talking huge numbers here compared to, say, the World Cup, but it's fairly cool. And we even got to see the new shootout in action, as one of the major rule changes this season is NO TIES. Senators win with two goals on Balfour.

One of the weird things that I expected to make more of a difference last night was the removal of the center line from the two-line pass rule. (Before, you couldn't pass across two lines for a much shorter distance.) But I kept watching players move past the blue line to pass—I imagine old habits die hard. I still try and manually lock my trunk, even though I haven't had a car that needed that in four years. So a lifetime of hockey drills probably won't be overcome in an evening.

Still haven't read all of my haul last week from the comics shop. The Top 10: The 49ers trade was short enough to leave me wanting more. Hopefully they'll be restocked on the Showcase Presents: Green Lantern trade, as that was gone before I could buy one.