Morning Flurries: Vacation Time

Hey guys!

While most people take their vacations at normal times - Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Easter Weekend - I take my vacations where I can get them, which means I’m going out of town this week.

Every time I go on vacation, I try to plan in advance so I’m around for work as much as possible leading up to my flights and subsequent days of leisure, but this time a lot of things all converged and I’m basically unable to put up Flurries for the next few days.

Mile High Hockey is run by a dedicated(ish) group of writers out of the goodness of our hearts, and it’s apparently a busy weekend for everyone - so unfortunately, we won’t have a fill-in for a few days.

That left me, staring at my alarm clock with a blank page and zero energy to look up story links for you guys.

As such, I’ve pre-written a few days’ worth of flurries here. They aren’t time-sensitive, so instead they’re just lists of stories that are evergreen as heck that I think you’ll, at the very least, get a kick out of if you’re looking for something to occupy your morning.

In a few days, Flurries will go back to normal, although not by me. I’ll be back after I’ve had a chance to get my vacation under way a bit.

Today, I decided I’ll share with you some excellent goalie masks, and their back stories. Enjoy!

I mean come on. How great is this?

For Team Switzerland, this is Florence Schelling. She’s an incredible study of the game, writing blog posts reflecting on her own performances and keeping detailed charts of her seasons to track her own progression. She’s also a quality human being, though, who crowd-sourced her Olympic mask, and it’s an amazing toque-inspired masterpiece. [Schelling F.com]

If you’re rooting for Team USA, here are two of the team’s tendy lids for the women’s side:

Alex Rigsby went for an old-school photos in time theme [InGoalMag]

Nicole Hensley, on the other hand, has a distinct style to her gear and her lid, and she’s brought it back in international competition once again. [InGoal]

Then there’s Maddie Rooney, who used Miskamasks to design her gear:

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the lids for Team Canada, if that’s who you root for:

Ann-Renee’ Desbiens is one of the best goaltenders to play the game right now, and she’s got tributes to Canada from coast to coast taking up space on her mask this year [InGoal]

Shannon Szabados is a legend, though, so her lid is - as always - as perfect as she is:

If you watch hockey around the league, you may have seen that Eddie Lack has the Swedish Chef on his mask. But the story behind it isn’t quite what you’d expect. [InGoal]

I’ll wrap this up with Ben Scrivens’ mask for Team Canada, because that’s all I have on hand: