"Put THAT shit on YouTube."

So says the ref at my 4 on 4 game last night.

While I was safe from the unwashed masses and their pepper spray over the Thanksgiving holiday, I found myself struggling to avoid buying unnecessary electronics. After making it through Friday, I thought that I had succeeded and allowed myself to privately gloat about my self control. But a text from my dad informing me that Amazon was having a sale on GoPro Hero cameras cracked my resolve and, 3 hours before my game on Monday, I found myself unboxing the camera and ruthlessly deleting photos from my SD card.

Scheduled to play the hapless Honeybadgers, I figured it'd be as good of a game as any to try the camera out with minimal risk of seeing a slapshot ricochet off a newly shattered consumer electronic. I found the camera to be moderately uncomfortable when worn with the head strap as it compressed my mask into my forehead and increased its weight substantially. Regardless, I played for half the game with the camera on, facing about 5 shots, 3 on penalty shots, allowing no goals and acquiring 24 minutes of incredibly dull footage.

First, warmups (make sure to watch all of these in HD if you check them out on YouTube):


Here's a penalty shot that resulted in the ref making the remark noted in this entry's title:


During the intermission, I traded the camera with a teammate. The footage from his time on the ice is substantially more interesting, if slightly nauseating. Interestingly, the save highlighted in this video saw my blocker deflect the puck directly into the former location of the GoPro. Hooray for life's fortunate timing.

Some skater-view:


There's more interesting footage that I haven't yet found the time to edit. Hockey definitely dictates shooting in 720p at 60 fps to get cool, smooth slow-mo and a wider angle. I might try some 1080p for science.