Friday, August 7, 2020

Princeton Pros

So apparently the Minnesota Wild of the NHL have a rescue dog that they've named "Hobey."

Hobey, despite no ability to actually do any of his own social media, has just short of 7,000 followers on Twitter.

Hobey is of course named after Hobey Baker, the Princeton Athletics icon who played hockey and football before graduating in 1914. Baker died shortly after the end of World War I when a plane he was flying crashed in France.

Today the award for the top player in men's college hockey each year is named the Hobey Baker Award. As you probably know, the rink at Princeton is the Hobey Baker Rink.

And now the Minnesota Wild have a dog named Hobey.

And, recently, Hobey was the recipient of some Princeton gear.
He's a good-looking dog.

Hobey the dog is enough to get TigerBlog to officially announce that his favorite NHL team will now be the Minnesota Wild, with the exception of any team that has a Princeton alum on it. Also, TB's allegiance is to the Princeton alum, not the team, so if he changes teams, TB's allegiance changes as well.

To be clear, TB is rooting for the Columbus Blue Jackets and Eric Robinson and the Dallas Stars and Taylor Fedun.

The NHL is currently in its restarted playoff format. It's a bit confusing and all, but it's fun to have hockey in the middle of the summer.

Princeton alums have been busy in the world of professional sports of late. You can follow how they're doing in the weekly "Princeton Pros" update that appears on goprincetontigers.com.

The weekly piece updates Princeton alums in Major League Baseball, the NHL, the WNBA, the Premier Lacrosse League and the National Women's Soccer League.

That's a lot of alums. And that doesn't take into account the NFL, which should have quite a few Princeton players.

TigerBlog thought this was a great tweet from the women's basketball staff off a zoom call from the other night:

That's a lot of really good basketball players on one screen shot. Or two. With the Princeton women's basketball team, you can never fit all the good players on just one screen shot.

The WNBA season is featuring two Princeton alums, Blake Dietrick of the Atlanta Dream and Bella Alarie of the Dallas Wings.

If you go to the WNBA website and look for player stats, the default setting seems to be alphabetical by player's first name. If it comes up like that for you, then you'll notice that Bella and Blake are separated by only one person, Betnijah Laney, a Rutgers alum.

Going alphabetically, Bella has seen her minutes go up considerably. After playing 12 minutes total in the first two games, she averaged 22.3 for the next three, including being on the court at crunch time. She has not yet become the offensive force that made her the all-time leading scorer in Princeton women's basketball history, and it has to be an adjustment not just for her but for all players who were the feature of their team's offense in college once they get to the pros. Hey, Bill Bradley had to do the same with the Knicks.

Still, she did go from two points in her first two games to 16 in the next three. She has also shown she can be a strong WNBA rebounder, with nine in the game against Chicago the other night.

What Bella has done seamlessly in the WNBA is continue to block shots, including four against Chicago. In fact, she was tied for third in the league in blocks per game after five games.

As for Dietrick, she has been as solid pro player for the Dream, playing 20-plus minutes per game and bringing solid play at both ends and court leadership when she's on the court. She had her career high of 13 points against Las Vegas on July 29.
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