Greetings again! Hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving. The Inferno have returned to Columbia after posting a 1-2-0-1 record while on their four-game road trip in the cold, bleak northeast. While the three points aren't the four wins I'm sure many were hoping for, it's not half bad when three of the team's best defensemen were all recalled back to Toronto right before the trip. With Reid Cashman, Phil Oreskovic and Patrick Wellar all gone, the team had four healthy defensemen and wound up using Mac Faulkner and Steve McJannet back on the blueline. Faulkner only lasted at that spot for a period or two, while Coach Mann was pleased with McJ's efforts. Evidently, McJannet played a little defense at Lake Superior State University. Wellar did rejoin the team on the trip, but Cashman and Resko haven't, and probably won't for a while. Oreskovic is exactly the kind of player that the Maple Leafs organization needs; he's not likely to be coming back any time soon.

Some good news on the trip is that Todd Ford played absolutely stellar hockey. He had his first shutout of the season against Trenton and stopped all but one shot against a very good Elmira club. Here's hoping Ford-o regains some of his swagger when the club comes back to host the Checkers on Thursday night.

I've got very little player or practice news as Coach Mann has given the team Monday and Tuesday off after the trip. But I'll be back tomorrow with some more info (we're filming a commercial!) and some nuggets here and there. I've done a lousy job so far of keeping up with the blog; it's time to remedy this situation.

BTW, if you like your Columbia Inferno, please head on over to this logo contest. Blaze the Flaming Dog Head is up against Cilly the Bucktoothed Cyclone from Cincinnati. I just made up that last name.

Also, please feel free to send me any pictures from our games. If you think you have a great action shot from the game, I'll post it either here or in a special section on the webpage. Who knows, it may even become the leading picture for a release! Please send all photos to ajbembry@columbiainferno.com

So sorry that it's taken me this long to update the blog. If you had any idea how crazy it's been in the office since the start of training camp, you'd definitely cut me some slack. But now that the majority of my preseason duties are complete, I should be able to update this here blog on a regular basis; I should also be getting a brand-new edition of the Coach's Corner on here within the next week.

First things first, how's about the recent performance of the team? The club has won four of their last six, dating back to the home opening victory against the Lynx. Daniel Sparre and Jeff Miles have been battling for the team's points lead, and as of Thursday Miles was the No. 1 scorer in the ECHL with 14 points (seven goals, seven assists). Sure, sure it's still early yet, but the team is definitely headed in the right direction with two more road games to play before they host the Florida Everblades on Tuesday. Coach Mann isn't sure who he's going to start in net for the Friday game against the Blades, as rookie goalie Jeff Jakaitis won the first game of this three-game swing with a 6-0 shutout against Pensacola. Coach Mann was very pleased with the effort against a very scrappy Ice Pilots team, as he said the Inferno put pressure on the Ice Pilots the entire game.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, WIStv's Brian DeRoy is a big supporter of the Inferno and has already done a couple of stories/pieces on us. He even spent some time in training camp, as evidenced by this video.
Be sure to catch Brian as co-anchor of the Sunrise News from 5-7 a.m. every morning on WIStv.

Since the website has been up-and-running (and supposedly bug-free) for a couple of days now, what do you think? What do you like best? What do you like least? Lemme know through the message boardsor by shooting me an email at ajbembry@columbiainferno.com. This site is supposed to be friendlier and easier to access. That's the idea, anyway, so we can't make it better without more feedback.

Speaking of websites and such, I'm in the process of making some downloadable wallpapers for everyone. Outside of the obvious choices (Ralph, Miles, Ford), who are some players you'd like to see highlighted with their own wallpaper? I'll try to get them posted in the next week.

Finally, from here on out I'm going to be attaching links to Inferno photo galleries to the blog and to the game stories themselves. We've had some issues with trying to find the proper way to host these images, but I think we've got everything worked out. There definitely needs to be more multimedia on this site; it's just going to be a work in progress.

AJB