I come from the land next to the land downunder

Hey fellas (and fella-ettes)

My name is John, I live in New Zealand and I am honored to join the AC writing staff. You may be a little perplexed as to how a guy from New Zealand gets into hockey or the Ducks in particular. I can unabashedly admit that it was those Disney movies that introduced me to the sport and this team in particular. My two other friends and I were hooked from there - playing first street hockey, then Inline and then Ice. They became Ranger and Penguin fans respectively whilst I stuck with the Ducks.

I have followed this team since their near infancy - I still remember the days of David Karpa, Jason Marshall and I remember when Josef Marha was someone to get excited about very briefly for a time there. Nobody in high school could quite understand my obsessive fascination nor why I kept scribbling numbers and names on my books in lines of threes and twos. Who is Rucchin? They would say. Yea I guess I was the weird kid in high school.

I have been to some Ducks games in person - four in total. Two were in Vancouver; when I was living in Lillooet, BC on a student exchange for my last year of high school. This was the season when Teemu had been traded for Freisen so I was treated to some lacklustre showings - I do remember Kariya and Friesen speeding up ice on a 2 on 1 at one point but that was about all that was worth remembering from the one-ice product. Other occasions were early season games in November for 2013 I think - I remember Saku was on the team and the intro video had a pretty fancy military feel with Muses’s ‘Uprising’ as the backing song.

I have grown a playoff beard for every single playoff run and for the 2007 cup I bewildered co-workers when I shaved it off after the celebrations. They had not seen me without a beard before.

Other things about me: I have a somewhat abstract sense of humour - I run my own T-Shirt brand based off of that (hence my Twitter handle - sorry I cant be bothered doing a separate personal one), I play hockey (inline - though I did play ice, there just isn't an ice rink nearby where I have recently moved to), my partner and I run a Bed and Breakfast, I love beer and review various drops that I find locally in my spare time, like JC I love to sing as well and I guess if you care or whatever - I am gay.

I am excited to get writing and hope to entertain with as many nerdy and/or pop culture references as possible. Time differences and such will mean I’ll be online in your later hours so if you are having trouble sleeping feel free to hit me up or whenever.

Thanks so much for reading through all of this and thank you JC and team for this opportunity!