Hello. My name is Adam and I'm...

Wait, wrong place. As you guessed, I'm elseldo here at PPP and on Twitter. I've been a "writer" here since last season, exact date is unknown. I'm a 32-year-old father of two and married to a Habs fan -- not that any of this is a secret.

First of all it's pronounced "el sel-do".

To give you a bit of my hockey history I shall quote from my previous blog:

I took the long route to my fandom. I crisscrossed the continent, and my allegiance for the first, oh 17 years, wandered like a hitchhiker in the 60s, complete with regrettable acts.

I grew up surrounded by hockey fans. My mother was a Bruins fan, my father's brother was a hardcore Leafs fan, my mom had three brothers; two Leafs fans, and a Blackhawks fan, and her father was a Red Wings fan.

How I never got into hockey is beyond me.

(This picture was taken before my first - and last - hockey practice. It was not worth missing cartoons to me on Saturdays, my father was not sad about missing early morning practices either)

I turned 10 in the winter of '93, and it seemed like everyone was more excited about what was going on in hockey. (My city, Niagara, is in a constant three-way of Northeast teams. The Leafs and Canadiens are dominant, but there's also a loyal Sabres following since we're minutes from the border.)

More and more Habs and Leafs shirts were popping up at school and like any impressionable 10-year-old I hopped on board the bandwagon of whatever shirt I liked better and what the kids I hung out with were wearing. So yes, here is my secret shame, now available for all the internet to know:

The first NHL shirt I picked out myself, I ASKED for, and wore proudly, was a Montreal Canadiens shirt.

Sadly, I wasn't just a bandwagoner. I knew players' names, I knew the team's weakness (not having Roy in net). I remember passionately explaining to my mom that the Habs "would be screwed" without Roy. I wanted a Roy poster for my room. I tried to argue how great they were, but I didn't really know enough about other teams to do so. I started collecting hockey cards, I thought The Hockey Sweater was true Canadian art. I would get up early to watch the cartoon of it when the CBC would start its broadcast day (it rotated with Log Driver Waltz and The Cat Came Back).

It's a dark time in my life.

A couple years passed, I outgrew the shirt and moved on (I think it was around the time Patrick Roy moved on as well, so that may not be a coincidence).

Later, a friend of mine got NHL 90-something for the SNES and we decided to pick a team to play a full season as. We chose the Sharks because, hey, sharks are pretty cool. They played the Jaws theme on the organ and the goalie had a funny name: Artus Irbe.

Then I got into the Buffalo Sabres a bit because of their closeness and my first ever NHL game was Sabres versus Panthers, plus I was a teenager and had to be opposed to what everyone else liked. The Sabres were my rebellion. I watched all of the '99 playoff run and experienced my first case of gut punching disappointment via a triple OT game won by a traitor.

I wasn't all that into hockey anyway, and it was always losing the interest war with the WWF. I then got a job at a takeout pizza place in the evenings. The staff was usually me and one driver, and since I was using this job to escape and avoid spending any time at home, I ended up working there full-time after school. At work, I got into reading the paper front to back (we offered customers the Star, the local paper and the Sun to read while waiting, so I was saturated with Leafs coverage.

And this was in the early 2000s, when they made the playoffs and were an overall good team. So I read about the Leafs, we listened to every Leafs game on the radio at work and I started to watch when I was at home too.

My mom wasn't much of a hockey fan by this point, but didn't complain when I put it on, and insisted on watching every Cup finals each year even if she hadn't watched a single game during the season. I probably wasn't solidified as a Leafs/hockey fan until 2002. I watched/listened to every playoff game that year, we even brought a TV into work to pick up the CBC over the air feed.

Then my old friend Arturs Irbe ruined it all.

I did not waver this time and have remained true to the Leafs since then.

I'm also a big fan of the OHL's Niagara IceDogs and the GOJHL (JrB) St. Catharines Falcons. The latter is the team that led me to the wonderful career path of broadcasting. I co-oped in high school with our public access channel doing camera/audio/graphics work on JrB games. I went to Seneca and left with two years of broadcast school in me, winning Best Director for my class in the process.

I peaked then with my "action" movie and sitcom pilot under my arm, I failed miserably at creative stuff, but am now a project manager at a media company. No, neither of those movies are on YouTube and they shall remain unwatchable on MiniDV tapes because no one has anything to play those on.

I joined PPP after being linked here from the site that shall not be named and jumped into the FTB commenting fray in a thread about "players' Mothers Day gifts," having my very first comment turn green (back in the old days!) and you haven't been able to get rid of me since.

Outside of this crazy place I play hockey with other lousy players in beginners leagues, never winning a championship in person since my move back to Niagara.

I spend the rest of my time fixing my house (never buy one just because it's cheap and you can totally fix it up yourself), being jumped on by the kids, playing various video games, and sleeping whenever I can. I am also in the midst of writing a parenting book titled "Kids Are Jerks" featuring chapter titles such as "Potty Training: Oh God...it's everywhere" and "Bed Times: HAHAHAHA GOOD LUCK", a children's book, and two TV proposals, none of which will ever go anywhere because I never finish anything (again, see my house). I also read books, biographies mostly/non-fiction mostly, but some comic books as well, mostly Deadpool/Hawkeye at the moment.

You can find me on twitter, or here.

I'm mostly on FTB, light news, and preview duty but here's some other type of ramblings:

Memorial Cup for Beginners

Carter Verhaeghe: Past, Present, Future

Phil Kessel & The Media

The Bet

CHL Top Prospects Game Review