Black Shoe Diaries, a Penn State Nittany Lions community

Nice video from SC.com with PSU's Paul Ruskin concerning the progress of the PIA. Everything is proceeding as normal, and he also discusses one of the "special extras" to the arena. (h/t @TYTBlog)

After an early alarm went off during the summer, it has been officially announced that the Icers will play the NCAA D3 Neumann University Knights on January 4th at 8pm. The game will be part of the Winter Classic series of games, this year being held at Citizen's Bank Park in Philadelphia. The link for purchasing tickets can be found in the link above (and I'll post it in the comments below as well). Tickets will be general admission and be $10/ticket. You will have to enter 'PSU' as the promotional code.

And so it is - the official name of the new ice arena. It's straight forward and not overly wordy, which is nice. Sure, something like the "Pegula Ice Pavilion" or "Pegula Ice Palace" have a fun ring to them, but this is just as solid. Also, with the plans currently at having two sheets of ice, I'm assuming they'll eventually name each rink (this is common practice for any arena with more than one sheet of ice). So it's time to start the speculation on that. I've got the Battista and Dufford rinks right now. (Again, thanks to @TYTBlog for doing a write-up for me.)

With the World University Games just around the corner, the ice hockey team is getting together to get some extra practice in during the Winter Break. Icers Tim O'Brien and Eric Steinour both scored in the first period to help Team USA to a 5-4 OT win over NCAA D3 Castleton State. Team USA lead 4-0 at one point, only to slack off and squeak out the OT win (sounds just like the Icers). The WUG start up January 28th for the men, and the 27th for the women. (h/t to TYTBlog for doing this write-up for me)

The author mostly discusses the advent of the Big Ten Hockey Conference, but does slip in the note that Penn State and Wisconsin have a tentative agreement to play a set of games at the Kohl Center in 2012-13. (h/t @TYTBlog)

Tonight, the Icers open their second-to-last season in the ACHA with a weekend set on the road at Pitt. For those in the Pitt area looking for something to do tonight/tomorrow, the games are at the Harmarville Blade Runners Ice Complex. Game tonight is at 8:50pm, and the game tomorrow is at 4pm. For anyone interested in following the games from the comfort of their own home, the games are being broadcast this season via UStream.

Being in Milwaukee means I'm far removed from getting regular info or updates on these sorts of things, so I can't make a call on the validity of the report. However, it is in line with some of the old rumblings I used to hear about, so there is likely a lot of truth to the rumblings going on. Whether it all comes to fruition or not is another story, but this is worthy of getting excited over the chances of getting a new hockey arena and D1 hockey in Happy Valley.

Keeping with the new coaches theme, the Icers announced their new assistant head coach, Josh Hand. Hand has been involved in hockey for the past 15 years, including playing youth hockey in Reading and Junior hockey in Philadelphia. Most recently, he was the director of hockey at the Arctic Wolf Ice Center in College Station, TX, while serving as an instructor and assistant coach at Texas A&M. Hand replaces Bill Downey, who was the assistant coach for two seasons before moving on to other career opportunities.