Perfect positioning

If you ever doubt the rewards of preparation and homework, you should have been in Tampa earlier today when, for about an hour, I was the only one hounding the Ottawa Senators before they headed off to a mid-afternoon practice.

A combination of the day off, knowledge of the team's schedule and an already packed hounding bag led to another 14 autographs, including five pucks, joining the collection.

And though I'll chide myself for missing Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson, thanks to his freshly shorn head and too much distance for me to cover, I'm quite pleased with my effort. Besides adding pucks from Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Andrej Meszaros and Nick Foligno, I also snagged the cards shown above from Ray Emery, Martin Gerber and Chris Kelly.

I also learned that Florida weather (sunny and in the low 80s) was much nicer than in Canada's capital, where it was in the low 30s (or, north of the border, about 0 degrees Celsius) with about 8 inches of snow when the team left for Florida. Today, it was snowing and got as cold as -11 degrees Celsius, about 13 degrees here in the states.

Even better, I'll head out tomorrow morning and see whether I can knock out the rest of the items. I also get to be one Senators fan's personal photographer.