The life of a backup goalie in the NHL demands even more downtime than normal. Even after all the travel and hotels, you wind up spending most oft our time waiting for the starter – in Scrivens’ case, Stanley Cup champion Jonathan Quick – to need a day off. Needless to say, Scrivens knows his way around some apps, and not just the ones you might expect.
What app would you say you’re most dependent on?
I stay up to date with Twitter quite a bit. I’d say Twitter and Netflix are my go-to apps that are necessary. The other ones are great for their purposes, but more limited in terms of their day-to-day functionality.
Why Twitter and Netflix?
We obviously have some down time when we’re not at the rink, and you can’t be practicing 24 hours a day. You go to the rink, you put in a couple tough hours getting better, getting stronger, and staying sharp, but then after that it’s hurry up and wait until the next time you’re needed to go on the ice. You can’t just go to the beach or do anything active, it’s not really conducive to playing well. You have to find ways to entertain yourself, and stay busy and productive without taking a toll on your body. So finding cool video players and picking apps where you can express yourself and kill some time, try to be a little bit creative and stay sharp mentally – anytime you can find and app or device that helps you do that it’s a huge blessing for most professional athletes.
What about photo apps?
Right now, I’m big into one call Photosynth. It’s kind of like taking a panorama, but it stitches the pictures you take together, and creates an image like those 360, 3D view cameras, where there are, like, 30 lenses taking pictures simultaneously, and you can grab [the image] and [look around]. If you want to show someone the inside of your house, you can actually feel like you’re in the room, and have some perspective. It’s all really accurate, and has some cool functionality.
You jailbroke – what customizations did you make to it?
I didn’t do anything illegal; just added a personal touch on the device – different icons and movements. When you swiped the screen, the icons rolled over instead of just sliding. The movement was embedded in them. I didn’t get too fancy, just wanted it to look clean and function well.
Do you have an app to remind Jonathan Quick when you have a better save percentage than he does?
They haven’t invented that one, yet. All that stuff, when it comes to talking with guys on the team, it’s kind of fun. That’s where you find the cool new things, where someone heard something from someone else. Everyone sitting on the plane together, and it’s like “Check this out,” and three or four guys download it. It’s a great way of sharing stuff and getting ideas. But me and Quickie haven’t talked about anything like that.
What’s your most recently downloaded app?
I found an app called “Bands In Town.” It’s a way to find out which concerts are going on in your local area. You can set it up to track different bands when they go on tour, or by location. So if we have an open Saturday somewhere, let’s see what concerts are playing and try to track down tickets. You always hear about your favorite band playing your home town two weeks ago, and you never heard about it. So that’s what this app is about.
(Image courtesy of CBS Los Angeles)
