my first hockey game

Wednesday afternoon, I popped into the main office at my church. The office manager, Val, saw me and walked over with an envelope.

"Sarah, what are you doing tomorrow night?"

"Um, nothing. That I know of."

"Good. Then here." And she handed me an envelope.

I opened it and inside were 4 tickets to a Sharks hockey game! I have never been to a hockey game before but always thought it would be fun. A lot of friends and co-workers are HUGE Sharks fans and they talk about it a lot.

I looked closer at the tickets and saw they were $112 each! Whaaaaat? I complain when I pay $30 for a Giants ticket. And now I was holding $448 worth of Sharks tickets in my hand.

Holla.

I immediately went to find Intern Scott. He enjoys hockey, especially the Pittsburgh Penguins (he grew up in a part of Ohio near Pittsburgh, PA). He said he could go and then we invited one of our students who helps us at college group with all the slides and A/V stuff and thought this would be a fun way to say thank you to him. And he brought his girlfriend, who is one of our student leaders in the group. Let's DO this!


We had such a great time. First off, as you can see from the above picture, our seats were fantastic. 5 rows up from the ice and in eye-line of the goalie. The arena was sold out - 17,000 people in their teal and black. Right before the game started, a huge shark head lowered from the ceiling. The lights went down, fog started coming out of the head, the eyes flashed red, and "Seek & Destroy" by Metallica started pounding out of the speakers. One by one the players skated out of the mouth and we all went bat-poop crazy. We were on our feet, jumping, screaming, shouting, fists in the air!!


For this game, the Sharks were playing the Buffalo Sabres.

[Random: Am I the only one who thinks of the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch whenever I hear the word "sabre"?

"I'll take 'Swords' for 400, Alex." -Sean Connery

"That's not 'Swords'. It's 'S-words'. These are words that begin with S. All right, the answer is..."Popeye is this sort of man."

*ding*

"What is a 'sabre'?" -Sean Connery]

Back to the Sharks game.

The game was super fun. My favorite part was "The Chomp". Anytime the Sharks go on the power play, the Jaws theme song is played while the fans do "The Chomp" - extending their arms in front and moving them up and down to form a chomping jaw. I took a little video of one time we did it:



The game lasts three periods. Each period is 20 minutes long. In between the first and second period, 3 of my students (who were sitting in another section) came over to say hi.


The Sharks sadly lost the game, but I didn't care. I just loved being there. I LOVED being so close to the glass. The players were always throwing each other up against the glass and we got great views of smashed faces, trying to get to the puck.

P.S. At one point during the game, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "FLYING V!!!" A cute reference to the Mighty Ducks movies with Emilio Estevez. However, I was the only one who thought it was cute. Everyone around me gave me weird looks. Whatevs.

Thanks for the tickets, Val!