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Live hockey
Mar. 16th, 2014 10:34 pm(I finally made myself a hockey icon! Not the prettiest, but it'll do. Favorite goalie <3 )
I went to my first ever live hockey game today! It was great. Well, not the game, the Vienna Capitals lost 2-4 to the VSV, which means they're eliminated from the playoffs. They played such a frustrating game: so many turnover, so little offensive zone support, and in the few minutes where they actually had chances the other goalie was good.
But the great thing about watching games live with other fans is that I didn't have to censor myself: I could shout and gesture as much as I wanted and nobody even blinked, while at home everyone looks at me like I'm very strange. And it's a cool feeling when the home team scores and everybody jumps up and celebrates :)
I don't think I've ever been in that arena before, and it's nice. It's different than watching games on TV because you can decide where to focus instead of the camera, for example I could follow one player an entire shift and see what they do. On the other hand sometimes when I was distracted it could be hard to find the puck again.
The crowd was very nice (though the visitors were much louder than the home crowd.) From families with three kids under ten to 70-year-old couples there were all kinds of people, and most of them seemed nice. Many people in jerseys, but not so many that I felt out of place. (They showed me on the screen once, clapping to the music, and I stood out in my pink shirt. (I hardly ever wear anything yellow.) That was weird, but not in a bad way.) For once the line to the men's bathrooms was at least twice as long as to the ladies'!
I also saw a few people in NHL shirts - two Habs and an Islander, unsurprisingly - and they sell caps with NHL logos and awful shirts of Crosby and Ovechkin in the shop.
I was afraid it'd be cold, but it wasn't. And thankfully I sat far enough away from the drums that it wasn't too loud. The music was loud enough sometimes that talking wasn't easy, but not so loud that it was uncomfortable.
In conclusion, I'm going to do that again :) Next season, probably. Or maybe I'll go to the Austria-Slovenia match in April.
Meanwhile, the team that I actually know the names of and cheer for lost a home-and-home series against their archrival the Flyers - sure, many of them are injured, but that doesn't excuse the way they played. Afternoon games, but I only watched two periods on Saturday. Oh well, playoffs are still a month away. As long as we don't play against the Flyers in the first round, that'd be a disaster.
I already have a few evenings planned with other people to get them to watch hockey with me, it'll be great! (Hopefully better games.) If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be the sports fan trying to convert other people I would have laughed at you, but that's how life works xD
I went to my first ever live hockey game today! It was great. Well, not the game, the Vienna Capitals lost 2-4 to the VSV, which means they're eliminated from the playoffs. They played such a frustrating game: so many turnover, so little offensive zone support, and in the few minutes where they actually had chances the other goalie was good.
But the great thing about watching games live with other fans is that I didn't have to censor myself: I could shout and gesture as much as I wanted and nobody even blinked, while at home everyone looks at me like I'm very strange. And it's a cool feeling when the home team scores and everybody jumps up and celebrates :)
I don't think I've ever been in that arena before, and it's nice. It's different than watching games on TV because you can decide where to focus instead of the camera, for example I could follow one player an entire shift and see what they do. On the other hand sometimes when I was distracted it could be hard to find the puck again.
The crowd was very nice (though the visitors were much louder than the home crowd.) From families with three kids under ten to 70-year-old couples there were all kinds of people, and most of them seemed nice. Many people in jerseys, but not so many that I felt out of place. (They showed me on the screen once, clapping to the music, and I stood out in my pink shirt. (I hardly ever wear anything yellow.) That was weird, but not in a bad way.) For once the line to the men's bathrooms was at least twice as long as to the ladies'!
I also saw a few people in NHL shirts - two Habs and an Islander, unsurprisingly - and they sell caps with NHL logos and awful shirts of Crosby and Ovechkin in the shop.
I was afraid it'd be cold, but it wasn't. And thankfully I sat far enough away from the drums that it wasn't too loud. The music was loud enough sometimes that talking wasn't easy, but not so loud that it was uncomfortable.
In conclusion, I'm going to do that again :) Next season, probably. Or maybe I'll go to the Austria-Slovenia match in April.
Meanwhile, the team that I actually know the names of and cheer for lost a home-and-home series against their archrival the Flyers - sure, many of them are injured, but that doesn't excuse the way they played. Afternoon games, but I only watched two periods on Saturday. Oh well, playoffs are still a month away. As long as we don't play against the Flyers in the first round, that'd be a disaster.
I already have a few evenings planned with other people to get them to watch hockey with me, it'll be great! (Hopefully better games.) If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be the sports fan trying to convert other people I would have laughed at you, but that's how life works xD
