DU Hockey - Opening Night

Welcome to Magness Arena. That's the DU goalie. He had a solid night, only letting one goal get in. This was our (Gwen and I), first ever live hockey game.

We had a grand old time. A co-worker of mine said her father, who has season tickets, gave her a couple of hockey tickets, but she was not going to use them. She asked if I wanted them and I gave her a tentative yes, and promptly called Gwen ... who promptly said yes.

I texted the babysitter ... who promptly said yes.

SCORE!

Notice the goalie in this picture is a little bit smaller than the one above? Well, this is pee-wee hockey. It was really fun. No goals were scored, but that little goalie did make a nice save. The kids followed the puck like a bunch of little bees. It was great.

 We didn't know what to expect, our only real hockey experience coming from Disney "Mighty Ducks" movies ... needless to say, this is a fun spectator sport. People were getting slammed into the walls, punched, pushed around ... I'm just going to be frank with you: I was only disapointed about one thing ... that both benches didn't clear in a fight. That would have capped off an otherwise awesome night.

We even learned stuff about hockey.

You can just make out the scoreboard here. At the time it was 1-0, DU was up. The final score was 5-1. DU won.

The highlight of the night was really just unsportsmanlike conduct ... but hey, it was ESPN worthy.

DU was flying down the ice with the puck, a four on three advantage. The center whipped the puck to the wing, drawing one defender to the side. The wing faked a shot, getting his defender to hesitate a little bit, and the shot a pass up the middle to his charging teammate who secured the puck and shot it in one fluid motion, to the goalie's stick side.

Deflected.

The puck shot back and another DU forward shot it, as all three defenders, and all four DU players converged ... the goalie reached out and caught the puck. The whistle blew.

As the scrum was getting cleaned up, a DU player shoved one of his opponents forward. He tripped over the goalie, and flew, face first in to his own goal. It was a thing of beauty.