15.10.05
The National Religion
Last night i went on a hot date to watch some hockey. Hockey (of the ice variety) is the national religion in Canada and i was ready to go church. My dates Amy and Leah picked me up and after a non-traditional sport dinner of sushi we headed off to the Pacific Coliseum to watch the Vancouver Giants take on the Price George Cougars.
The Vancouver Giants play in the WHL, which is one of three junior leagues run by Hockey Canada, where Hockey’s next big things show there stuff in the hope of being drafted into the NHL. The guys in the team are all under 20, with the majority of them being 17 or 18. Last year when the NHL Hockey season was a no show because of labour disputes the Giants were playing in front of sell out crowds in excess of 12,000 for the play offs. The giants are the family friendly option of going to watch hockey rather than trying to find tickets to the Canucks and paying inflated prices for second hand tickets.
We joined the other 5481 fans that went to the game last night and awaited the start of the game. You’d have to love playing hockey 2-3 times a week in front of 5,500 people as a 16 year old. Try to imagine 5,500 people going to watch two teams play Under 18’s footy. In some of the smaller towns that are in the comp like Kelowna there local teams in the WHL are THE team in town.
The kids play as hard as the gus in the NHL. From what i have seen of the NHL on TV the skills in the WHL are obviously not as polished as they are in the big leauges and the size of the body is a bit smaller, but they still go in at full pace crashing each other against the boards and hitting each other on the open ice. The hits against other players on the boards always sound big even if they don’t always connect as the sound of anyone hitting the boards echoes around the stadium. against The game is still lightning fast and extremely impressive and the skating had to be seen to be believed.
It was a good night and Leah, Amy and myself all enjoyed ourselves. I am going back next week when the Giants take on the Kelowna Rockets who I am led to believe are traditional rivals.
Also on November 2nd I am off to the Vancouver Canucks to see the BIG boys go about their business.
For the record the Giants went down 4-5 to the Cougars from Prince George
Cousin Scott said,
October 17, 2005 at 5:24 pm
Howdy AB
Sounds like your having a whale of a time.
Jade and I are looking at heading over to Canada next year in June. Will you still be around then? Would be awesome to catch up for a few.
Kristy from Wisconsin (the land of cheese) said,
October 19, 2005 at 8:04 pm
I am sure you had a fun time at your hockey game, but a 2am text message to tell me about it probably wasn’t really necessary…the game is on, just you wait to see what random 2am message you will get from me!