I saw my first ever Ice Hockey game today, not on T.V, i watched it live @ the Bell Centre in Montreal. It was Canadiens (Habs) Vs Atlanta Thrashers. The atmosphere was amazing, thousands of people had come in to support their local (Canadien Habs) team and Canadiens surely needed the support after having lost their last 5 encounters, the match was a do-or-die for them. Very much like cricket in India, Canadians (not just Canadiens) are surely crazy about this sport. Stadium was packed with people from all age groups, kids with their mom or dad or both, young couples (both straight or otherwise :-)), middle aged men, women, university students, school students, few had come in wheelchair and quite a few 70+ youngsters (surely young at heart). They all had just one anthem for the evening - Go Habs Go ...The match was very interesting and Canadien Habs dominated the game from the word go, the Atlanta Thrashers were being thrashed by Canadiens at the every given opportunity and by the end of first 20 minutes, the Canadiens were one up on the scoreboard. Thrashing by Canadiens continued but from no where Atlanta scored a goal and the scoreboard read 1-1 at the end of next 20 minutes. And finally during the last 20 minutes they played Hockey, I mean there were some fights on field (in India the first thing to pick up during a street fight is a hockey stick), anyway the crowd loved to see the players hit each other and i was one of them. No Goal scored in the last 20 minutes, so the game went into extra time (5 minutes duration) which also did not provide any result and finally Canadien Habs ended their losing streak with a well deserved win during the shootout
Stadium was nice, decent setup to accomodate such a large crowd. Every corner of the stadium had a logo of some sponsor or the other. Infact the game is so commercialized that during penalty strikes the referee waits for the TV commercial to complete and then resumes the game, i do wonder if it was commercials during the break or was it the other way round. Even the support staff who came in to clean the ice seemed to have a sponsor or at least they wore jacket or T-shirt which had logo of the company that sells disinfectants. Well this kind of commercialization is nothing new, it happens in most of the sports but referee waiting for TV commercial was new to me :-)
Anyway, they played good music during the break, during one of the breaks 5-6 yr old kids played Hockey which was nice to see, there were some funny moments like all the Habs were asked to spell CAMMALLERI (last name of one of the players in Canadien Habs team) and none of them could do it. Well it may not sound very funny but it was fun when we saw it. Prior to the game, United Soccer Leagues First Division champion, Montreal Impact were honored and the players received a standing ovation for their win. I am sure the players felt very nice about themselves, representing your city/town/country is a great privilege and then living up to your dream and also millions of others by winning a tournament is amazing !
special thanks to the client who arranged the tickets for today's game (surely a wonderful gesture by them), I got to see a hockey game and the seats we got were also perfect, seats were quite close to the playing field or rink and high enough to be able to view the game without any trouble. Good that Canadien Habs won the game and now Go Habs Go, go get the trophy ..
