Game #83- Ottawa Senators

Ottawa Senators vs. Los Angeles Kings Canadian Tire Center December 11, 2014 What a crazy couple of days. I flew to Denver to watch a Broncos game, then came home on Monday to get right back on a plane and head to Canada on Tuesday. So far I thoroughly explored Montreal. First I got completely lost in the Atwater region but saw a lot of the revitalized town. Little did I know I was right in front of the old Montreal forum where the Canadiens played for decades…now it is a movie theater. Next I roamed all over the Olympic park where the 1976 games took place and found the Montreal Impact soccer stadium. Finally ended the day at the Old Port as well as Old Montreal. It is a great city, but combine cold weather with about a foot of snow I was exhausted when I got back to the hotel. The following day, I drove two hours to Ottawa to check out the touristy areas in the city and then made my way to the hockey game. The Senators have a lot of history originally founded in 1883. They won 11 Stanley Cups, an original franchise, and were part of the NHL from 1917 to 1934. When the NHL expanded in the 1920’s to the United States the Senators saw huge financial loses and moved to St. Louis where they disbanded after only one year. It wasn’t until 1992 when the league expanded and awarded the city of Ottawa a team again. This is why they have banners in the rafters and old time jerseys around the stadium, because even with some success over the past 20 years the team has not won any trophies. It’s funny, I have been to several away games for the Kings and I always don an LA sweater. But if I wear the current or even recent uniforms I get a lot of trash talking from the homers. But when I sport the purple and gold Marcel Dionne most of the time I get “Nice Jersey!”. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the new jerseys but even I know that a lot of the current fans of my team are simply rooting for them because of the recent Stanley Cups. Take for instance the Ottawa game. I was expecting to see a handful of Kings fans…oh no, there were hundreds. I was shocked! And most of the kids had Kopitar or Doughty uni’s on. Crazy… The game was great, mainly because the Kings came away with the victory. It was much closer than the 5-3 win indicated and that was all because of Jonathan Quick. He was a wall in net. Making one amazing save after another he single handedly kept the game close until Anze Kopitar scored the tiebreaking goal. Tanner Pearson put the game away with an empty netter at 19:03 and I walked away a happy camper. Even bought a couple Ottawa Senator Christmas decorations for the tree. The highlight of my night was talking to Bob Doyle, my seatmate at the game. Whenever I don’t have a hard ticket stub it is my goal to find someone with season tickets and ask if I can have one at the end of the game. When I asked Mr. Doyle he said no but we struck up a conversation about why I was in Ottawa. He was very impressed with the stadium tour (actually his grandson was shocked, he kept asking how I got all the money to do this epic adventure). I soon found out that Bob played college hockey at Michigan State and still has the single game record for points which is 9 (4 goals and 5 assists). He was good enough for the NHL but in the mid 60’s players didn’t make much money and he decided to get married and have a regular job. Up until a few years ago he stilled played hockey with the likes of Stan Makita. Amazing guy, fascinating life, and so much fun to talk to. Good times in Ottawa.