Game #84- Montreal Canadiens

Montreal Canadiens vs. Los Angeles Kings Bell Center (or Centre Bell if you like) December 12, 2014 What a great week in Canada. Knowing full well the weather wouldn’t be perfect, under the circumstances it could have been a lot worse. Montreal got about a foot of snow while I was in town, and besides getting completely lost leaving the metro while trying to find my hotel, the white stuff didn’t bother me too much. I just drove back from Ottawa last night where the Kings put away the Senators and I was hoping for much of the same tonight…too bad that didn’t happen. I started the night off early because I needed to return my rental car which happened to be a block from the stadium. I had several hours to kill before the puck was dropped and I didn’t want to drink since I had a really long day of travel on Saturday, so I decided to go to the Canadiens Hall of Fame. The first person that greeted me, the ticket taker, saw my old school Kings jersey and gave me a big thumbs down sign. In fact three people that worked there did the same thing until I walked by and they saw it was a Dionne sweater, then they screamed “Marcel! OK, OK, good!”. I guess I can’t complain about that, Dionne was and is a legend in French Canada. The hall of fame was cool, lots of old memorabilia ranging from jerseys, skates, pads, sticks and trophies. They put together a life size replica of the old Montreal Stadium locker room, had very early hockey cards dating back to the teens, and had a life size statue of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard. This was a good way to waste about an hour, stay out of the cold snow, and get me closer to game time. To be completely honest, I was expecting much more from the Bell Center. With so much history, the most celebrated team in the NHL, I really thought the city would go all out. In fact, it felt really old in the way it was set up. Yes the rafters were filled with retired jerseys and past Stanley Cup Championships, but just like the Saddle Dome in Calgary they have the announcers in a catwalk that completely blocks the scoreboard for the upper deck areas. You almost feel like you are watching the game on TV rather than being there in person. The only pleasure I got from my seat was the fact that I saw Bob Miller and screamed his name. He looked around a bit, I yelled again and when he found me he gave a great big thumbs up. I love that guy. Game time…it was rough. The Kings looked tired from last nights game. Quick couldn’t go back to back in goal and Martin Jones played really bad. Combine that with a very talented Montreal team lead by superstar PK Subban, and Carey Price who was a stellar in net, we had no chance. Three of the Canadien goals were cross ice passes that were slapped in perfectly, nothing Jones could have done, but Quick being the better goaltender might have had a chance at the saves. Before I knew it the game was over and Montreal won 6-2. A good experience, but the best way to describe Canadien fans…at least on a Friday night game…is drunk Boston Redsox fans times three. They were nuts!

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.