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.

Game #82- Denver Broncos

Denver Broncos vs. Buffalo Bills December 6, 2014 Mile High Stadium This weekend I am finally closing out the games in the state of CO. Luckily on this trip I was able to stay with my friends Ricky and Lindsay Webber whom I married (yep...reverend Chris at your service) about two months ago. They bought a “McMansion” just outside of Denver which makes the stay much nicer. That night before the game we went to a holiday party where I got to show off my ugly X-Mas sweater: Santa Clause pissing Merry Christmas in the snow, it was a hit. On Sunday we headed to Mile High Stadium in a sea of orange, the state of Colorado is really enjoying the resurgence of the team which is lead by future hall of famer Peyton Manning. This is one of those games where there are very few supporters of the away team, today it’s the Buffalo Bills. To be completely honest, I didn’t care who won the game. Living in San Diego I watch the Bolts, and I appreciate them when they get into the playoffs, so if Denver loses it will help out my home team…but again I just live in San Diego and everyone knows I am a Packers fan. So all of that being said I was cheering for the Broncos today. The stadium is really nice (formal name is the Sports Authority Field at Mile High). It was built in 2001 to replace the original stadium which was erected for the Denver Bears baseball team in 1948. Not a bad seat in the house, and I should know because we were practically touching one of the jumbo-trons we were so high up. But we had the good side facing the MASSIVE video display called the Thundervision 2 which sits just below the bucking bronco statue. I didn’t see any cool fan experience areas like old jerseys or team pictures, unfortunately that is what usually happens with newer stadiums. The game was tighter than I thought it would be. I haven’t seen many Buffalo games and I didn’t realize how good their defense is this year. Manning had a difficult time driving down the field and if it weren’t for some questionable calls against the Bills the score could have been drastically different. In fact, this would have been Manning’s 52nd game in a row with a TD throw, but that didn’t happen. Instead the team relied on the running ability of C.J. Anderson who took the ball in for 3 touchdowns. Final score, 24 to 17 Broncos. Best part of the weekend didn’t happen at the game. At the X-mas party, they had a white elephant gift exchange. One of Ricky’s buddies printed a full size Fathead poster of himself in only green underwear like George Costanza…amazing.