predators

We went to see the Predators opener last night. Fun game, but the Predators did not come out looking like the team expected to win the central division. It was a sloppy, sloppy game. Other notes from the evening:

• I dislike all the booing at sports-events these days. It’s so uncivilized. What ever happened to politely clapping when your opponent does well? Last night, people booed after a sweet goal by Chicago. I understand rooting for your team, but come on. Dude had skills. Respect. Booing loses its impact if you do it after every single thing you don’t like. What are you going to do when something really unfair happens? Throw a chair onto the ice?
• There was a guy sitting on the end of our aisle who didn’t move and gave out death glares every time we had to walk by him to get out. He was apparently unclear on the concept that we actually had to walk by him to get out. We weren’t just doing it to annoy him. A few death stares back in his direction and he wised up, though.
• One phenomena I noticed: during the period breaks, vast throngs of people stampeding towards a particular set of doors. Bewildered, I wandered up to the cops standing by the door and asked what it was everyone was lining up to get to through the doors. He smirked, and said “smoking area”. A-Ha! “Pitiful smokers, lining up like sheep to get their fix,” I thought. I laughed to myself and shook my head sadly .. and then got in a massive, doubled-up line to get beer. Hi, I’m a hypocrite.
• While I encourage civilization in sports-viewing, I take the opposite stance regarding the arena’s bathrooms. They’ve gotten too civilized. Urinals? For real? I used to go to baseball games with my dad at County Stadium in Milwaukee, and let me tell you: we had it figured out back then. No urinals, just a massive trough with a drain and sprinklers. As many guys as you could fit to a trough, that was your pee-capacity. We’ve really taken a step back in our bathroom facility technology.

• Two older women sat behind us, and throughout the course of the game, uttered the following phrases (reproduced verbatim with no exaggeration): “Come on, boys, get a stick on it.”
  “Come on, put it in! Put it in!”
  “Don’t stop! DON’T STOP!!”
  “Use your stick!”
  “Get it in there!”
  “Come on, babies, put it in!”
  “Just stick it in!!”

  and so on, over and over and over throughout the game. I am pretty sure they were putting us on. They also left early. The only thing worse than a fairweather fan is a fairweather pervert fan.</li>

  • The mid-game events are totally out of control. Every time-out, period break, penalty, etc. they had some stupid event on the ice to give something away or play a game. I appreciate the need to entertain kids, but, come on. It was like they were doing everything they could possibly think of to distract you from the actual game. Some of us do actually like watching the actual hockey, you know. So after a call by the ref, instead of getting to hear what the call was, I get to watch Gnash start the crazy t-shirt trash-can race around the red carpet on the ice to win a free hot dog!!</ul>

  Good times. You’d think I would go to more hockey games, considering I live within spitting distance of the arena.