We went to our first ice hockey game, the Vancouver Canucks v. Minnesota Wild, for Rowan's birthday. Luckily the Canucks won after extra-time and a shoot-out, thanks to some good saves by his hero Robert Luongo, the goal-keeper.
I'm only just getting the hang of knowing which team is playing better, who is likely to score and whether a goal was due to good attacking or bad defensive play. It's coming though.
Compared to UK football (soccer) matches the music is better, but I was a bit thrown by the national anthem played before the game as it was only a league match. It was against a US team though.
There's more shoving and pushing on the pitch. Although some of it seems a bit ritualistic and half-hearted, referees do not intervene until somebody falls down. As a friend of mine made out, he once went to a boxing match and a game of ice hockey broke out half-way through.
Strangely the game seems based on threes which seems unusual for a sport. There's three periods in a game, three referees on the pitch, and three sections to the pitch.
We'll be living just across the road from the stadium so it was great to see what goes on inside, although I don't know how often we'll be going as it'd be expensive to go to regularly. It was the 159th consecutive sold-out home game (beat that Man U.) so there's no incentive to bring the prices down.
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