NTKOG #47: The kind of girl who sits back with a beer and one of those big foam fingers, shouting obscenities and screaming for carnage. So. Y’know. A hockey fan.
I am: a pretty peaceful and laid back dude. I mean, aside from that time I punched Muscles.
I am not: a sports fan. Despite forays to a football game five years ago and a Sox game recently, I’ve still never actually sat through a full sporting event.
The Scene: Agganis Arena, with sister, wearing my requisite BU shirt (thanks, sis!) and reluctantly prepared to cheer on the men’s ice hockey team. Although she totally denied my request for a preperatory screening of Mighty Ducks (call me, fifteen-years-ago Emilio!), Sister spends our wait in the will call line and the beer line explaining the finer points of the game. When I’ve more or less gotten this down, she explains a few of the more off-color traditional student-section cheers. Much more to my liking.
Also, because she would kill me if I didn’t mention it, apparently BU’s team is supposed to be pretty good this year. They were like the 2009 NCAA National Champion team (do those words mean things?), after a season so intense that some poor little sophomore actually LOST HIS SPLEEN in an effort to score a goal. Lost his spleen, guys! Apparently he just like hooked the fucker out with his own hockey stick.
So, actually, that plus an on-draft Sam Adams got me reasonably fired up for the game that was to ensue.
And oh my god, you guys. By twelve minutes into the first period, I was complaining that nobody had lost a single tooth, and I’d yet to confirm the compelling rumor that blood freezes before it hits the ice. By sixteen minutes in, we’d scored our first goal, and I was so friggin’ psyched, I didn’t even care about the lack o’ bouncing frozen blood. (Well, I cared a little.)
I’m not going to actually walk you through the dang game, as most like reasonably socially developed people have probably actually been to sporting matches before. But stuff that was totally awesome about hockey:
- Beer. God. Have I become a beer drinker? The guys behind us were so drunk that they kept trying to invent their own multi-lingual rally cries. And you know what? Everyone else was so drunk that it actually kind of seemed like a good idea.
- Face-planting. So, I usually have a pretty refined sense of humor, more prone to wordplay and layered allusions than slapstick comedy. But dude. Dude. Burly guys sliding belly-down across the ice like newborn penguins, before slamming their skulls into boards? HILARIOUS. I may or may not have laughed uncontrollably every. single. time.
- Crowd mentality. One thing I’ve absolutely never been able to do in public is shout with abandon. I mean, I’m one of those people who positively writhes with embarrassment at concerts when the band asks you to clap along. Let alone actually letting my voice be heard in the dang crowd. But for whatever reason, the cruel mass taunting that comes so readily to hockey fans? Totally contagious. Before I’d even had anything to drink, I was already shouting “Ugly goalie!” and “fuck ’em up, fuck ’em up, BC sucks!” with the most rambunctious of them.
- Between-period entertainment. I, um, may or may not have gotten up and danced spastically for the Dance-Off Cam. I definitely did plot to make sure every second date I go on in Boston is to a hockey match, until I get face-time on the too-cute-to-be-real Kiss Cam.
- Brawling. Um, you can just go ahead and call me a Cullen, ’cause I was seriously, seriously lusting for blood. (Also, dude, I am in no way a Twilight fan, but weirdly, that’s maybe not the most inappropriate Twlight reference I’ve made lately. Strange.) You guys! Burly dudes! Swinging sticks at each other! Also, at one point, one of our guys seriously fucked up another player, so in retaliation, one of the dudes from Michigan straight up head-butted one of our players in the stomach, then, when they collapsed in a heap, kept bashing him with his stick until he was called out of the game. IT WAS SO GLORIOUS.
Oh, also, we won in a pretty thrilling last-second victory. Spleen-Free Dude, through some physics-defying miracle, hooked the puck into the net while he was standing like totally right behind the goal. It made no sense. It was amazing.
The Verdict: Lord help me, I loved hockey. Loved it loved it loved it. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d probably get season tickets. (I can pratically hear my sister’s told-you-so dance as I type this.)
Told you so, told you so!!! ::mimics Xander’s Snoopy dance::
Let’s not forget the awesome conversation we had yesterday morning leading up to the game…
(On the phone, around 11am)
Sister: Umm, I think I have a problem. I think I’m dying, and my neck is swollen to about twice the normal size. I should really go to the ER about this potential strep throat thing, but then I would probably have to spend 7 hours over there and miss the hockey game. It’s homecoming/alumni weekend, you know. It’s a *huge* game.
NTKOG: I hear what you’re saying, I really do. But. Ummm. I think you may need to re-examine your priorities. I want you to know that I’m not happy with your choices right now.
Sister: Okay, so, what are you doing Sunday? Do you want to come with me to the ER?
And yet. And yet. Your necessary medical attention in fact devolved into us watching Buffy and eating pizza. Sigh. We have made decisions, dude. And they are not necessarily great ones.
I did try to instill a little early enthusiasm for this kind of thing when I took you and your sister to a pro-wrestling match when you were 8 and 9 years old. you saw Hulk Hogan before he was just a reality star and rotten dad. I tried.
haha, see, if I had only known then what I know now… Now I’m desperately trying to convince Sister to go to a boxing match with me! Although I’d settle for a WWF cagematch.
I, like you, am not a sports fan. I,like you, have also discovered a love for hockey. Also soccer. But only mens soccer. I think that the exquisite mixture of beer, dudes, ice, hockey sticks and drunk people in an arena setting = HILARITY. It’s okay to throw any and all higher standards of humor out of the window when watching hockey. [and soccer]
Jesus! He gouged his own spleen out?! How does one do that? Or did I read that wrong. I’m hoping I read that wrong.
Anyway, I used to work at this terrible place. Two years of my life down the drain for easy money. This place was called Sports Depot. If you’ve never been there, ugh, maybe check it out? I bet you’d get a good NTKOG out of it.
I might have exaggerated the situation… As my sister explained it to me, he skated really hard into the wall with his stick at a weird angle, then the stick flew back into him really hard, caused a ton of internal bleeding, and had to be removed.
Still, pretty dang gory, right? Although, potentially worth it just for his opportunity to remind his teammates: “I regret I have but one spleen to give to my team.”
i love your blog, so i will attempt to forgive you for cheering for bu
love,
bc law student
Awwww, thanks! Besides, you’re a law student! And I’m obsessed with correcting people who misuse the phrase “beg the question”! So basically, we have a connection that transcends university allegiances, is what I’m saying.
BC does suck, haha. But um I go to BU, so you know, I have to say that 😉
~ BU always has a good hockey team.
~ College hockey frowns upon the pugilism. For actual hockey brawling with blood you need to go to a Bruins game (if they’re playing the Canadians there will be good fights).
~ for your third dates, after the kiss-cam and to really weed out the weak, make your date dress up in BU paraphernalia and take you to an away game at one of the other Hockey East schools (BC, UNH, UMass).
~ and as I UMass fan I feel required to throw in a Sucks to BU!
Like yourself, I consider myself an “artsy type.” I’ve constantly got my nose in a book or am running to and from rehearsal. I thought myself “above” hockey… until last year when I gave it a chance and was HOOKED.
I went to my first game on a disastrous first date, and was totally transfixed by the speed, the violence, the BLOOD!!
At the end of the night, I ditched the guy and kept the team. 🙂
Hockey is amazing. But I agree with Svaha above — for the real exciting stuff, you have to watch the NHL. Get a ticket to a Bruins game. Also, there is NOTHING IN THE WORLD like playoff hockey. It is unbelievably brutal, both as a player and as a spectator. So much fun.
As a BC student, however, I can’t support your BU fandom.
I was at this game, rooting against you! We were the loud people in the corner chanting “We want mooooore goals!” Bummer of a last second loss.