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.)
Don't you hate it when the guy in front of you wears a big hat?
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.)
Not That Kind of Girl 