Happy Puckiversary

Every year for the past 4-5 years, we would go to a Spokane Chiefs Hockey Game, to see if it would catch on.  Try it on to see if it fits, as it were.  We did the same thing with Spokane Indians Baseball, and various sports on TV - March Madness, Super Bowl, and so on. 

Spokane doesn't have "big league" sports.  That's OK.  We have short-season minor league baseball.  A longer season would be nice, but I've frozen my giblets on too many May Bloomsday mornings to want to spend too many evenings in the uncontrolled out-of-doors before about May 20th.  Memorial Day weekend is usually OK - but about about 25% of the time? Brrrrrrr.  So the season is short, but for 38 home games, it's busy - and parking is free.  $0.  Gratis.  Try that at Safeco Field.

We have arena football - the closest we get to the "majors" - competing in the same division with Phoenix, San Jose and Salt Lake City.  It's not the NFL, but we fill the joint.  Oh, and arena parking is $6.  It was $5 for about the first 15 years the building was open, so I guess we were due for an increase.

Go Chiefs Go!

And so it happened that last February 25th.  The Chiefs were having "school night" with discounted tickets for students & family.  All the way to the arena, a chorus of "we don't want to go to the hockey game" came from the back seat, before it turned into a raucous night of dancing, cheering, and like-we-flipped-a-light-switch hockey fans.  Before that night I couldn't have known the difference between the Prince George Cougars and the Red Deer Rebels - now we have an 8-year-old WHL encyclopedia who knows all the teams, knows that Victoria used to be Chilliwack and that Spokane and Portland are the only US-based teams in the WHL that have won the Memorial Cup.

Game Summary

But that night turned out to be an 8-0 shellacking of PG that set us on the hockey path.  By the end of the evening, we had ourselves our first favorite player "STARTING AT CENTER, NUMMMBER NINE, FROM SPOKANNNNNNE WASHINGTON, TYLERRRRRRRRRR JOHNNNNNSONNNNNNNNN", and had seen out first "hatter" from "NUMBER TWENTY-ONE, ANTHONYYYYY BARDARRRRROOOOOO" (more on him in the weeks to come).  We knew what a "chalupa goal" was, and "game misconduct" too.

Day 1 of our Puck Lives

Scoresheet

Pouncing on that opportunity like a loose puck in front of a rookie goalie, we took advantage of the fact that the last two Fridays were home games - we needed to find out if the interest was real.  That was an unqualified yes.  When the scoreboard says "everybody dance", that's a command.  When there's a goal - you stand and clap.  Go Chiefs Go!

The Chiefs usually have "school night" twice a year - October and February - and so it became that last night was our "first anniversary".  It was a 5-4 slugfest against the Seattle Thunderbirds that probably shouldn't have been that close.  Five different Chiefs netted goals, none of them the big-time scorers.  There was some pushing but no real fights.  And there was popcorn.

Our 1st Puckiversary

Game Summary

Our puckiversary will always be celebrated on the February "school night," regardless of the actual number on the calendar.  Kim was always a good sport about it, but I, selfishly, wanted a sporting endeavor I could share with my sons.  Hockey, it is.  Go Chiefs Go!