Yesterday I was very fortunate to go to the Leafs game at the Air Canada Centre. It was my first time watching a game in the ACC, all the games I have watched have been at Maple Leaf Gardens. I hadn’t been to a live hockey game in years, the last one I can recall being the Toronto Maple Leafs versus the New Jersey Devils, sometime in the mid-late eighties. My family although big Leafs fan, would never pay the ridiculous prices for tickets … nevertheless we were extremely lucky that my dad would occasionally get tickets given to him. So yesterday I got to take a step back into the world that I hadn’t been in touch with for quite sometime, something I suspect that most Leafs fans would not even have the opportunity to do considering the cost of each ticket which is rather unfortunate in my opinion. I guess the sad thing about the Leafs Nation is the fact that there are so many people willing to pay whatever the price for tickets to a game, it somewhat makes us out to be suckers, but perhaps an optimistic view would be this also demonstrates how loyal fans are to the team (and how much we believe in the “dream”). Of course a friend of mine also pointed out on Friday that all this activity could just be business people using the game as a place for negotiations.
If I only had my better camera. Oh well, not a bad shot.
Some random check.
Aside from the dramatics the game was a fierce and tense one. The Star reports that this was one of the most attended games, likely because of #87 Sidney Crosby (aka. Sid the Kid, apparently). While Sid the Kid was fierce and anyone could see he was very agile and extremely fast on the ice, #11 Jordan Staal was capturing the attention of the crowd especially since he scored the first and last goals of the game into overtime. The first period was rather bland with the Leafs taking a beating but the second period was amazing and pure magic as we saw Toronto catch up and even score a tie-breaker. I happened to be sitting near the right side behind the goal and watched the smooth passes taking place. Too bad the magic dissipated in the third period and after Newberry was injured and had to be carried away in a stretcher. After that it seemed like the Leafs became desperate and lost all sense of tactics and strategy into overtime.
I honestly think the idea of throwing yourself on the ground to block the puck has to be one of the worst moves to watch in the NHL. As my dad put it, if you throw yourself on the ground, suddenly your team is one man down because you have to get yourself up and find the opponent. Leave the goal tending to the goalie and focus on keeping the puck away from the opposing team.
Regardless, it was an amazing game to watch. No one left the game early because it was such a tight intense match. There were some moments that didn’t make sense like when #25 Hal Gill just literally knocked down one of the penguins, jumped on him and started hammering in. Purely instigated. Later the refs took down #80 Nik Antropov on a harsh penalty in overtime on something that hardly looked like hooking, but I guess when it’s 4 on 3 in overtime they wanted to make things extra fair. Good game overall. Too bad the Leafs lost as well as lost one of their guys. In the beginning of the game, one of the refs got hit by a puck too so there were a few odd moments. In addition, the subway shut down on the way back home causing a huge amount of chaos between Lawrence and Finch station.
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