Take Me Out to the Hockey Game

Well, we HAVE taken Lane out to the Coyotes hockey game....3 times in the last 4 weeks! The first was with Dad and the Young Men, the 2nd was with Mom and Dad on a Tuesday datenight, and the last was with Dad, Uncle Seth, and cousin Colton. Lane was really well-behaved at all of them. If you live in the West Valley, you kind of have to be a Coyotes fan to be socially accepted.

The first game the 'Yotes lost in OT. I was just glad to get home alive with about 15 young men and 5 leaders. It was cool to hear the singing of "O Canada". The game was against Vancouver.

The 2nd game was memorable because we went to Cabela's first, because Anna hadn't been there yet. So we come for the start of the 2nd period, and we're outside taking pictures in front of the musical fountains (see picture below). There is this guy that is near us that is looking like he wants to talk to us. Finally I went up to him and asked him if he needed something, and he told us that he had 3 tickets on the 4th row, but his friends weren't going to make it. He asked if we would like to use them. So we gave our upper-deck seats to some other people outside the ticket window and had some really sweet seats. You should've seen Lane's face as we approached the seats. He's probably wondering what the heck....these giant guys cruising on the ice wacking a frozen rubber disc all over the place....at the plexiglass, at each other's faces, at the goal. Anyway, it was fun to see his reactions. He stayed on Mom's or Dad's lap the entire time and hardly moved. Also, all the people around thought he was cute and hilarious, and they kept feeding him popcorn and beer....kidding about the beer. We warned them that he is like the Zoo animals. If you feed them, they keep coming back for more.

The 3rd game with Seth and Colton was the best actual game of them all. The newspaper that morning called it their most important game of the year. It was a shootout thriller against a very good team. The Coyotes are in the home stretch of a playoff run, and things are looking good for the playoffs coming very soon.

We've had a little too much fun the past couple of weeks. Thank goodness the Coyotes are a great team, because all the other Phoenix teams REALLY stink this year!


Lane and Mom at the musical fountains outside the arena. They are similar to those at the Mirage in Las Vegas



Lane and Dad...the 2 Hockey junkies



Lane and Mom



Lane looks a little tired at this point. But still in awe.


This was the view from the 4th Row. You are right in on the action. We sat next to the guy that gave us the tickets. He was a nice guy from Boston who has lived in Phoenix since 1977. We talked about hockey and nursing, because his wife is a nurse.

About the only bummer was that we didn't really see any fights. Not as many fights in the NHL as there used to be. Of the 3 games we attended, the 'Yotes won a shootout thriller, a game in regulation, and lost one in OT to the team with the best record in the NHL, Vancouver.