Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Now that was a $200 hockey game


Ever since December, I felt like that Carolina Hurricanes were going to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. Then, as the playoffs wound up, I began to feel like the Canes were a team of destiny. I decided to not buy any playoff tickets and instead save up all my money for the Finals.

Sure enough, Carolina polished off Buffalo in 7 games to make it to their 2nd Finals in 4 seasons. So for my birthday and for Father's Day, Liz allowed me to buy myself tickets to Game 1 and Game 7. Each ticket cost a whopping $194 (including all the TicketBastard convenience charges) but it's not like you can see YOUR team play in a cup final every year so I bit the bullet and hoped the game would be worth it.

I must admit that when Carolina was down tonight 0-3 with less than 24 minutes to play in the game, I was feeling like I'd thrown $200 in the trash. What a disappointment the game was turning out to be until our captain Rod Brindamour, number 17, scored at 17:17 of the 2nd period to give us a lifeline. Numerologists take heed -- that magical combination of 17s set off Category 5 squall inside the RBC Center that saw the Canes rattle off three more unanswered goals, the last of which was even shorthanded, to take a 4-3 lead. After the home team squandered the advantage, Brindamour stepped up just as he did in Game 7 of the Buffalo series and scored the game winner -- this time with a mere 31 seconds to play in regulation.

You can bet I'm feeling like that was money well spent at the moment.

1 comment:

Gerry said...

I, too, went to that game although I opted for the "cheap" $100 seats since I went to the first NJ/Carolina game a few weeks ago. Boy was that exciting to see them come back after playing pretty poorly for two periods.

I'm still pretty hoarse 24 hours later.