Baby's First Hockey Game

For Christmas, I got my littlest brother Patrick two tickets to a New York Rangers loss. 2-1 to the Buffalo Sabres. I should have probably gotten tickets to a win. Oh well.

The main reason I thought this would be a good gift was that neither of us had ever been to an NHL hockey game. So we were very excited!

In addition to being excited, we were also ashamed to easily be the two least knowledgeable people inside the World’s Most Famous Arena. We both felt like how clueless pseudo-Yankee fans blabbering behind us at Yankee Stadium should feel.

Things I learned about hockey:
-hockey is fast and hard to follow, even live.
-hockey referees are RIDICULOUS. During pre-game introductions, they just BURST out onto the ice, skating about as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone skate live. These are easily the most athletic officials in major sports.
-someone can get a penalty for diving AT THE SAME TIME as the person who caused them to dive getting a penalty for tripping. This seems counterintuitive to me.

Things I re-learned about hockey:
-What offsides is. I always forget what offsides is. (It’s when a player enters the other team’s zone (proper word?) before the puck.)

Things I already knew about hockey but were put into sharp relief by actually being there:
-Hockey is low-scoring.
-Fighting is legal.
-Rangers fans are crazy.

And that last one is coming from a crazy, crazy Yankee fan. The guy in front of us screamed “MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKER” at one indiscriminate point (or maybe something important had just happened...I don't know). Keep in mind, this was a regular season game in the middle of the year for a team who, if the playoffs started today, would be in them handily. That’s as far as I’ll go with that, because me intimating that sports fans should calm down could be the most hypocritical thing in recorded history.

Anyway, good experience. Anyone wanna go to another Ranger game with me? I’ve got a month to burn.