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Well, a-looky here, it’s the ticket from my first-ever live National Hockey League game. Thank goodness the Ottawa Senators got back together after an almost sixty-year hiatus from the NHL, else I might be sitting here today having still never seen an NHL game. Just imagine me typing away until the page was empty…
But they did and I have, many times as it turns out. So many times in fact that I now know enough about the live hockey experience to have acquired a whole new appreciation for that first game of mine way back on November 22nd, 1993.
First off, I got the ticket for free, lest I shan’t have attended in the first place, so fleeting was my interest in sport of any sort at the time. Sure, when I was a young’un I was sporadically quite interested in watching the Leafs play – or at least in watching my dad and his friends watch the Leafs play – and though the action was sometimes too tricky to follow there was always the Peter Puck cartoon and the cartoonish Don Cherry, both of which were easily understood by even the dumbest of kids…
Heck, there was a period there in the early ’80’s when we were living in Richmond Hill and my hockey-playing cousin down the street billeted Laurie Boschman’s* brother for a season. In my memory there was no shortage of free tickets and even post-game locker room passes being bandied about, but I was deemed too young (at 14 years of age) and/or disinterested to be invited to tag along. So no Maple Leaf Gardens backstage stories here.
Which is too bad, such an experience might have cemented my interest in the sport, and maybe even the Leafs themselves. But alas.
Anyway, like I say, I got the ticket for free. Ironically it was from a friend who worked on Parliament Hill, whose boss had (complimentary?) season tickets. So yes, I had a senator’s Senators ticket.
And it was a good one too, just a few rows behind the players bench. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, but my seat would have been pretty expensive. So pricey in fact that it would be many years and dozens of games before I would sit so close to the action again. And this was back when the Sens played at the Civic Centre, a modest hockey rink with a capacity of around 9,000 compared to the team’s newer home which holds twice as many people (in theory…it’s not like the place sells out anymore).
But wow, what a great seat (I exclaim retroactively)! So close to the action, plus my section had wait service and tv monitors dangling overhead to show replays (it’s not like the arena had a fancy-pants big-screen scoreboard or anything). The checks sounded like car accidents, the players could be heard yelling to their teammates and swearing at their opponents, and every goal was a flurry of ballet-like motion right before my eyes. It felt great to be free to look wherever I wanted and not be encumbered by the whims of CBC’s live video editor. I could see the plays getting set up, and watch the players that held back. The whole experience was endlessly entertaining, not to mention educational.
And did I mention that the game was at the Civic Centre, right there in Ottawa and just a short stroll from my apartment? No drive to Kanata to deal with, no $15 parking fee, no sitting senselessly in gridlocked traffic trying to get home after the game…gosh, if I had a time machine I might just go back to me walking out of this game just so I could fully appreciate how good it was to see the Ottawa Senators play in downtown Ottawa.
But I don’t, so I’ll have to warmly relish the moment in my fading memory. And I do.
Just the facts: Buffalo won the game 5-2 and I went by myself.
*In a fit of irony, Laurie Boschman was on the ice at this game filling his role as captain of the Ottawa Senators. It was his only year playing for the Sens, and it was his final season playing at all.
Todd Man Out 