Our First Hockey Game

One of the perks that I get from being the coach of the NU women's basketball team is that the university sports center sometimes gets free tickets to sporting events in town.  I've been to a couple of the basketball games this year with some of my basketball players, for example.

This week, I was asked if my family wanted tickets to the hockey game.  I was happy to say yes to the tickets.  The team here - Barys (or snow leopard) - plays in the KHL (Kontinental Hockey League) with teams from Russia, other former Soviet States, and a couple of teams from Scandinavia. The team just moved (a few months ago) from their old arena on the other side of town to an arena near the other sports arenas - which is only about a mile from our apartment.  Last year we thought about going, but getting to and from the games was problematic.  Now that problem is solved.

I got the tickets on Monday afternoon for the game on Tuesday.  Tuesday the kids' school was cancelled (it was supposed to be the last day of the term) because of a blizzard that raged all day.  The wind and snow was still blowing when I came home from work in the late afternoon and we thought about not going, but decided that we would brave the weather instead.  I ordered two taxis to pick us up at 7:00.  We were taking three of the kids and Yulia's mom (so six of us) since Polina was sick with the flu.  When we went down, our taxi wasn't there.  It took until 7:30 for one of the taxis to show up.  By that time Babushka (Lyudmila, Yulia's mom) had given up on going, so the five of us piled into the taxi who drove us through the blizzard down the road a bit.

View of the blizzard from our window

We arrived at the game 10 minutes into the 1st period - and Baris was already up 2-0 over CSKA Moscow.  We had nice seats behind one of the goals high enough up that we could see the action on both sides.  There was also a very nice scoreboard and screen that showed replays, so we could get into the action.  The arena was only about 2/3 full - we think mostly because of the storm.

Our view of the rink from our seats

Selfie

The girls watching the game

I had never been to a live professional hockey game before (neither had anyone else in the family) and we really enjoyed it.  The game was intense - the final score was 4-3 for Astana.  We saw a fight right in front of where we were (in the game, on the ice) and quite a few power plays because of penalties.  The atmosphere was a lot of fun.

Barys is in blue, CSKA Moscow is in red

Fight

Another fight.

Fans would put up a giant banner every time after Barys scored

Standing ovation after a score

At the end of the game when the team won, lots of people through stuffed bears out onto the ice.  It was the first time that they had done something like that (the announcer said) and it was a lot of fun. Because of the traffic and storm, we decided to just walk home.  The wind had calmed down quite a bit, although it was still blowing.  The snow on the sidewalks had drifted up to four feet in some places.  Because of the way the weather had gone, though, much of the snow was crusted and we could walk along the top.  It took us about 35 minutes to walk home - and by the time we arrived we were plenty chilly.

Teddy bears on the ice and teams shaking hands

Cleaning up the bears after the game

The winners!

Snow Leopard Mascot 

We are really glad that we had the opportunity to go and watch the game.  We had so much fun that we are planning on making it a more regular part of our winter entertainment.