Last December we went to a Hockey game. This year we decided to go again. Last year we had gotten free tickets from the university. The seats were pretty good. This year, we bought our own tickets, and the seats ended up being amazing. We spent about $42 dollars for all of us (including Yulia's mom) to go and watch the Omsk Avangard.
The stadium is just about a mile from our house and the busses don't run on the street it's on, so we decided just to walk. We walked there in nice weather, unlike last year when we arrived and left in a blizzard.
By the time we got to the stadium, through security, and gave our coats to the coat check, we were about 5 minutes into the first period. Our seats were about 7 rows up on the corner behind the goal. We had a great view of the action on both sides of the rink. The stadium is very nice and has a huge jumbotron as well and so we were able to see replays of the best plays.
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| The girls came straight from their figure skating practice, so they are in their special attire. |
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| Dropping the puck. Barys is in blue. |
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| Amazing speed and agility! |
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| Barys fan section. It looks like Ded Moroz and Snegurochka came to cheer for the team! |
The game itself was great. The Avangard team scored in the first period. The second period was scoreless. Barys scored at the beginning of the third period, and about five minutes scored again, gaining the lead. The other team pulled their goalie with about 2 minutes left and attacked furiously. Astana defended, got the puck out, and scored in the open net with about 25 seconds left in the game. Everyone immediately through stuffed animals onto the ice (something that was supposed to happen at the end of the game) to be donated to orphanages around the country. It took about five minutes to clean up all the animals - and it was lots of fun seeing the players, referees, and rink staff gathering them up.
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| Action! |
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| This #43 (Dustin Boyd, a Canadian) is a local hero. |
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| Every time our team makes a goal, the fans fly this gigantic Barys shirt. |
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| Third goal with 25 seconds to go. The crowd just blew up! |
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| Players helping to clean the ice. There are 25 seconds still left in the game. |
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| Final score 3:1. We won! |
We all had a lot of fun. One peculiarity of the stadium here is that food is not allowed inside - and so when we sent our kids for treats they had to eat them. I think the emphasis is on keeping the stadium looking nice. In the US, of course, the emphasis is on making obscene profits on concessions.
The other big adventure was that Yulia and I were on the kiss cam during a break in the third period. We totally kissed!
Hockey wasn't a game that I'd ever really been into before seeing it live, but it is a great sport to watch live. It has a lot of action and is very fast. We are going to try to go see a basketball game during the winter break as well.
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