On Thursday night I was treated to my first National Hockey League game by a Kings fan. My only previous exposure to hockey was basically just listening to Byron talk about it in high school and college. I’d seen some games on television (although could never stay interested enough to watch the entire thing).

As usual, seeing an event live is much better than watching on the little box. For one thing the puck was much easier to keep track of, except when it would go out of view because of the rink board (or whatever it is called) on our side of the arena. Every time that happened I laughed (to myself) because it just looked like a bunch of guys trying to kill a mouse or something.

In hockey you get three periods with two 16 minute intermissions. There are a few time outs, but not nearly as many as in basketball or football. Although the Capitals did do a time-out with 9 seconds on the clock to try to plan their own hockey version of a hail mary. I found out that a hail mary in hockey is to sacrifice your goalie so you can put another man up in enemy territory. The Capitals tried this twice in the final few minutes and both times it resulted in an open net easy score for a “half court” shot by a Kingsman. The resulting score at the end of the night was 5-2 Kings.

The game seemed to go by very fast. Probably due to the fact that the game only stops to assess penalties and rarely a time out.

However, half-time is abysmally slow due to the fact that 12 of the 16 minutes have to be devoted to the Zamboni. My generous companion is so enamored with zambonis that she made it part of her email address. I don’t get it; it is a giant ice-lawnmower that rolls around at 2 miles an hour.

The first intermission had a short Sumo Hockey match.

The second had an American Gladiators Atlasphere on ice race….and… a toyota truck (the sponsor? It didn’t seem to serve any purpose…).

Both events were moderated (sort of) by Bailey, the Kings mascot. I understand why he is a lion (the King of the jungle); but why name him Bailey? My avid Kings fan companion didn’t know the answer to this either.

It seemed like the rink was much closer than the basketball court. This must be true as the rink is much larger and is obviously built on top of the court.

When driving to Staples I was shocked by a giant new building under construction that didn’t exist just three months ago when I’d been to the convention center with Aaron (for the Siggraph show). I was informed that it was the new ritz carlton.

If I had to rank the experience of a hockey game I’d say it is probably somewhere above live pro tennis and below pro basketball (with OSU horseshoe ticket at the top and NASCAR/Golf at the bottom).