Hockey's Back!

Hi, my name is Sarah, and I'm addicted to hockey.  I know what you're thinking, "It's just a sport, it's not like she's addicted to meth or booze or something serious."  Well let me tell you, it's a real problem! A real awesome problem, but a problem just the same.  For those of you who aren't avid hockey fans, here's a little about what I've been going through in recent months.

Normally, the hockey season starts in October.  When that happens, I'm a happy camper until the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs in June.  In the off season I take in some baseball games and catch up on the sleep I lost during hockey season.  It all works out perfectly for me.

Last year, my brother and I became season ticket holders for the Phoenix Coyotes.  We only had a partial package last year, so we went to around 20 games by the time our team was done with the playoffs.  I may freeze to my very core sitting at Jobing.com Arena, but that place is definitely one of my happy places.  So you can imagine my excitement, when we decided to upgrade our package to a full season.  I was going to get 40 games!  40 nights sitting in the arena watching men beat the crap out of each other.  At least 2,400 minutes of intense anxiety and nail biting.  It's amazing!

This year is a little different.  Like the other professional sports, the National Hockey League has a collective bargaining agreement between the league/owners and the players.  A set of guidelines and rules for everyone to follow.  A big part of the CBA is money related.  How much teams can spend on players, how much players can make and the max amount of years a player can sign a contract for.  That's a very broad overview and explanation, but you get the picture.  Something I think we can all agree on is that money can make things very difficult.  The CBA expired at the end of last season, which meant a new one needed to be agreed upon by both sides.  That didn't happen, so the league went into a lock out situation.  No hockey could be played until everyone decided to play nice and agree on some things.

Needless to say that didn't happen until about 2 weeks ago.  We lost half of the season, the Winter Classic Game and the All-Star Game.  Now, instead of 40 games, I get 24.  Don't get me wrong, I'll take what I can get and be stoked about it, but it was a rough few months without hockey.  I was okay for a while when college football was still being played.  I really enjoy college football, and didn't mind using it as my replacement sport.  After college football was over, I actually started paying attention to the NFL just to have a sport to watch.  I really don't like the NFL.  I never have.  This year I knew way more about it than I'm comfortable admitting.

It was rough.  Just ask my mom.  She would cringe anytime someone would bring up anything hockey related in my vicinity.  I was angry, and it wasn't pretty.  None of that matters now though, because HOCKEY IS BACK!  We had our first home game this past Sunday night.  The Coyotes upgraded our seats that night to the lower level.  We were 6 rows behind our goalie.  It didn't suck.  Now I'll be spending roughly three nights a week in section 207 at Jobing.com Arena watching our boys play and hoping for another run at the cup.

I am once again a happy camper, but being gone most nights at games may make blogging even more sporadic than it already is.  One of my goals for the year was to post more, so I'm going to try and get my life together this week and get back on track.  Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

Brother & I stoked to be back in the arena for a game

Our seats for Opening Night.  6 Rows behind the goal.  Very awesome.

 

Today Should Have Been Awesome

This is my hockey gear.  All of my t-shirts and rally towels.  The only things not in the stack are my Brooks Laich jersey and my hats.  Because my closet at my parents house is so small, and my hockey gear takes up so much room, it gets folded up and stacked in the top of the closet during the off-season. Today should have been like Christmas.  I should have been able to take all of this off the shelf in order to pick out the perfect outfit for tonight's first pre-season game.  Instead, I'm sitting here in the living room, watching baseball and writing this post.  My mother taught me that if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all, so this will be short and sweet.

This whole lockout mess is ridiculous.  If either side was fighting for anything other than money (player safety anyone?!) I might be able to justify it.  Unfortunately, this is a fight over money, and at the moment it would appear that neither side is willing to meet somewhere in the middle and compromise.  So both sides are being stubborn, and currently all pre-season games in September have been cancelled.  Considering today was the first day they've held meetings in two weeks, it's likely that there will be an announcement regarding October's games very soon.  

In the meantime, the fans are angry (pissed off season ticket holder, party of one....right over here!).  The last time the NHL had a lockout was the 2004-2005 season, and all of the games were cancelled that year.  They lost a lot of their fans after that, and they've just recently began to recover most of them.  Not only are the fans angry, but did anyone ever think about the arena employees who now don't have jobs until this is all over?  Or the businesses surrounding the arenas that thrive on game traffic?  It doesn't appear that they have.  So, for now, I'm just going to be an angry fan.  If you need me, I'll be in my room, staring at my closet, wishing I had a reason to put my hockey gear back in my wardrobe rotation.