Happy New Year

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Happy New Year to all.

In our incarnations as slightly batty women's hockey wonks, TOPWLH and I attended the December 30 exhibition hockey game at Xcel between the national women's teams of the USA and Canada. These are the two best teams in the world, they have played a series of exhibition games which are leading up to the Olympic games in February in Vancouver. The two teams are expected to meet again in Vancouver for the gold medal. Hockey people in Minnesota were pretty proud of ourselves for the crowd of approximately 6,200, a huge crowd for women's hockey in the USA.

Tonight in Ottawa the same two teams are playing before an all time record crowd for women's hockey in Canada, something in excess of 16,000. Just goes to show, hockey matters in Canada, not so much in the so called state of hockey.

By the way Canada won 2-1 in Saint Paul. Tonight in Ottawa the two teams tied 2-2 with Canada winning the shootout conducted after overtime.

I post all this to lead up to the story of our favorite moment from the game at the Xcel. You may end up being surprised that our favorite moment was only tangentially related to the hockey.

TOPWLH and I had abandoned our mid-ice reserved $27 seats because of persistent interference with our attempts to actually watch the hockey from far too many of the other ticket holders in our vicinity. Most were completely unaware of hockey spectator etiquette, acting for all the world as if it was the first game of ice hockey they had ever attended. Many of our fellow ticket holders walked up and down the aisles DURING PLAY completely oblivious to the fact that they were obstructing the view for large portions of the crowd of the main event of the evening being conducted on the ice below.

We sought seats in the corner of the arena. The seats are cheaper there but very often end up being a better vantage point for actually watching hockey. We ended up sitting in a row behind the Warroad High School girls' hockey team. Those girls produced a moment which forever makes them one of our favorite teams.

The Journey song (Don't Stop Believin') which we are listening to came on the public address during a stoppage of play. The usual practice at hockey arenas is to play a snippet of music during stoppages. This is done because people who have paid to see a hockey game are more interested in arena rock than in hockey and will certainly become bored and leave the arena if you don't provide them with alternative entertainment. The rules require that the music not be played during game play so the sound is usually cut off just split seconds after the puck is dropped to resume play. Because only that tiny snippet gets played all that got played this time of the Journey song was the opening line.

I'll wait if you want to stop the music and go back and restart. To do this you should click on the other tab and restart the YouTube video. Then come back over here.

The first line is:

"Just a small town girl".

Play resumed and the music stopped, and god love them, the 15 or so small town girls comprising the Warroad High School girls' hockey team, completely unrehearsed, completely unchoreographed, completely together, continued to sing:

"Livin' in a lonely world,
She took the midnight train going anywhere."

Maybe you had to be there, it was a great moment.

Here's a link to a live performance of the song by Journey for those so inclined.

In further hockey news, in yesterday's second game of the annual Doug Woog Kaposia High School Girls' Hockey Tournament in South Saint Paul the small town girls from Warroad absolutely thumped the girls from the big city suburban school Eastview by a score of 10-1. The rules of high school hockey in Minnesota dictate that when one team gets ahead by 6 goals that the game goes to running time, the game clock no longer stops for goals or rules infractions or any of the other normal stoppages. Warroad put Eastview on running time in the SECOND period, leading 9-0 after two. The final shots on goal were 65-16 for Warroad, including 52 shots by Warroad in the first two periods. High schools play 17 minute periods which means Warroad averaged about one shot on goal every 40 seconds or so.