The Good Ole Hockey Game

On Friday night I finally got my Christmas present. Sha bought both Eric and me tickets to the Montreal Canadiens - Ottawa Senators game for Christmas, and Friday night was the night.

Both the of us donned our jerseys. His is Montreal's current star goalie, and mine is the previous great, Jean Beliveau, who played when I was a boy and into young adulthood. Fittingly, he played his last game on April 04 1971, and this was also April 04, 43 years later.

Just for fun before I get back to the evening, here is a photo of me in my Canadiens (CH or Habs for short from now on in this post) hockey sweater, circa 1955.I am with my Uncle Charlie on Christmas if I recall. He died in 1970. He was a Leaf fan and would tease me good-naturedly at every opportunity.

Anyway, we made it to the arena early and found our seats in the third tier: section 321, row F, seats 1 and 2.

The view was excellent. The camera was zoomed out for this photo ↓ and the players were larger in life than they look here.

I tried a few selfies and did better with the second shot below.

Using Sue's compact camera, I snapped quite a few photos during warmup, choosing to leave my bulky DSLR at home. My favourite player, #76, PK Subban is prominent in both shots. The second shot below shows, more or less, the real life view that we had from our seats. It was fine.

The game is on. I put the camera away for most of the game but eventually remembered to take a few pictures.

Despite the game being in Ottaw, there seemed to be as many Habs fans as Sens fans. There was an exuberant block of fans just behind us. ↓ They were loud and sang their victory songs from time to time, for the Habs won handily: 7 - 4.

I took my title, The Good Ole Hockey Game,  from the main line in Stompin' Tom Connors', The Hockey Song, which gives the flavour of how seriously but enthusiastically we take our hockey in this county. Stompin' Tom was a greatly loved Canadian folk icon. At one point he spent several weeks here in Carleton Place where he composed Mufferaw Joe, and we have a wall painting in town commemorating him and his stay.

Fittingly, he performed this ↓ rendition of The Hockey Song in Ottawa on Canada Day 1993, just after the Habs had one the Stanley Cup and mentions that in this version. Unfortunately, the Habs have not won since. In fact, although the CH has won more championships by far than any other team, times have not been terribly good for most years since 1993.