Dr. Dog's House
1/29/2009 - Fact action on the ice
As you may know, for years I have been hoping to get to a college hockey game up here. We have three major universities in the U.P.: Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan and Lake Superior State. We live fairly close (2 hours away; relatively close, anyway) from both Tech and NMU, but I never made the trip. Either I was too tired from the week's work or the weather was iffy (both places get lots of snow each winter) or else I just decided to stay home. Sometimes all three. The full season would end before I fully realized that another season has gotten past me.
But not this year.
The team visiting Northern Michigan is from the school where by friend B works. While waiting for that night's high school basketball scores, I saw the TV report of the Friday night Alaska-NMU game, and the lightbulb switched on. Why not? I had a lighter-than-normal workload that weekend. The weather was going to be decent.
Why not, indeed?
My wife opted to stay home: We had driven to Iron Mountain the day before, and she doesn't like to travel that much, especially when it's cold. But I called my son David, and he was interested. He had never seen a hockey game in person before, and he likes new experiences, too. Early last Saturday afternoon, we got in the car and started driving to Marquette. The camera went along, of course.
The sun was out and the roads were mostly bare, though more snow was evident as we got closer to Marquette, like on this rocky outcropping along the road ...
In Marquette, as David checked out a used games place, I was more interested in the huge piles of snow in the parking lot. This is not the kind of thing you get from a pickup truck with a plow attachment ...
We made a few fast shopping stops, got an early supper and then headed for the Berry Events Center on the Northern Michigan campus ...
Here's what it looks like on the inside ...
Our seats were two rows up from the glass, near the goal line at one end of the ice. I thought I'd have to stand up most of the night to get my pictures. But I got to see plenty of action right from my seat ...
Sometimes I was nice and close to the action. Crunch!
But when the action went into the opposite end, beyond the Alaska team bench, it was hard to tell exactly what was going on ...
I had fun with the camera. It was the first time I had seen a hockey game that was not played by little kids for many years--over 20, in fact. As luck would have it, of the four goals scored in regulation time, three took place at the other end of the ice. But late in the second period, Alaska scored at my end ...
There was no scoring in the third period. Not that the teams weren't trying. Here, NMU is on the attack ...
And here, an Alaska player is firing a shot at the Wildcats net. This would have been a great shot if the glass hadn't been distorting the view. You see the Alaska player cranking it, the NMU defenseman going down to block it and a Nanooks player trying to screen the Northern Michigan goaltender (blocking his view of the shot) ...
But there was no scoring in the third period. The teams played a five-minute overtime--no goals. That meant a shootout. Here is the winning goal, scored by an NMU player. If you're looking for the puck, check out the net ...
And all the NMU players were happy that it was there ...
From there, we went home. Didn't see a single snowflake all day, and the roads were good. We got home about 11:45 p.m. I had a good time, and I think there is more college hockey in my future.
Maybe next year.
****
Before I close this, I want to write about our "wonderful" winter weather.
By some coincidence, as the U.S. has been enduring some really crappy snow and ice storms, the Weather Channel has been promoting "Why I like winter."
It's been a loooooong winter here in the Upper Midwest. Seems that it's lasted forever. We really haven't gotten that cold (for us) this winter--nothing colder than about -23F (-30C)--but it sure hasn't let upon us very much. We have had a lot of subzero weather in January (and December, for that matter), and we sure could use a warmup.
I checked our weather records the other day. We have been below freezing continuously, 24/7, all through January. In December, we topped freezing on three days--as high as 43 on Dec. 28. Our heat wave. In early November, we had some mild weather. As warm as 66. But after Nov. 8, we never hit 40 again.So it's been a long time.
It's a rough winter amid tough times. The news has had reports about many major corporations laying off thousands and thousands of people. Even little firms, like the one that used to employ the husband of my friend S. He lost his job recently.
Yeah, it's been a loooooong winter. We're waiting for the times to get better. It can't happen soon enough.
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1/29/2009 - Untitled Comment