First Frost, First Win

While other towns in the North are dealing with unexpected snow, we woke up with our first real frost of the season here:There's something quite magical about frost on a sunny day, and in particular the pastel hues it brings out in nature.

Last night was also our first Seawolf Hockey game of the season versus the Merrimack Warriors. Our favorite mythical sea creatures that play hockey had a pretty awful season last year, dropping 15 straight games to end it, so we are all hopeful that they can only improve this season.

It all started with the general spectacle of the Sullivan Arena, which is my favorite part of going to a hockey game in the first place. While Frank was getting our cappucino and breve (our usual hockey-watching drinks), I snuck by and got myself a clapper--a plastic hand contraption that you wave in the air to make a very obnoxious sound.

It got much use during the pre-game spectacle where we learned that the Ford GT does not work very well on ice and that Spirit the Seawolf can be lowered down from the ceiling for dramatic effect. Then came the traditional American flag waving and the UAA flag waving for a while.

As for the team itself, a great omen was that exhibition uniforms look very snazzy this year with the accent color being a lovely army green color. This is certainly ten times better than the awful silver of last year (yuck). They looked very impressive doing their warmups, which is always important.

Then after the hoo-hah, we finally got to the game. We first had to get the obligatory "blocking in the back" penalty on UAA out of the way, which Kevin Clark helped us out on 11 seconds into the game. Talk about an enthusiasm killer!

At the point that Kevin Clark got thrown out, Jason the ugly fan was in full ugly swing, raging against the machine and the refs. We sat close to Jason the ugly fan (wears a hockey mask and yells nasty things at the players who can't see them), Sock Puppet Joe (taunts the other team's penalty box with sock puppets) and Elvis (mid-age guy who likes to drink, dance and always is looking to see if the camera is on him or not).

So, UAA starts the game with a 5 min penalty that they had to kill, which is nice because traditionally we are a bit better with less people on the ice. We wound up killing that penalty and getting two (!) goals in the first period.

The Seawolves were on fire, which was great to see. Merrimack made a weak attempt at getting back into it with a goal in period 2, but we answered with three additional goals (!) in the second period, despite getting pretty much all the penalties for the first and second period.

By the time we left, the score was 6-2 Seawolves, which was a great start to the season.

Tonight though, the Seawolves will need all the help they can get in order to beat Nebraska-Omaha for the Classic championship!