This'll be a two-parter.
Today, my Mom hits me with a nice surprise: an early birthday present! Tickets to tonite's Aeros game and some cash for dinner! Huzzah!
So Tarvis and I head out to the game. As usual, we got there about an hour early...only to discover that the game was going to be starting an hour LATE. See, today was a bit of a monsoon in Houston (that's a slight exaggeration), so there was a span of a couple of hours when planes weren't landing here, and airports weren't sending out flights that had to land here until they knew the runways wouldn't be underwater. As the Aeros and Rivermen had played the previous night in Peoria (2-0 Aeros victory to tie the series up at 1), they had had to fly in to Houston for tonite's game. (See where this is going?) Fortunately for the visiting team, the Rivermen had caught an early flight and arrived in H-town about noon. The Aeros decided to sleep in and try for an early afternoon arrival...erm, not happening, it turns out, and their plane ACTUALLY landed about an hour before the pre-game skate was supposed to be. So, everything got pushed back.
It was a FANTASTIC game, by the way. Neither team played anywhere near flawless hockey, understandable given the circumstances, but the home team had just a bit more kick for just enough of the game to eke out a 2-1 win (and a 2-1 series advantage!) Mitch Love set the tone early on with by fighting some dude who was a good four or five inches taller than Love. Mitch dropped him with three punches, then turned to work the crowd. It worked, and the mostly-empty Yo was rocking.
Any suggestions on a nickname for emergency starting goaltender Anton Kbudobin? I'm thinking "Hootie" at this point.
I am going to try to get to Wednesday's game five if possible (Dave-o, I'm lookin at YOU!). Have to check with the family first, of course :-)
Another really interesting surprise today, but I'll blog on that later. 8:25 start time for your hockey game + highway 45 closed for construction on the ride home = late night and less mental cohesiveness for intelligible blogging.
See? Those two big words have apparently used the last of my word...slinger...ness...for tonight. Yeah. G'nite.
Playoff updates:
(Last night)
Pittsburgh 3, Philadelphia 2 (OT) (Penguins lead series 2-0)
Carolina 2, New Jersey 1 (OT) (Series tied 1-1)
Vancouver 3, St. Louis 0 (Canucks lead 2-0)
(Today/tonite)
New York 1, Washington 0 (Rangers lead 2-0...wow!)
Detroit 4, Columbus 0 (Red Wings lead 2-0)
Boston 5, Montreal 1 (Bruins lead 2-0)
Chicago 3, Calgary 2 (Blackhawks lead 2-0)
