I was lucky enough to be at Nationwide Arena for Scott Hartnell's hat trick this past Tuesday. I had previously seen Geoff Sanderson's hat trick back in the winter of 2000 against the Nashville Predators. A hockey hat trick is really one of the coolest sports events to see in person. Getting pelted with hats during the celebration and the crowd's hyper awareness of every moment the player has the puck. It was also a great game as Columbus took down one of the best teams in the league. Probably the best or second best game I've seen them play live this year.
My wife and I ended up going to a lot of games this year. The Anaheim game was our 15th game this season and we have tickets to 3 of the last 5 games of the season. It spurred our decision to get season tickets for next season. We're both really excited as we won't miss any games and we get to control the same two seats for the entire season. There's also a lot of perks and events that season ticket holders get to attend.
I also knocked a lot of teams off my list this season. I believe the only teams I haven't seen play live now are Pittsburgh, Colorado and maybe Montreal. So I really knocked a lot of teams off of my never seen play live list this year.
Kelly and I both got super into the Blue Jackets this year. As I mentioned, we'll have attended 18 games by the end of the year and we probably haven't missed a game since the Nashville game at the end of November. We've really gotten to know the team greatly through out the season. I'm planning to write a couple of posts about the team after the season comes to an end and I plan to write about how I think Todd Richards has done as far as coaching goes. Until then...
