it was a game and a half....no, more.

Well, thanks to sitting through a "90 minute" (yeah, right, it was 3 hours) sales pitch for a timeshare, Ryan and I came out with a couple of NHL playoff tickets. And yes, we went to the game last night.

Now, I've been to a handful of games in the past, but never a playoff game. This was exciting. This was something special.

It all started with us joining the crowd of people walking through downtown Vancouver towards the stadium, excitement in the air, tickets in hand. It was the first game, first round, first time in a few years that our Vancouver Canucks have made it to the playoffs.

We found our seats, row 4 on the balcony, in the corner. Not the worst seats in the place, eh? We had made a point of trying to get there a little early to get in on the pre-game excitement, but mostly failed. We had about 10 minutes to sit and soak it in before the game started.

Seven o'clock rolled around and the Canucks skated out onto the ice. WAAAHOOO!!!! The crowd went wild! Everyone waved their white towels and you could almost taste the excitement in the air. This was going to be awesome! Two and a half hours of pure bliss, surrounded by people shouting at the players.

Okay, so if anyone reading this paid any attention to the game last night, you know that it went a little longer than two and a half hours. We endured nearly 4 periods of overtime and let me tell you, we felt every minute that passed.

The crowd around us was a colourful one, as they usually are. I was happy to not have any "I could do it better than those guys" types, but we did have a plethora of other interesting characters surrounding us.

There was a group of guys about our age sitting directly behind us. They were good natured enough, and rather funny as the night rolled on. This was a theme of the night actually. As it got later and later, and we got more and more tired, the people in the crowd seemed funnier and funnier.

There were a couple of younger guys in front of us who, as the game progressed, seemed to leave and come back with more and more Canucks paraphernalia. It started out with one of them wearing one of those goofy looking foam puck hats and waving a foam finger, then they got face tattoos, then the other guy got a foam puck hat and finger, then they purchased a flag which doubled as a cape. It was funny enough, except when they leaned forward and all we could see when we looked towards the ice was two HUGE puck-shaped noggins.

There were a couple of girls over a couple seats from us, who seemed to be on the warpath for goodness. They were hearty yellers the whole game, but seemed to only have two things to yell. "Let's fire it up, boys!" and "GO CANUCKS GO!!!" The second phrase was triumphantly started as soon as any of the crowd started jeering at the other team's goalie. (which happened the ENTIRE game) After a while, we noticed that they seemed to be on some kind of kindness cheer leading team, and it was confirmed when in response to the jeers of the crowd, "YOU SUCK TURCO!!!" they yelled back, "HOW CAN HE SUCK IF WE DON'T SHOOT AT HIM!!!?"

Noble. Very noble.

Then there was a guy seated a little behind us and to the side. I think he must have decided before the game that he was going to be Scottish. He put on an accent and yelled out as many Scottish-sounding expressions as he could. It was pretty clear that it was fake though, because the more beer he drank, the more his accent would suddenly morph into Jamaican, or some other confusing mix of accents.

Then there was Ryan and I, in the midst of all this. I have often been surprised by Ryan at games. For a guy who watches hockey rather religiously, then after each game watches the highlights, then goes and checks Canucks.com, I always expect him to be quite passionate. On the contrary, he's a deep, quiet burner. I'm the loudmouth! I was screaming things out the whole time, and was hoarse by the time we were halfway through the first period.

Now, as mentioned before, the game was a long one. Longest ever in Canucks history, actually, and 6th longest in NHL history. There are some stats for ya. As the game wore on and sudden death overtime seemed to stretch on forever, the crowd became really tired. The yelling changed from encouragement to desperate cries for mercy. At one point, late in the game, you could have heard my voice screaming out, "PUT US OUT OF OUR MISERY AND SCORE!!!" I actually wondered at one point, in my exhaustion, why one of the teams just didn't give up, for pete's sake. My brains returned a moment later.

I think my favourite moment though, was when one of the die hards behind us changed his tune and yelled, "WOULD SOMEBODY JUST SCORE!!!???" It was as if delirium had officially set in and we forgot how much we wanted our team to win.

What can I say? It was a long night! A good one though. We won in the end! I'm glad we went! I'm glad we got some seriously awesomely cheap tickets! And if anyone's interested in sitting through a sales pitch, I believe they still have some tickets left!!

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