Wednesday Night Hockey

Last night was one of the rare times I got to actually go out after work. A bunch of us from our office got together and managed to score a group rate for the Cyclones game. While a bunch of people expressed interest initially, only about 15 of us bothered to put money towards tickets. However, we still had a good time.

We had pretty good seats, fifth row up, just to the left of the benches. Aside from group of idiotic and drunken frat boy morons in front of me, who were already drunker than skunks on their tenth $1 beer before the game started and were more concerned about how many times they got on the jumbotron that what was happening on the ice, it was a good time. The above picture was shot during warmups, right when I got there.

Our opponents on this night were the South Carolina Stingrays, who are second in the ECHL south division and one of the better teams in the league. Through the first two periods, the Cyclones didn't get much going and were outshot 16-6 and were down 1-0. The third period though is where things really heated up with penalties about for roughing and even a game misconduct on the Cyclones winger Justin Vaive. Amidst all the chaos, the Clones did manage to tie it up and then won it in just over three minutes in overtime.

Not only was it dollar beer night, which meant Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life cans for a buck a piece, it was also a giveaway night. The Cyclones don't have trading cards (believe me, I've asked) but instead tonight, we got playing cards.

The regular cards are nothing special, just the standard suites on every playing card deck. The kings, queens, jacks, and jokers are what makes this unique though. Every king card is Twister, the queen cards are Puckchop, the jacks are local morning radio host and PA announcer J.D., and the jokers are play-by-play announcer Fitz, who calls the games online.

In case you're wondering, here's what the backs looked like. It was another fun night down at the rink and I probably won't be able to get down to another game the rest of the season since there's only a handful of home games left, but hey, at least I managed to make it to two games this year.