Ice Hockey in Dallas

Before last night I last went an ice-hockey match in my home town, Brighton, in England and that must have been over 50 years ago. So, it's a long time between games but I managed to get to one last night in Dallas, which is 60 miles - maybe 110 km - away from where I'm staying on a rural residential subdivision in deepest Texas.

Well, the event was a great spectacle in the American style. The huge indoor stadium (ice tends to melt outdoors in Dallas) seated 28,000 often screaming fans, many of them drink coke and eating burgers as you'd expect. The microphones were turned up full volume for the occasional commentary or the beat of music during the many of the intermissions when the dancing girls with pompoms were strutting their stuff or adverts were shown. High above the ice there was a square array of TV screens providing review of key plays and other 'entertainment'. In fact the entire arena was full of flashing lights of various kinds attempting to energise the crowd. 

The game itself was played at a furious pace, something that I could remember from 50 years previously, often with seemingly violent crashes between opposing players, which the crowd seemed to like - all part of the theatre. I was supposedly supporting the Dallas Stars who lay in the middle of the table and they were playing the Chicago Black-hawks who sat, and still sit atop the table. It was difficult to be enthusiastic about a side beaten comprehensively on skills and losing 7-1! Indeed the distinctly unenergised crowd began leaving in droves at 2/3rds time. 

The game is played over three 20 minutes periods, but it true US style the game actually took 3 hours to complete. In other words, the game had frequent stoppages for, ahem, TV ads, re-surfacing the ice (clearing away dangerous detritus and laying extra water), staging of the dancing girls, singing the national anthem, running strange 'sporting' events for lay people and so on. One had to be quite creative to spin an hour's worth of ice hockey into 3 hours. Also the players were rotated regularly taking more time out.

Oh well, the better side won and I really didn't have to support one side or the other even though my hosts here generously paid for my expensive ticket and the burger meal. After all, Dot has relatives living in Chicago and I know that city rather better than I know Dallas, having been here only once before. All in all though it was a great experience, a bit like the football (American-style) game I saw in Madison, Wisconsin, nearly 15 years ago among a crowd of 70,000 students.

 AS