Roaming The Rinks

No, I am not talking about a weekend where your car breaks down, your dog dies and you're sick with the flu.  I am talking about a weekend like I had last weekend as a hockey fan, where everything falls into place.  I ended up having a blast catching 4 games in 3 days and all were amazingly fun.  It started off last friday night when the evil Reading Royals came to Elmira and received a 8-3 whooping at the hands of my Elmira Jackals in an entertaining game which saw 3 fights.

After that it was out of the house by 8am saturday morning for the 2 and a half hour drive to Syracuse for the AHL Outdoor Classic.  Details of the venue and game are in the reviews section of my site.  In addition to experiencing a unique hockey atmosphere I was able to watch the most entertaining fight matchup in all of hockey-  Jon Mirasty vs. Jeremy Yablonski, and as expected neither guy dissapointed.

                                            

That was the matchup I hoped to see, so obviously I left the Fairgrounds quite satisfied.  The Crunch taking the 2-1 win also left the home town fans with reason for a post game tailgate party to top off their day.  I had other plans however as part 2 of saturday found me back in Elmira by warmups, where the Jackals again hosted Reading, only this time the Royals had 2 busloads of purple clad fans rooting them on.  I like when visiting teams bring busloads of fans to our barn.  I like it even more when those fans go home dissapointed.  The Reading fans had a lot to cheer about until about 3 minutes left in the game, when the Jackals took the lead for good.  The quiet Elmira fans breaking out the "Warm Up the Bus" chant at the end was priceless. 

Game 4 on day 3 saw the Jackals lead Johnstown 5-0 before finishing with a 8-3 victory.  It don't get much better than a weekend like that!