The off season is a little more bearable for me because…..I love hockey too!

            I started really watching hockey during the 2010 Olympics.  I had watched hockey before.  Birmingham used to have a team in the East Coast Hockey League and I went to several games.  During that time I watch some NHL too.  But the Birmingham Bulls left in 2001 and, let's face it, hockey isn't exactly popular in the deep south, so I stopped keeping up with it.  Then came the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.  I didn't get to watch a lot of those games.  I was still in public accounting at the time and was lucky to see the prime time coverage, even on Saturdays; and the hockey games do not get very much of the prime time coverage.  I did get to see the gold medal game.  That sealed it.  I was hooked.  It's funny, now that I think about it; that a game so heartbreaking could hook you, but it did.

            So after the Olympics were over I wanted more.  I wanted to be a hockey fan too.  Which meant I needed to pick a team.  Obviously the hero of the Olympics was Sidney Crosby.  You couldn't have written the scenario of what he did any better.  The face of the NHL, getting the gold medal winning goal, in overtime, for Canada, against the USA and in Vancouver to boot.  Yep, he was a hero, for the Canadians.  For the Americans, not so much.  I read that he was booed in his first game back in Pittsburgh.  That's crazy, because he is LOVED in Pittsburgh.  The next Penguins game was schedule to be on TV.  So I watched it.  Then I watched the next one and the next one.  And that was it, I became a Penguins fan.  I've been accused of being a bandwagon fan.  I guess that's true.  I became a Penguins fan the year after they had won the Stanley Cup.  The thing is, if you are going to follow hockey in Birmingham (and you are not planning on paying for NHL Game Center) you have to pick one of the more popular teams because they are on TV more often.  I may be a bandwagon fan in the way I chose my team, but not in the sense of how I follow them; i.e. I will not be changing teams.  And by the way, I have been a subscriber of NHL Game Center for two years now.

            So here we are, in the middle of the 2014 Olympics.  I have gotten up at 6:30 the last two mornings (Saturday and Sunday) to watch USA hockey.  The game against Russia yesterday was amazing.  Eight rounds in a shootout before there was a winner!  Are you kidding me?!?!?!  I'm so glad I got up early for it.  I'm hoping for another USA vs. Canada gold medal game; just with a different outcome this time.  Go USA!