Sunday, April 10, 2005
Go Hitmen Go!
With the NHL hockey league stalled over the salary dispute, hockey fans in Calgary are getting increasingly excited by the progress that our local junior team the Calgary Hitmen are making in the WHL (the Western Hockey League). They qualified for the playoffs at the end of the regular season and are now in there along with 15 other teams playing for the big prize. Along with our visitors and the Breitmeyers, we went along to one of the games in their first playoff against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. The playoff series is run on a best-of-7 series, so the team which wins 4 games first wins the playoff. The score in games was Hitmen 1 - Hurricanes 1 before the game started. It was a super game, almost 17,000 fans turned up to the game at the Calgary Pengrowth Saddledome, and our heroes ended up winning the game 4-0. It was an exciting game, real end-to-end play. The game has three periods of 20 minutes each, with two 18-minute intervals usually featuring fans playing little games on the ice (Air Canada sponsored a race, and then there was pizza curling at the second interval). We had some good Mexican waves and also got into some good chanting - GO HITMEN GO and LET'S GO HITMEN! Here are some pics:
Hitmen at the Saddledome
On the Scoreboard
The goalie
Goal-mouth tussle
Action on the Ice
Farley the Fox, the team mascot
Girls at the Game
Pizza on the Ice
So, the Hitmen won the game and took the series to 2-1. They they romped home in the next 2 games, and won the series 4-1. They're currently in the next round, only 8 teams left and they've gone east, two provinces over, to Saskatchewan to face the Brandon Wheat Kings (otherwise known as the 'Wheaties'). So far the series is tied at 1-1, (10-1 to the Hitmen in the first and 1-5 to the Wheaties in the second) and the next game is on Tuesday. Watch this space...
(If the Hitmen beat the Wheaties, they then face the winner of the Medicine Hat Tigers and the Prince Albert Raiders for the Eastern Conference title. The winner of that will face the winner of the Western Conference, which will be the Kelowna Rockets, the Kootenay Ice, the Everett Silvertips or the Seattle Thunderbirds...) For more info on all the WHL teams, look here and for the full breakdown on all the games in the playoffs so far, look here.
Hitmen at the Saddledome
On the Scoreboard
The goalie
Goal-mouth tussle
Action on the Ice
Farley the Fox, the team mascot
Girls at the Game
Pizza on the Ice
So, the Hitmen won the game and took the series to 2-1. They they romped home in the next 2 games, and won the series 4-1. They're currently in the next round, only 8 teams left and they've gone east, two provinces over, to Saskatchewan to face the Brandon Wheat Kings (otherwise known as the 'Wheaties'). So far the series is tied at 1-1, (10-1 to the Hitmen in the first and 1-5 to the Wheaties in the second) and the next game is on Tuesday. Watch this space...
(If the Hitmen beat the Wheaties, they then face the winner of the Medicine Hat Tigers and the Prince Albert Raiders for the Eastern Conference title. The winner of that will face the winner of the Western Conference, which will be the Kelowna Rockets, the Kootenay Ice, the Everett Silvertips or the Seattle Thunderbirds...) For more info on all the WHL teams, look here and for the full breakdown on all the games in the playoffs so far, look here.
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