I get a phone call from a Doctor friend of mine just before Thanksgiving. He announces that the purpose of the call is to give me plenty of time to come up with an excuse as to why I cannot attend a Tampa Bay Lightning game with him on Tuesday, December 4th. Coming up with nothing on such a short notice, I reluctantly agreed to go with him. I marked the engagement in my Day-Timer and promptly forgot about it. Sunday night the good Doctor called again to see what excuse I had come up with. Again I drew a blank; so I took the approach that I was really looking forward to the game. We made arrangements to meet on Tuesday night and ended the call. I was stuck!  

Now I don't have much of a history with hockey. As a kid growing up in Boston, my friends who were skaters and hockey players tried to teach me the game. But after the second session with them yielded a total of 15 stitches on my face and no progress on the skates, I gave up on this endeavor.  

 When I got out of the Navy I went to work for a company in Brighton. Most of my co-workers were Bruins fans and in the interest of being comradely, I tried to become one. The first Bruins game I went to was exciting. The problem was that after the third period was over, everybody left. I had to ask an attendant what was going on. That's when I discovered there were only three periods in a hockey game, not four quarters as there is in every other time-managed sport. I think that the only reason I stayed interested was the Bruins had a good team back then. Somewhere along the line they won a Stanley Cup and they had Bobby Orr. I new nothing about hockey but it was obvious that he was special. I eventually changed jobs and moved from Boston. My hockey days were over.

Skipping over many years, a lot of geography and a few wives, I ended up in West central Florida. My wife of the past twenty-five years, the fabulous Cindy, has always been a hockey fan and became interested in our local team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. I never got very interested except during the Stanley Cup year.

  So there I was, in a Walgreen's Drug store parking lot waiting for the good doctor to pick me up. I never did come up with an excuse and didn't want to give my friend the satisfaction of being right about backing out. Besides, I could stand almost anything for three hours. In order to not look too stupid, I spent about thirty minutes on the Hockey page of this site. That was when I discovered the Bolts were playing the Ottawa Senators. He arrived exactly on time and we headed out for the St. Pete Times Forum in downtown Tampa (now that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?). We arrived about a half hour before game time he took me for a quick tour of the facility. We got something to eat and found our seats that were located on one of the blue lines about twenty rows up.  

I'm not going to give a description of the game; you can find that under the "hockey" tab. I will tell you that the Lightning won the game in a shoot out, 4-3; and I learned that a hockey game in person is a whole lot different than a hockey game on TV (even HD). What I expected to be an exercise in patience and tolerance turned out to be an incredibly entertaining evening. The only negative was the gas that the eight-dollar cheese steak sandwich gave me. But that was Ok cause I didn't like the guy sitting in front of me.

 The bottom line. If you are not a hockey fan and have never been to a NHL game in person, you are missing something. Do not pass up the opportunity if it presents itself. I definitely will see more games at the Forum (but not with the good doctor, the cheese steak gas was too much for him).