It’s not often that I feel compelled to write up a random blog post based on a simple occurance in everyday life.  But when I think about it, as a campus radio personality, everyday life for me tends to be fairly different from everyday life for most folks.  No offence, but this is the greatest line of work in the world and I’m a little disappointed that I won’t be able to continue when I graduate in 3 months’ time.

Anyway, back to the story at hand.  Friday night was “Rock the Rink” night at Western’s Thompson Arena.  Any fans who wore purple shirts got in for free and everyone else had to buy a purple shirt.  That made it a packed house at Thompson Arena, which is a pretty unusual occurrence, of about 700 people by most estimates.  Most teams try to do a white-out or a black-out or whatever team colour but I think this is the first time in recorded history that a hockey crowd was a sea of purple.  Add to this the fact that it was “Seniors Night” which meant there was a special pregame ceremony to honour all the graduating players before the game and this was geared up to be a special night.

The game itself was about as amazing as the crowd.  The visiting Waterloo Warriors were 1 point behind the Western Mustangs heading into the game.  They sure seemed up for passing the ‘Stangs in the standings because they hammered home two weak goal in the first 7 minutes.  The Mustangs could have given up here but instead scored 4 unanswered goals over the next 20 minutes to get the lead.

This is probably a good point to start giving you behind the scenes stuff.  The in-studio host was late getting into the station so we didn’t get on air until just after 7:30.  Normally the puck would have dropped by then but the warm-ups started late and there was the “Seniors Night” pregame ceremony which gave us ample time to setup the game.  Mind you, we almost had some major technical glitches as the power died on our equipment 10 minutes before game time (plug came loose) and we couldn’t transmit back to the studio until 2 minutes before the pregame started (I forgot to plug in the phone line).

Waterloo came out flying again in the 3rd period when they scored two goals less than three minutes into the period which chased Western’s starting goalie, Keyvan Hunt, followed by a go-ahead marker at the midpoint of the period.  The Mustangs tied it up again on a nice passing play.

In the third, I made a rather long-winded rant about how the referee was one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  My problem was that he wasn’t making many bad calls (he called a few phantom penalties, let lots of rough stuff go which nearly caused the game to spiral out of control, blew some quick whistles on goalies not covering up and was generally out of position all night) but he was inconsistent.  The final straw for me was in the third when a Mustang tried to stick check a Warrior off the puck, caught a bit of his hands, bumped the guy’s stick up and got the puck.  The ref called hooking which would have been the correct call if the stick to the hands caused to turnover but it clearly didn’t.  During the ensuing Waterloo power play, a Mustangs player with the puck and trying to clear the zone was hooked to the ice and nearly gave up a scoring chance.  Key word there:  Inconsistent.  A few minutes earlier a Mustang was called for tripping when he tripped a guy coming out from behind the Waterloo net.  That wouldn’t have been an issue if the ref didn’t let that one go unpenalized 30 seconds earlier.

Overtime solved nothing (although Waterloo missed a wide-open net and found nothing but post with their best chance), so it was off to the shootout.  Both teams’ first shooters scored but Western’s second shooter put them ahead.  At this point, I took my headset off (I was on colour commentary and had to do an interview with the CHRW Player of the Game after the game) but Waterloo tied it with their third shooter so I sort of jinxed things for the ‘Stangs but I had a job to do.  The next seven shooters for each team were denied until Western’s 11th shooter, Yashar Farmanara, buried one five-hole and sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Here’s where my fun sort of picked up.  I’m sort of a cheerleader.  The ultimate homer colour commentator.  My pulse was a-racin’ throughout the shootout and could hardly hear the play-by-play guy or the crowd for the sound of my heart beating in my ears.  When you play the role I do on commentary and do as many games as I have this season, you become really emotionally invested in the team’s successes.  You never know which game is your last, and I was pretty sure that this is likely to be my last hockey game, so I was really pulling for them to win.  The press are supposed to be neutral but when you are the eyes and ears of the home fans you have to think like them to an extent.

Anyway, Farmanara scores the winning goal so I turn off my headset and bolt for ice level.  I can’t see what is happening on the ice so I have to listen to what my play-by-play man is saying.  There’s only one stairwell down to ice level without going through the bleachers and it was the farthest one from the Western locker room.  Rather than fight through Waterloo staff and players, I fought through the crowd, down the bleachers, past the kids lined up to high five the players to the tunnel to the dressing room.  Because of the technological limitations of CHRW, I have to get a hold of my interviewee almost the second he gets off the ice.  It was suggested on-air that I get a hold of Farmanara but he was the last one off the ice so I got two-goal scorer Keaton Turkiewicz instead.  Still, he was a good interview.  It’s not often you get players admitting that the team came out flat, made mistakes and can’t afford to do that again if they want to succeed.

After that I ran back up through the bleachers, along the upper concourse, into the press box, around the stadium crew already tearing equipment down (P.A. equipment, music, game camera), through on my headset and wrapped up the game on a dry throat and short of breath.  It’s not the most glamorous way to do a broadcast but I wouldn’t have it any other way.