I am very excited to bring you a special treat this Father’s Day. In order to give dear old Dad the day off, my son Spencer volunteered to contribute a piece about watching Blue Jackets hockey with his old man. I’m sure you will enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks, Spence, for being such a great kid and a fantastic author! And a very happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!
Hello readers, this is Joe’s son writing, Spencer. I could name many times we went to a hockey game, but the most memorable game I ever went to with my dad was on February 25, 2011, the day the Columbus Blue Jackets played the Phoenix Coyotes. It was a casual February day, and lots of people were gathered at Nationwide Arena to watch the Blue Jackets play hockey. People were there with kids, grandkids, step-kids, brothers, sisters, in-laws, out-laws, husbands, wives, ex-husbands, and ex-wives, but I was there with the person I love the most (no offense Mom, I say the same for you on Mother’s Day), my dad.
We walked in, and the arena was packed full of Blue Jackets fans. (There were Coyotes fans too, but I tried not to notice them.) We had great seats! They were right next to the goal that the Jackets were defending twice. Everyone wanted to see the Blue Jackets win it all. The game started out rough for the Blue Jackets fans. Phoenix scored the first two goals, but the Jackets fans didn’t lose hope. Right when the first period was about half way done, R.J. Umberger scored a goal for the Jackets! Then everyone was excited to see what was going to happen next! The first period was coming to an end, people were thinking to go to the bathroom to beat the traffic at that point. But right as people were walking up the stairs, Jake Voracek scores the tying goal! People were so excited to see him score that they stopped going up the stairs and started celebrating. Then the first period ended and my dad and I went up to get some Skyline Chili like we always do, and went back down to our seats.
The puck dropped and the players fought to win it for their team. Nothing happened for a little bit, but then out of nowhere Matt Calvert gets the puck and heads for the net. People knew it was going to be a goal, and sure enough the sirens went off seconds later. We were happy to see that the rookie was good, and we’d have him for a while. Once we were done singing the chili song, we watched to see what would happen next. We were flabbergasted to see that Matt Calvert scored another goal! People were praying for a hat trick, because every fan wants to experience a hat trick one time or another, and we were maybe going to see one that night. So we were at the edge of our seats waiting for Matt to get the puck. When he did, you could tell people were excited! He was going down to the end, passed it, got it again, shot, and SCORED! People were cheering and yelling everywhere! There were so many hats on the ice, you couldn’t count them. People were so excited, and the game was pretty much ours. Then Phoenix scored, and the Jackets had to play really hard to stop them from scoring again. But they did it! And the final score was CBJ-5 PHX-3.
After the game my dad and I got our team stick like we do every time and we went home. That was the most memorable Blue Jackets game I went to with my dad.