The first two games

The first two games of the season were played in London, on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the season starts on my birthday, Wednesday October 3.

We learned a few things:

1) Hockey remains the least predictable of all sports. Without their goalie, captain and chief defender, and top goalscorer from last season, Anaheim, the defending champions, won one and lost one. This is good! All fans want the game to mean something, for it not to be decided in advance.

2) The league's pursuit of blood on the ice pleased the English fans (England's a place of fistfights, but has less gunfighting than the U.S.). As the AP report noted, "it wasn't 10 goals in two days that most of the capacity crowd came to see." It was the fights. There was a fight in the second period and it brought the audience to their feet.

3) We're seeing a lot of goalie interference. I hope the league protects goalies, but if they don't we'll see a repeat of the Geoff Courtnall hit on Jamie Storr, which won a playoff series in its final three minutes when Courtnall slammed Storr's head against the goalpost with the full force of top speed skating.

4) And we had to remind Nick to play Michael Cammaleri. Although he mist Camm's first two goals in game 1, he did get the goal in game 2.

The season begins! Yay!