Hockey!

One of the “Canadian” things we identified as something we would like to do was to watch some of the local sport, specifically hockey. This is of course, ice hockey in Canada. Toronto’s NHL team is the Toronto Maple Leafs, but we soon found out that NHL tickets are excessively expensive (even by Canadian standards!).

We decided to support the Toronto AHL(American Hockey League) team instead, the Toronto Marlies. The AHL is one division down from NHL, and Marlies is a feeder team for the Leafs. The AHL tickets were much more affordable.

Sporting leagues in Northern America work somewhat differently. Teams in the USA and Canada are grouped by region, and play each other team in their region a few times before the leading two teams progress into the playoff phase. In the playoff phase, teams are paired for a best of seven game knockout. So for the playoffs, you end up watching your team play the same opponent up to seven times.

The first game we watched was against the Rochester Rockets, from the USA.

Even on the AHL level, the entire event was a spectacle. From the start, it was clear that children are a major part of the event. The DJ for the night was an eleven-year-old, a fully kitted out child of age 9 opened the proceedings by skating around the rink with a Marlies flag, ending up in the middle of the rink with all the spotlights illuminating him. In fact, both the Marlies and Rockets had a junior team accompany them to the stadium, the youngsters would take to the ice for a quick shooting drill during one of the breaks between periods.

Marlies took the win, and as a result, the fans got free tickets to the next home game! We ended up watching three games thanks to the Marlies’ wins.