Colin's Ice Hockey Stadiums Visits

One more essay I announced in the Illinois post, and if you don't care about hockey, feel free to skip it ;-)

I remember when I was pregnant, and we were wondering how this whole parenting thing was going to go down for us, I said to Christian "you know if it's a boy the two of you can watch the play-offs together." I must have had a premonition of some sort. 

Because these days I feel like I am the ultimate hockey mom.

While Colin's same age friends like to build castles from Lego bricks, Colin likes to play with Lego as well. Just he builds hockey sticks. And pairs them with the appropriate laminated team logo and plays their goal music. 

During the holidays he insisted he needed "Christmas logos" for his teams.

He refuses to go to sleep and studies the team rosters or  plays with his autographed player pictures instead. He knows their jersey number, how old they are and what teams they were previously playing for.

And he uses every opportunity to meet his "friends", the players, at skateathons and other events. He's not shy to tell them not to commit so many fouls or compliment them on a specific goal.

Nino Niederreiter

Reto Suri

Mark Streit

Romano Lemm

So of course when planning a vacation, his concern is "how many stadiums am I going to see, and will the fan store carry soft sticks?"

He plays with his indoor sticks and pucks every day and comments his every move "and he scooooores!"




Unfortunately those sticks are not of a very long lasting quality, and he needs constant fresh supply. Which turned out to be hard when we were visiting numerous arenas during the lockout in October 2012 (of course when we had booked this trip, we counted on watching a couple of games) 

Detroit

Toronto

Buffalo

Pittsburgh

Columbus

Chicago

So this time with the play-off finals still going on we thought the chances of scoring some merchandise would be better. Not the case. They were in full summer mode! Selling basketball stuff, hosting boygroup concerts or being just plain closed.

Dallas

Nashville

St. Louis

While I am typing this, Colin and I are up in the middle of the night, hello jet-lag.

And of course he thinks it is important to mention that in 2011 we explored some other arenas as well.

So here goes:

Montreal

Boston

New York

And with the mention that we feel ice hockey is being neglected by U.S. retail I am closing for today.

Epilogue:

When we were watching him and the two dozen other kids running around on the playground a couple of days ago my husband said "do you realize, one of them could become a Stanely Cup winner in about 20 years?!"

Who knows ;-)