Growing up, hockey was absolutely NOT my cup of tea. I didn't really get into sports until I was in high school, but I always followed and rooted for all the Boston teams... except I can honestly say I never really watched or followed the Bruins. Well once you have dated Andrew Dolan for a few years you realize how truly thrilling and exciting the sport of Hockey can be! His parents have season tickets to the Hershey Bears so we always went to the games with them when we came to visit... and it didn't take long to develop an absolute LOVE for these guys! The way they play hockey in Hershey is something like I've never seen before and the fans are incredible! Everyone in Hershey lives, breathes and dies with the bears.... as it should be!
So the past two months have been an exciting time around here! The playoffs started right after Easter in Mid-April and went all the way through til this past Monday- and what a ride! There were some definite highs and lows, but in the end, the Hershey Bears won the Calder Cup for the 11th time in their history, 3rd year of the last 5, and first time at home in the past 30 years! Without a doubt, Monday night's game was the most exciting Hockey game I have ever been to and I will be hard pressed to go to one of that caliber ever again. The bears came out swinging... and boy, did they want it! After dropping the first two games of the series AT HOME, they went on to win all three in Texas. So coming home with a 3 games to 2 advantage with 2 games left in the series was a good feeling, but when no home team had won a game on their own ice for the whole series, there was the smallest hint of uneasiness.
Without going into too much detail, the Bears went ahead early and never relinquished a goal to the Stars! The final score was 4-0 and it was so exciting to watch the guys celebrating on the ice as the final seconds of the game came to an end. Almost all of the 11,002 fans (a record attendance) stayed for the presentation of the MVP and the Calder Cup! It was so exciting and we were all SO HAPPY!!! Chris Borque won the MVP and then the Calder Cup was presented to Bryan Helmer and the place went nuts! It was so cool to see all the players skate around with the cup and it was GREAT that they won it on home ice!
Fans started filtering out, but we stayed for about an hour afterwords! It was great! Chris Borque skated around with the cup once only a couple thousand fans were left and when he came into the penalty box to let fans touch it, I ran down and got a hand on it! I was so happy!
It was a great day, but obviously a little bittersweet because I hated the idea that I was experiencing all of this while Andrew was in hell! It has been tough to go through so many exciting moments without even being able to text Andrew and let him know what is going on. I have enjoyed writing letters though, giving him daily updates on what is happening around here! I can't wait until he reads about the bears winning! He will be so excited!
I guess it is just something I will have to get used to though, fun and exciting things happening while he is away--not only at Ranger School, but also on deployments and training assignments. But that is life in the Army, I suppose.
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