Today’s subject is hockey-related, but for you “football-only” wankers, stick with it. The story gets better as it goes along.

To begin with, it’s hard to get in the Christmas mood when it’s in the mid-70’s in the 3^rd week of December.  That’s warm even by Atlanta standards.  It’s even odder to go to a hockey game when it’s that warm.  Yesterday was one of those days.

Anyway, I’m in my usual spot in the penalty box and as I give a puck to the linesman to start the game, I notice a spider crawling on the ice.  This isn’t something you see every day and I’m surprised the little bugger wasn’t paralyzed by the cold.  I tell the linesman if he’s ever seen a spider on ice before either and he concurs that it’s a first for him too.  He then proceeds to pick the little bugger up by his leg and tosses him into the box.  To be honest, I am not the biggest fan of spiders.  OK, I really freakin’ hate them and they creep me out.  While I love most animals, spiders and snakes give me the willies.  So I walked back to the door as though I was looking at the bucket of pucks but I was actually surreptitiously stepping on the creepy critter so he wouldn’t crawl on my leg.

The first period ended (this was a 4 PM game) and I went to the lavatory to do what nature intends one to do with processed liquids and as I attempt to pull “it” out, I realize I had left my shorts on from the morning!  It was so hot before I got dressed for the game and I had put on my khakis without realizing my shorts were on.  In my defense, the shorts are made of a real thin fabric (like Hooters shorts material, but not orange and much longer) so I didn’t feel them until I opened my zipper.

Then the game took a serious turn.  We noticed the referee (the one who wears the orange band on his arm and calls the penalties) had not returned to the game and one of the two linesman (normal striped shirts) now had the referee stripes on.  It turns out the referee, who lives in North Carolina, had just received word that his house had blown up – literally.  We found out that he was married with children and thankfully they were not in the house at the time.  Of course I had to tongue-in-cheek make a “combustible meth lab” comment, but I didn’t do it in front of the referees.

There normally is a backup crew in place in case something happens but the backup referee had broken his tailbone the night before and was not in any kind of shape to take to the ice.  The backup linesman had left to referee a kids game at the Ice Forum which is about a mile from the arena.  He had left literally a minute before the referee got the bad news.  They wound up locating him and he was actually back in time for the 3^rd period.  An amusing side note is this was only his second game as an ECHL linesman, his first game took place on Friday night.  Before he passed his officiating test, he was actually the Gladiators’ team mascot Maximus!

After the second period, one of the linesman came out of the locker room (their locker is across the hall from ours) and was trying to make a cell phone call to his wife to relay the news about his co-worker.  Of course, being in the bowels of the arena cuts off most cell phone coverage, so he had to get near a door to get signal strength.  Since he didn’t want to take his skates off, he attempted, rather humorously, to navigate on a towel through the hallway.  This took him a very long time to get to the door and it was quite comical.  After his call he came back, instead of walking on the towel, on his knees back to his locker.  Of course quite a few of us had camera phones and we all clicked pictures of him on the floor as he flipped us off.  Below is a photo of him as he was nearing his final destination.