It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times

Stupid Gerber. I can't lay the blame on him entirely, but the 3rd goal was something that the Kazakh juniors goalie would have seen and grabbed.

The rest of the team just looked like they were going through the motions. Except for a spirited 1st minute of play in the first period, no-one except for Alfie, Phillips and Picard looked like they really cared how the game went. I counted as many passes directly to Canucks players as I did successful passes between Ottawa forwards. There was no real chasing after pucks, no battling in the corners, and except for brief glimmers of hope, there weren't really that much genuine scoring chances. All in all it was the same old story this year, with the senators getting a shiny participation medal, and not much else.

Notes on the Arena:

Canucks fans are a genuinely pleasant lot, the fans in front of us in the cheap seats struck up a friendly conversation, and hoped that I had some insight into why the boys in red and black were underachieving this year. I didn't, and they said that they've felt that way in the past. They assured me that this too will pass. I almost believed them, until the team hit the ice.

The other thing that impressed me and made me feel more love for the citizens of my adopted city happened with a few minutes left in the 2nd. A man came up during a play stoppage and asked my father if we were just the two of us at the game. Turns out his son was getting tired and he had two lower bowl, center ice, bench side tickets for us. They were awesome seats, and the fact that he approached the fans of the visiting team to offer these tickets made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

GM place however got a big old thumbs down from me. They ran out of beer at one of their kiosks before the first period even started. The sold me a $10 corned beef sandwich that was both more salty and drier than the potato chips that accompanied it. The final straw was the ejection of a sens fan from the lower bowl.

Fin (the canucks mascot) came down to our section to harass a gentleman who had dressed up as a centurion. He grabbed the helmet off the man and tossed it into the fans on the other side of the aisle. As soon as he had done this, he stuck his hand in the face of the somewhat inebriated man. In news that is bound to shock you, the man began to fight back. Well, let me tell you that the security team wasn't having with that. The man got wrestled away from the mascot and trudged up the long staircase and into the concourse, all the while buffeted by the boos of most of the people in our section.

On the way home, I caught a skytrain car that was mostly empty from burrard station. A few of the straggling canucks revelers got on at stadium. For the duration of the stops home, I heard them laughing and cheering about the game. As I got up from my seat, the lady of the group asks if she should say something. I cut them off with the observation that yes, my team did in fact suck, and that if they had been paying attention, they've done so since january. They were shocked, but unable to provide any sort of counterpoint to my resigned defeatism.

To list the mojo that I applied for today's game from start to finish.

1. Dried off after shower with Sens bath towel
2. Plugged in Sens optical mouse
3. Put on Sens socks
4. Put on Senators 2007 eastern conference champions t-shirt
5. Put on jersey
6. Put on hat
7. Ate milk chocolate puck with sens logo from christmas stocking
   
8. Ate piece of toffee from candy filled sens piggy bank that I got for my birthday
9. Chewed gum from ottawa senators gum puck packs from halloween
10. Cleaned my knife with Sens hand towels.

I can't remember if I did anything else. But perhaps this solves once and for all whether or not any of my superstitions have anything to do with a win. I'll still be sporting the jersey every game day.