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Yesterday morning I decided to go to the Canadiens game last night. I bought my ticket online and had a mistake in my email address. I had to wait until 9h to call them to get it corrected, so I did, and eventually I received the email that told me how to get the ticket.

There is a train that goes into the city that leaves from where I live at 17h23 and gets me to the Bell Centre at 17h50. It is very convenient that the terminus train station is embedded within the Bell Centre. It wasn't clear to me which would be the best entry to use, so I wandered around the building and picked an entrance that didn't have a long queue and got in without a problem. First was to show proof of vaccination with a photo ID. Second was to show the ticket on my mobile device that allowed me entry and then third was to pass through a metal detector scanner for security purposes. I then went to my left for perhaps 200m and saw no sign of steps or escalator to get me up to the 300 level of seating. So I backtracked and about 200m to the right of where I came in I found the escalator up.

I ended up having to walk perhaps 3.4 radians around the oval of the arena to get to my section, so I chose an incorrect door if my goal was to pick the door closest to my seat. Once I found the exact section and seat I had bought, I went back to the concourse and bought a slice of pepperoni pizza and a Coke (~16$) and then took it back to my seat to eat, and drank the Coke a few sips at a time throughout the game. Here is what the view down to the ice looked like from this early moment, about 50 minutes before puck drop.

Perhaps 10 minutes before the start of the game, the person sitting to my left arrived. He was a solo spectator like me, he spent a significant amount of time, during the game, on his mobile device, and from what I could tell, he was chatting with one or more people. He was a fairly big man and sat in a way that was somewhat inconsiderate with respect to how widely separated his thighs were, bumping up against me through the whole game. With about one minute before the game started the man and son pair sat to my right, the son closest to me, of smaller stature than I am so none of this bumping thigh business.

As the game started I easily overheard these two guys speaking with each other, in the row behind me and one or two seats further to the left than I was. Their conversation throughout the game wandered through various topics, sometimes about the game, sometimes not. At one point they were talking about VR technology and how it is advancing; one of them said it could be this would be commonly used in work situations; the other said that by the time that happens, he would be too old and would have aged out of the kind of work that would require it.

Just at about the second that the first period ended, the guy to my left stood up and passed in front of me and the two to my right to exit to go to the concourse. I simply stayed in my seat through the first intermission. He ended up doing the exact same thing for the second intermission, while I did the exact same thing too; staying in my seat.

At various times the camera crew director would choose cameras focused on individuals or small groups that would be shown on the big screen. When I saw them, they all were having so much fun, smiling, dancing, being happy. It would be nice if I could share this experience with someone.

During the evening there was an ad for a Genesis concert happening in two weeks. I haven't ever been a big fan of Genesis but I do like their music. I do not like their music enough to pay 175$ to attend the show, that being the least expensive ticket.

The middle period of the game was a sleeper, with not a lot of good play going on from either team. The third period was a little more exciting as my team tied it up at 2-2; but sadly we couldn't get the winning goal before regulation elapsed. We had plenty of chances, but time and time again, I've noticed this through all of the games this season I've watched on TV, the players on my team shoot and miss the net.

An LA King got the game winning goal in overtime.

I stayed in my seat for about 10 minutes after the game was over so that there were not as many people to contend with on departure. Instead of taking the metro from right where the Bell Centre is, I walked up to the Peel metro station and took the metro to L-G from there, and then the 211 bus left just a few minutes later and I got home uneventfully.