Day Four - Part 2...The Game

It was time for the first game of the tournament and the first game that the boys would play in the Colisee. After waking up from their naps, many of which found it very easy to fall asleep for 2 hours, they all piled in the van and headed to the Cafe de Hockey for dinner and then over to the Colisee. There was a lot of excitement in the Colisee, as the crowd was getting larger during Friday evening. The boys had an opportunity to sit and watch the game that was going on ahead of them for awhile, in addition to doing a little pin trading. But around 6:30pm, it was time to head down to the lower part of the Colisee, where the locker rooms were. Down there is also where they store the hockey gear between game/practice times.
In the locker room they found their gear...and their excitement began to build. While the boys got dressed, the coaches looked over the official scoresheet and was given the game cards that all the boys needed to sign before being able to play. The last bit of "official" work that needed to be completed was the taking of the team photo...then it was back into the locker room to wait for the call to enter the ice.

It was very exciting to go up into the stands and see the name of our team light up on the Jumbo-Tron above...and then see our boys come out all dressed in their Teal to skate warm ups. The buzz of the crowd was amazing and the music was loud. Sitting in the stands with us were many of the billeting families and their children. All were just as excited as we were to watch the boys take the ice for their first game. Several of the host families were wearing San Jose Shark Jerseys in support for our team.

After warm ups, both teams lined up on the blue lines and then skated toward eachother in order to trade pins. As the teams filed back to their benches, the coaches of each team collected the pins - they were distributed after the end of the game.

The Petes came out strong - scoring 2 in the first period. We did manage to come back in the 2nd with a goal by Chris, assisted by Max and Carson...end of 2nd: 2-1. Unfortunately, the Petes scored in the 3rd, making the score 3-1. The rest of 3rd period just seem to go down hill - it looked like we just stopped playing, thus the game ended with a loss of 3-1. The boys were disappointed. After the game, they went back to their host families to recover and sleep...tomorrow would be another day.