Bieksa’s Buddies vs. UBC T-Birds

I’M BACK.  I’ve never been so glad to see the weekend in my life.  This week was awful, from an academic point of view.

On Wednesday night, I took a long (and not quite deserved) break from Hell Week and went to a charity game organized by Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks. They played against UBC’s own Thunderbird hockey team at the Thunderbird arena.

I sat up in the nosebleed seats, but it wasn’t too bad because the arena is relatively small so I wasn’t actually too far away.  And in the break between the second and third period I went down to beside the ice and took close-up pictures of the Canucks players!

Yay! One of my best pictures of the night.  Both Kevin Bieksa and his brother, Marty Bieksa, were there! 

The event was pretty good!  I’d never been to a hockey game before, so it was actually sort of weird to watch without commentary. I do know that it was a clean game (because it was for charity!), and in some ways that made it a little boring to watch, especially in the beginning when there were no goals.  Later on, though, they picked up the pace and the final score was 8-7 for Bieksa.  Obviously, Bieksa’s Buddies were going easy on the T-Birds, but it was still great hockey!

I was especially happy to see Michael Buble there, even if he backed out of playing on Bieksa’s team (jersey number? 88). Buble also matched all the donation contributions to a generous 6 figure sum!  The donations went to The Canucks Autism Network, Canucks Family Education Centre and Canuck Place hospice.

Upsetting, though, were  the scalpers outside the area looking to sell tickets at steep, Canuck-level prices.  The tickets were cheap—I paid $25—so that UBC students could enjoy the game whilst contributing to charity.  Making a profit on those tickets was very, very wrong.

But anyways, guess who I was cheering for?

If you guessed the T-Birds, you would be correct! Sunshine and rainbows for you 🙂  I have a tendency to root for the underdogs, especially when they’re the home team.  Of course, this doesn’t apply in regular NHL games (always for the Canucks!), but because of the dratted lockout…

So even though I stayed up waaaaaaay past my bedtime on Wednesday night (or should I say Thursday morning?), I’m glad I went.  I had a good time, gave to charity, and checked “watch a hockey game live” off my bucket list!

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