I Got an Assist at Verizon Center

Yes, I am bragging.

Verizon Center (home of the Washington Capitals) has a promotion where a local recreational or high school hockey team can buy up a block of tickets to a game, watch the game, then play on the ice after the Caps game. The friends and family you brought along with you get to watch your game from section 100. My team, the Puck Hogs, took advantage of this deal last month.

Before the game started, we had to bring all of our hockey gear to the press entrance of Verizon Center. Before bringing it inside, some poor dog had to sniff each hockey bag for explosives or drugs or something. All that dog smelled was 30 different bags full of disgusting hockey gear.

We brought our bags into the basement of Verizon Center, passing by the locker rooms for the Mystics, the Wizards, the Red Rockers, and of course, the Capitals. We ditched our bags in what was basically a closet near the end of the hallway that connects to the Zamboni tunnel. Joel Ward was walking around the bowels of the arena and our Czech player had a chance to talk to his countryman, Milan Michalek.

At the end of the second period, we had to meet with our Verizon Center liaison, go back into the seemy underbelly of Verizon Center, and move all of our stuff to a "dressing room", which was not exactly set up to have a hockey team get ready in. It seemed to be more of a small, all-purpose dressing room. My area was just a folding chair.

The Caps game was fine, I guess. Here's the recap. Caps won.

At the end of the third, we once again met the liaison, and once again went to the basement to get changed.

The Puck Hogs sat on the visitor's bench; the Red Army (our opponents) sat on the Capitals bench. Despite their name, the Red Army wore white and we wore red. The bench itself is higher than at the rinks around the DC area. If I sat on the bench, my feet did not touch the ground.

The ice at Verizon Center is surprisingly nice. It's well-lit, too. I didn't find any of the ads on the ice or the boards distracting at all. The biggest downside to being on the ice is that you can't see the scoreboard very easily. Maybe there was a more subtle one hiding somewhere. I repeatedly attempted to look at the TyrannoVision while on the ice to see how long I had been on my shift.

From the ice, of course, you can see every single seat in the arena. Save for a bunch of seats in Section 100, they were all empty. I can't begin to imagine what it sounds like when all the seats are full.

My assist was anticlimactic. The puck was passed to me along the boards in the neutral zone. I centered it and crashed the net. The first shot bounced off the goalie; someone else picked up the rebound and scored. Still, it was amazing to have gotten an assist in Verizon Center, the same number Andrew Gordon has gotten there. That's right, I'm just as good as Andrew Gordon.

We lost, just like the Capitals. HEY-O!