Hey Chicago. Come join @mikepilarz, myself and others to watch Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals Thursday night between the Detroit Red Wings and the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Where: Avenue Tavern (Detroit Friendly!)
When: Thursday April 16th, puck drops at 6pm Chicago time
What: $3 Labatts, 2 for $5 Coneys & $0.50 cent wings

RSVP below. When you tweet “Yes” dont change anything before the URL, you can edit everything after or else it will not count your RSVP! If you are not on twitter and would like to attend, just leave a comment!

Let’s Go Red Wings!

Everyday after school growing up, like most kids I watched afternoon cartoons. Shows such as Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures and Super Mario Brothers Super Show dominated my weekday afternoons.

Most days, though, I would get home 30-45 minutes before these shows came on. So what would I do to fill the time? I would switch over to WGN, where the Cubs were most likely playing one of their patented day games at historic Wrigley Field. I distinctly remember watching Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson and Mark Grace swinging the bat while always chuckling at the way Harry Cary said “Jose Vizcaino”.

While I didn’t necessarily become a Cubs fan, I watched more of their Wrigley games on TV than I watched any other team.

I grew up a Red Wings fan. A die-hard Red Wings fan. How does a young boy from Texas, not exactly hockey Mecca of the world, become a fan of the mighty winged wheel? Well, I was born in Detroit. Only lived there a couple of years before my family transferred down to Texas, but my parents were HUGE Red Wings fans. Well, fans of Detroit sports in general. I was raised to love all Detroit Sports. So yes, I am a fan of the Red Wings, Tigers, Pistons… even the Lions. I love them all, always have, and always will.

So you could imagine my emotional high I was on when I got of the L at the Addison stop on the Red Line and followed the herd of hockey fanatics to the Friendly Confines. Here is how hockey fans were greeted at Clark and Addison:

I walked all around the outside of Wrigley twice to check out all of the festivities. There was a live band, ice sculpting, oversized team jerseys, face painting, NHL.com people walking around greeting everyone and a place where people could shoot pucks at a green screen against their favorite goalie. It felt like a carnival with all the face painting, games/trivia and great smelling food filling the air. At 10:30, I just couldn’t take it anymore, I had to get inside and explore Wrigley Field for the first time in my life.

Once inside the stadium, my mouth started watering for something to eat, specifically a pizza. I walked around from concession stand to concession stand looking for one that didn’t have a long line. (Ok really I walked around as far as I could so I could snap some pictures of the stadium from different angles, but…) one of the concession stands had a few guys kicking around a soccer ball. My first thought was “who brought a ball to the game to stand in the way and it around?” until I got closer and realized, “holy crap! That’s Valtteri Filppula and Andreas Lilja. And Nicklas Kronwall. And Kirk Maltby and Kris Draper!! Kicking a soccer ball around is a pregame tradition of most teams to get warmed up, and these guys decided to do it out in a public area to rally the fans. Well as one of the first people to step up to them to take pictures, the ball was kicked to me 2-3 times. Ok, I’m pretty sure it was an accident and all I really did was kick the ball back to them, but I’ll forever say I played some keep-it-up with some of my favorite Red Wings and I have some pictures to prove it:

I finally got my pizza, ate it while sitting by myself in the bleachers enjoying the moment, then went to walk around the stadium some more to take pictures.

Fifteen minutes before scheduled puck drop, I decided to head back to my seat. By this time the stadium was about 80% full and I sat around a great mix of (very knowledgeable) Red Wings and Blackhawks fans. I chatted with people from the upper peninsula of Michigan, Vancouver, Winnipeg and upstate New York.

I cannot explain the atmosphere I experienced over the next 3 hours during the game, but I must tell you I felt like a little kid all over again. That is a stupid cliché, I know, I’m sorry. But my heart was pounding the whole game. I felt nervous and excited all at the same time. I was so happy to be there I could not feel the cold, even with 5 degree wind-chill.

The fans participated in the pretty-standard-in-big-out-door-game card stunts spelling out (on the first side of the card they held) “Happy New Year” and on the second card “Red Wings vs. Blackhawks”. This is what happens when you get a bunch of Blackhawks fans to hold up signs that say Red Wings:

Then, finally, the players walked out:

And got in a bit of a pregame skate:

Then came the most moving part of the whole game, the national anthems (Star-Spangled Banner in particular. This was by far the BEST National Anthem I have experienced. Instead of standing pat and mouthing the words, Chicago Blackhawks fans are known for CHEERING and ROARING during the US National Anthem:

That’s with barely 20,000 fans. Imagine Wayne Messmer’s voice and fan reaction of over 40,000 at the most anticipated NHL game in years. For an idea of what it was like, you MUST watch CBC’s coverage of the pregame festivities:

Here is the Wrigley faithful cheering for our country:

This was the view from my seats. Camera looks like I was farther away than I was, I had a pretty good view from the right field bleachers. Here is opening faceoff and a game shot:

After the Red Wings scored a couple Goals in the Second, a fan, in true Wrigley fashion, “threw the ball back”. Here are the two pucks the fan threw back. This went unreported in all articles about the game, but this is a top memory of mine from the game.

Fans standing for “Take Me Out to the *Hockey Rink*”

Check out the Toe Blake hats sported by the Red Wings coaching staff:

RED WINGS WIN 6-4!!!

Sportsmanship in the NHL is, by far, the greatest in the world.

The NHL could not have created a better atmosphere for this game. As I type this I can’t stop thinking about how much fun I had at this game, experiencing what felt like a childhood fairytale. It was like Christmas, except I was enjoying it in Santa’s workshop playing with all the toys I ever dreamed of.

I hope you enjoyed some of my photos. I wish I could share all 429 pictures that I took, but I chose a handful I thought would suffice. If you would like to see more please visit my Facebook Page or contact me.