I am SO late in posting a recap of one of my favorite hockey games ever! Back on Thrusday, 11/17, the Capitals hosted the red hot (all puns intended) Dallas Stars.

Meet my friend Jess. Isn’t she pretty? With her red coat and red hair, she could be the Caps mascot… except they already have one (more on this later).

 

I recently won a Caps Ultimate Fan Experience, and took Jess as my date. The package consists of watching warm-ups from the penalty box, plus two lower-level seats. Which, after watching warm-ups from the penalty box, seem like they’re in the parking lot.

You can buy these ticket packages here. They come with a jersey and run $250+ depending on the game you want. The Stars game was lowest tier. Obviously that schedule was made last season! For a special occasion, or if you wanted to impress your hockey blogger wife (ahem), it’s pretty darned cool.

 

How are we ever going to watch warm-ups from anywhere else? Would we ever get used to pucks pinging off the glass non-stop in front of our faces? Maybe if I’d been looking at the Caps’ side, I’d have seen those pucks coming. But Jamie Benn was right there.

 

After acting like we owned the place/team/universe, and taking a sneaky photo with Caps’ announcer Wes Johnson…

 

We moved to our excellent 7th row seats right at the goal line where the Stars shot twice. Now, we were definitely rooting for the Caps, but the Stars have some high-powered offense and it was fun to watch Benn & Seguin connect for a goal up close. If I could teleport, I would have revealed my power to the world when I popped into the middle of their hug.

 

Our Tweet was even featured on the Jumbotron, which I then included in a Tweet about the Jumbotron. It was all very meta.

 

The already epic night held two more highlights in store. First, I had the pleasure of meeting Erin (@ErinMIHaley) and Jen (@jhro_jhro), and talking some hockey in real life with people I talk to on the Twitters all the time. I love this. If you ever come to Verizon, say the word and we’ll meet by the Dunkin’ Donuts. (Which no longer has iced tea, so maybe we’ll meet somewhere else.)

 

The second shiny object was literally one for the record books. Ovechkin scored career goal number 484, passing Sergei Federov and claiming the title of most goals by a Russian-born player in NHL history.

 

Ovi has never been my favorite, but I’ve seen quite a few of those goals in person and this was a pretty fantastic moment, both for him and the Caps’ faithful.

 

To round out the night – and maybe because he was afraid of Jess taking his job – Slapshot came down and paid us a visit. The Caps didn’t win the game, but we definitely had a winner of a night.

 

Since losing this game to Dallas, the Caps have won 5 straight and jumped over the NYR (whoop!) for first in the Metro Division. Now if only the Penguins could stop losing in OT and get those second points….

Tags: Alex Ovechkin, washington capitals