saneopinion

"Keep the opinions sane and well thought out."

Canada, AB • Canada •

VEGAS! Flames tales...

Monday's can be painful aweful days, days where you look to the week ahead and groan. I just came off a long weekend where I went to Edmonton to watch my Fiancé graduate with her Bachelor of Science in nutrition and food sciences from the Uof A, aside from being super proud of her, it was a nice reprieve from the working stiff world I live in. Then this morning I get a bombshell of good news, I have won an all expenses paid trip to Vegas from The Fan 960 for the NHL Awards, I cannot begin to tell you how pumped I am.

For one, my Fiancé and I are both Vegas lovers, it is really so awesome there I can't tell you if you haven't experienced it, and now I get to mix hockey with Vegas for free? The words "hockey" "Free" and "Vegas" are some of my favorite words anyway, mixing them together is almost too much for me.

We are staying at the Palms... in case you haven't been this is also the home of the playboy club...

Anyway, Thank you Fan 960, the best sports radio station in Canada and to Mike Richards morning crew et al who make me laugh every day. (fake Garcia is my favorite!)

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The Flames river is running dry, there is almost nothing to write about, a search for an A.G.M.?? No trades, no draft pick possibilities (yet) so what? So if you can bear it I thought a couple stories with you that have enshrined the Flames in my sports loyalty.

'89- Yes we won the cup and that was a great moment even for me being a kid, I'll never forget Lanny's shot or Doug Gilmore putting that series away, Vernon making crazy glove saves but one thing I loved about that series..I got on TV!! CFCN News came by the elementary school I attended and I made it on TV, the first of four times I've been interviewed on the news, I like to think this is where my Flames opinion pieces started.

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2003- Harvey gets Molested- Believe it or not there was a time when the Flames attendance was spotty and tickets were easy to come by. My best Friend Dave and I along with two other Friends decided to get four nose bleed tickets and do our usual spotting of seats routine. Being young, making alright but not serious money we cut a few corners, one of those corners would be buying Flames Tickets for $20.00 in the nose bleed section and spotting seats that were still unattended after 1/2 a period and moving into them. We would just go sit and usually no one would bother us. Being young guys we would almost always partake in some serious beer drinking, the Dome is notorious for it's heady beer, that stuff is hangover liquefied but that would stop some guys in their early 20's. After finding four seats and moving down we are watching the Game, it's being televised on Sportsnet and like most guys we would love to get on the highlights but stop short of streaking, those opportunities don't come along very often though. So we are enjoying the Game, the Rangers Powerplay at the time was filthy and we were awed that they had so much talent that we barley noticed Harvey the Hound stroll up beside us. If you don't know who Harvey is, he is the Flames mascot, the oldest mascot in the league and one of the most famous. I don't remember exactly what we said to Harvey but I do remember him giving us a miming motion he wanted to stage dive on us.

Some how, some way after Harvey landed on us we decided it would be our sportsnet highlight moment. We undressed harvey. We took his shorts off, we took his collar off and I still vividly remember Dave Flossing his crotch with our mascot's collar while I waved his shorts above my head. Harvey being Harvey was really good about it, he jumped up and covered his fake crotch before grabbing Dave's Jacket and running for sanctuary. If this made the highlights it would still be talked about today, right there with the English streaker who cracked his head on the ice and laid there unconscious and naked. A moment later a Flames assist and girl walks up to us and indicates they'd like to make a fair trade for Harvey's clothes if they gave Dave's Jacket back. Now our intent wasn't to get Harvey, we're fans, it was just play a funny prank and hopefully wind up on a highlight somewhere, so we accepted the deal.

To this day when Harvey comes around we remind him that we were the guys that took his clothes off and we get disapproving finger wave and a pat of the back.

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Whatever year the flaming donkey jersey came out-Speaking of moving down to seats, this worked 99% of the time. The time it didn't was the best time we had. Dave and I bought our nose bleed tickets with every intention to not sit there a moment longer than we needed to. We noticed some center ice seats and some seats just on the blue line in the lower bowl, by this time we are well practiced veterans at this. Our first seats were prime, center ice seats so it was a huge bummer when the usher actually bounced us, first time for everything! Not to be discouraged we moved to the blue line seats, the only problem is that they were only two sections away and I guess the first usher talked to the second usher because we got bounced for the second time almost right away...those sly ushers... So we decided that we need to make a bigger move, we were playing the Devils and noticed some seats right behind Broduer, PERFECT! We sat down and started enjoying the game finally, I was sitting on the isle and Dave one seat in from me, I think I was mid sentence when he started saying past me, " HEY STRACH! STRACH! You were wrong about that stat you said earlier!!"

Strachan is the guy in Calgary who runs around during intermission doing trivia etc.

Strach says, "OH! You two think you're smart hey? Want to do our trivia?"

Of course we're in!

They set us up with helmets that have lights on them attached to a trigger, once you know the answer you press the trigger and you get to go first but if you get one wrong it's a point for the other guy. Dave rang in twice and beat himself, I got one right because the week of this event the flames newsletter had the answer so I won. I won a flaming donkey jersey and hat signed by Ron Petrovicky (remember him? thought not) a hat signed by him as well, a travel mug, a long sleeve Flames Shirt. Dave hooked us up and his insulting strach actually resulted in our winning so I made him a deal where I would keep the jersey and hat and he could have the travel mug which was actually really nice. He also won a hat for participating. I think the best part, and I wish I could have seen them, was that those two ushers were probably thinking to themselves what a**holes we are.

S>O>

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