I got to see another great Penguins victory, took a ton of photos, sat 4 rows up and one section over from a row of Pittsburgh Steelers players, met the G ladies (1WingAngel, Nicole G., and Mama G.), and had bar-none the smoothest drive home from Pittsburgh I've ever had in my entire life (← that's not a joke). WHAT A GLORIOUS NIGHT!! :)
When we got there, we saw a month of progress on the new arena. The second photo shows where the new arena (far left) will be in relation to the current arena (the base of the dome can be seen on the far right).
It is always nice to be in house for the Penguins award ceremonies. Here are my pictures of this year's winners:
The only thing that would have made it better would have been winning one of the sweet prizes. The Pens gave away T-shirts (in addition to the ones they gave us at the door), a dune buggy cart, flat screen TVs, a washer and dryer set, spa trips, concert tickets, autographed Pens gear, playoff tickets, shopping sprees, and - the best prizes - the shirts off their backs.
The complete domination on the ice + the fan appreciation theme = a fantastically entertaining atmosphere. The home closers are without a doubt the best regular season games to attend - unless, of course, one of those regular season games just happens to be played outdoors. ;)
Prior to the Boys hitting the ice, they showed the following video on the ice:
One of the reasons I love the Penguins so much is that Pittsburghers are amazing people. I don't know if I always remember to mention it whenever I tell you about my trips to the city, but I'm mentioning it now because there were so many things that happened that reminded me why I love Western Pennsylvania so much. Even the little things that Pens fans do for each other, like helping guide one another into the horribly cramped parking spaces, make the entire experience all the better. There were folks all over the Mellon collecting for the Fallen Heroes Fund for the slain officers. It was amazing. People were just stuffing money into the collection jars. We raised some serious cash for the officers' families.
The tribute to the officers was moving. Some d-bag arse in the seats behind us yelled, "Let's Go Pens!" during the moment of silence, but literally everyone else in the arena was respectful. You could have heard a pin drop. The Pittsburgh Police Honor Guard gave Jeff Jimerson, whose performances are always clutch anyways, a little something more. It was great to be in the building to see it.
This is the only picture in today's post that I didn't take. But when I saw it, I couldn't have a post about this game without it. This is a shot of Siddo, Duper, Bylsma, and Syko during the aforementioned moment of silence. As with all other pictures on this post, click to enlarge.
Our seats were really close to the seats of Jeff Reed, Chris Hoke, and Jason Capizzi of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
At the end of the game, we stuck around to watch the Boys give the shirts off their backs to lucky fans. Our seats were up underneath an overhang (we couldn't even see the jumbotron) and behind the protective netting behind the goal, so we knew we wouldn't be getting any of the T-shirts the Boys were tossing into the crowd. But even so, we stayed to watch them because, every year, they seem to have so much fun with it. Before last night, I would have said that Colby Armstrong was the player who I thought had the most fun skating around throwing T-shirts at people, but that title now belongs to Matt Cooke. He grabbed an armful of shirts from the table and started launching them in rapid succession. He looked like he was having a blast. :) Saint Siddo was having a good old time, too. Actually, they all did. Check out the Cheshire cat grin on Jordan Staal's face in the second shot:
Finally, Geno and Siddo were the final two to give their jerseys away:
After the final giveaway, woodstock and I headed out to PenStation (← which I finally realized I've been spelling incorrectly all this time, haha!) where we met up with the G ladies. All three of them were extremely sweet, and it was wonderful to meet them. We chatted for a bit, and woodstock took a photo of us with our Roamers. (Look for that one on the Roamer blog soon.) I really like meeting the Friends of The Show. :)
When it was finally time to hit the road, we didn't hit any traffic whatsoever. No construction, no accidents, nothing! The easy drive home was a great way to end a fantastic evening. I'm so glad I'll be doing this again in about a week!
GO PENS!!!!!!!!!!
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