Maine: Players Will Be Sat On and Sinners Will Be Towed

My Partner-In-Crime took this picture in Freeport, ME

For Valentine’s Day, my fiance and I traveled to Orono, Maine to cross yet another Hockey East arena off our list and see Boston University take on the University of Maine Black Bears.  Because of our work obligations, we could only make the Saturday game and missed Friday evening’s BU blow-out.  I followed the game on the radio and online Friday night, and knew we would see some angry Black Bears on Saturday evening.

Saturday evening’s game was uneventful. It ended in a 2-2 tie, which could have been anticipated -you weren’t going to see another blow out evening. Maine was too angry, and Dave Wilson, who they inserted halfway through Friday’s game and started again Saturday, isn’t too shabby of a goalie.  He’s very quick and is able to cover much of the net. Wilson’s shorter than Scott Darling – who, like Ben Bishop before him, should play for the basketball team, not the hockey team – which gives him a bit of an advantage in moving around much quicker and fighting low shots.

Maine’s fans are of their own variety. The people are relatively nice people – until you get them in Alfond Arena. And then, they want to bite your head off if you are for the other team. Which is fine – I’m all about fan loyalty. However, at the Alfond, you are shoulder to shoulder with these Maine fans in the crowded bleachers under a second level filled with students that leaks unknown liquids and has garbage falling from it, and then their rabidness just starts to make you the slightest bit uncomfortable. I could not move my arms without encountering a low growl by the Maine fan next to me. Sorry for wanting to get the circulation back in my right hand, m’am.

So while smushed up to your new best friends from Bangor, you look up and realize, “Ooh, not only is the second level leaking things on me, but there is no net at the ends of the ice.” And while you are thinking about that, whack! – an errant puck comes flying at your head.

Awesome. So now you have fast moving hard rubber objects flying at your head, you can’t move your arm, and you have a sixty-something woman from Bangor with blue face paint low growling at you.

Then the Maine student section starts hanging their stuffed life-size referee by a noose in the second level. And then the Maine lineup comes out of a giant inflatable bear’s head. And then the video board uses Comic Sans as it’s primary font. And then there is the random guy in back of you screaming, “Go Black Bears, go!” in a French accent over and over and over again. When things didn’t go the Black Bears way, he swears in French.

This all being said, the Alfond Arena is an experience that all Hockey East fans should take in at some point in their lives, unless you have a really short fuse, are claustrophobic or have a problem with strangers touching you. Then you might not want to go to the Alfond.

A few notes:

– At the start of overtime, a Black Bears defenseman (I think it may have been Simon Danis-Pepin, who really ought to be on the Black Bears basketball team- he’s the tallest hockey player I’ve ever seen) decided to defend his net by sitting on A-Number-Twenty-One. When I say “sat on,” I physically mean he sat on him. A-Number-Twenty-One had the puck, was nearing the net, and Danis-Pepin, who is at least a foot taller, just sat on him, like he was a chair.

I think it was the most random piece of hockey defense I’ve ever seen.

The State of Maine wants you to stretch.

– The lovely people of the great state of Maine are so concerned with others’ well-being that they have labeled all of their rest stop trash cans with a label saying, “For your good health, barrel picking is prohibited.” They also have signs around all of their rest stops telling motorists who are tired of driving to stretch in their cars. How nice of them. I felt cared for.

-While in Freeport (where I successfully refrained from purchasing anything at the Coach outlet even though everything was 60% off clearance prices and they had an awesome red leather Legacy collection purse that I really, really wanted), my fiance saw the sign at the start of this post. “Sinners will be towed.”

Only in Maine.