Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Hockey Tournament Recap

April 7, 2008 by Beth

This is our goalie, Megs, at dinner on our first night in Vegas. Her shirt (and she had those shirts made up for everyone on the team because she *totally friggin’ rocks*!) pretty much sums up our weekend at the Lady Luck Cup hockey tournament in Las Vegas.

Highlights of the trip:

• the U.S. border guard who asked us to explain what a “hockey tournament” is. Seriously.
• these randoms from Ottawa who met some of our team on the Thursday night showed up to watch our game on Saturday morning. Apparently when it’s 6 a.m. and you are still in the casino after a night of drinking and gambling an idea like “hey, we should go watch those girls play hockey!” sounds like such a good idea that you wake your friends up and drag them off to the arena. Unfortunately, these dudes ended up at the wrong arena¹ and after a $100+ cab ride trying to find the arena, they showed up after our game had ended. We let them ride back to the Strip on the bus with us² and I’m sure that at this very moment, they are bragging to all their friends “… and then we were on the bus with a hockey team full of hot chicks!”
• Speaking of $100+ cab rides, one of our players accidentally paid $109 for a $10 cab ride by mistaking a $100 for a $1 bill³. She more than made up for it, though, by winning $2300 on friggin’ slot machines!
• The buffet at Paris was so ridiculously awesome. Crème brûlée⁴ to die for!
• Picture this: there’s about 2 minutes left in our first game, we are down like 9-0 and our one an only fan yells out at the top of his lungs, “There’s plenty of time left!”
• Apparently the other teams in the tournament, all of whom were from Canada btw⁵, went to Vegas to actually play hockey. We, however, thought the competition had more to do with maximizing the consumption of alcohol containing beverages while minimizing the number of hours slept. Thus, things like going to the arena, putting on our gear or moving in such a way as would result in skating-like motions/stick handling/shooting pucks anywhere near the opposing team’s net were not among our favourite events of the weekend. Some of our more stellar moves in the tournament included:
  • when our two defenceman were fighting over who had to go and get the puck: “No, you go and get it.” “No, YOU go and get it.”
  • the defenceman who would just stand and wave at the other team as they went by on a breakaway. Buh-bye!
  • the way the goalie would break out into laughter every time the other team scored. She was to explain later that her thought process was something like this: “Oh hey, there goes a puck. Wait, I was supposed to stop that, wasn’t I?”
• At the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay⁵ they let me touch a stingray!

Lowlights of the trip:

• Nuh uh! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so you aren’t getting any of the good dirt from me here!

I’m relatively certain that I’m forgetting a tonne of other things (some of which I’m not even intentionally leaving out to protect the, uh, innocent), but I’m way exhausted and must go to sleep RIGHT NOW! If I remember anything else of note, I’ll post an update. Srsly, must sleep now!

¹Who knew that Vegas had more than one arena. Or, as they like to call them, “ice centres.”
²Which may or may not have been because they bought us a couple of cases of beer.
³Stupid American money that all looks the same!
⁴No relation to Gilbert.
⁵Seriously, we went to Vegas to play teams from BC and Alberta. There was a team from Saskatchewan in the women’s division, but we didn’t play them.
⁶Check out my photos from the Aquarium, including some person dipping their 5-year-old into the tank to touch the sting rays, here.

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