WELL.

Monday night, I got to witness the Hurricanes’ full-on collapse at the Can from Section 353. It was fun, finally getting to go to a game with The Pregnant Motie Warrior.

Pepsi Center: Very nice. The flash didn’t cooperate with me very well, so all my pictures of the concourses turned out like crap except for this one:

Cheaper than the RBC, if you can believe that. Wow.

Here’s my sister (trust me, she normally looks better than this):

I took that picture right after Justin Williams tied the game 1-1.

I wish I could tell you what happened to the ‘Canes in the third period, other than that they tried to be cute–and, of course, failed miserably. During first intermission, I heard “You must be the Acid Queen.”  And looked over to my right to see Tapeleg’s smiling face. We rapped during first and second intermissions, and then a little after the game–cool cat.

The crowd at the Pepsi Center is D to the U to the L mothafunkin’ L compared to what I’m used to at the RBC. At the RBC there’s a constant level of crowd noise, but at the Can it’s just dead–except for the cat behind me who kept hollering “RUN ‘EM INTO THE BOARDS!  SOMEBODY FIGHT!” the whole game. I guess that proves that there are yokels everywhere.

My camera died shortly after I took a picture of David Tanabe sitting in the press box with Jason Karmanos–the Warchief was down in the locker room working out (unless he took a break from that too–which I can’t picture). Yeah. Wasn’t real impressed.

Some other pictures from the first period:

Crackers watching the play in the neutral zone at about the 5-minute mark of the first.

This is shortly before the Avs’ first goal.

And this is right after:

Blah.

The overall experience was pretty nice–the fans were really cool, didn’t give me a lot of crap. I didn’t feel like I was taking my life into my hands by wearing my ‘Canes jersey there, fortunately–so the Can is added to my list of arenas that I can feel safe in (next to the X in St. Paul and the Phone Booth in DC).

I’m trying to score tickets to Friday’s game at the RBC. With luck I’ll have a report on the Great Helmsman’s return to the RBC three years to the day after his firing.