Czech Ice Hockey

Thursday September 18, 2008

Pictures from a hockey game

Karen and I went to see an ice hockey game. We saw HC Slavia play against HC Vítkovice Steel

What a game. It had everything: a penalty shot, gushing blood, ice princesses skimpy outfits, crazy fans, and cheap beer.

HC Slavia is a team in a Czech ice hockey league. It is one of two teams in Prague in this league. Last year they won the league championship so I guess they are pretty good. The style of Czech hockey is much different than what one would see in NHL. There is very little hitting. That I think translates a little bit into less defense. Or maybe different style of defense. The score in the game was what I would think of as normal in hockey, 3-2. Almost all the players had a half shield on their helmets. Some even had a full cage. The uniforms of both teams were covered in advertisements. Even the refs had ads on their uniforms!

In the first period a player on Vítkovice Steel was breaking in on the goalie and was held up by a Slavia player who was behind him. The ref awarded a penalty shot to the Vítkovice Steel player. Awesome! The shooter scored on the goalie easily. He made it look so smooth and easy.

Gushing blood... in the second period their was a pile up by the Slavia net. Some of the players crashed into the net and knocked it off. One of the Slavia players got injured in the face, blood was streaming onto the ice. He skated off the ice and went straight into the locker room. The cool part about this is that there was so much blood that the arena crew had to come out and scrape the blood/ice up. They had to scrape the ice and pick up the pink/red snow all the way from the net to the bench.

Ice princesses... every tv time out a couple of young ladies in short skirts and mini tank tops skate out to clean the ice near the nets. I've seen something similar at Bruins games. The difference is that at this game there were 2 skaters that just do figure skating turns/spins at center ice. And did I mention they have short skirts on?

Crazy fans. The seats directly behind the nets were reserved for the team fan club. Slavia's end was filled with fans dressed in red/white. Vítkovice Steel had like 5 people, but one of them did have a drum. He was beating on it through the entire first period. He didn't even stop when arena security came up to him and talked to him. I think he wanted the fan to move the drum off the seat, but the fan ignored the security people and kept beating the drum. The security guy just grabbed the drum and took it away from him. That was the closest thing to a fight during the entire hockey game. The fan ended up sitting in the aisle instead and beating on his drum. By the third period he was no longer beating the drum. He looked like he had passed out or fallen asleep . Slavia had 6 drums on their side! And they were allowed to rest them on the seats. Home ice advantage?

Cheap beer. All the concessions were cheap. 40 korunas for a beer which is about 2.30 in USD. Wow. Beer and chicken wings was like 8 USD. A beer at a Bruins game is probably about 8 USD now. The other neat thing about the game is that it started at 5pm. So you can bring your kids to a game and not have to worry about being up late.

Slavia won the game in overtime. OT was 4-4 and lasted all of 2 minutes before the game winning goal. The game was alot of fun. I'd definitely suggest seeing one if you like hockey at all when visiting Prague.