Happy Hockey Moments…

I actually planned to work on my assignments of the county election campain this evening. But I feel very queasy since a couple of hours. It might just be a side effect of that time of the month :-) or maybe I ate something my stomach doesn’t like to process? I went to a Chinese buffet for lunch but I actually didn’t eat anything unusual. Maybe it was the fish? Or the garlic sauce it was broiled in? I have no idea, but right now I’m sitting here with a heating pad on my tummy and I’ll retreat to my comfy armchair and some DVD after finishing this post. Damn I really wanted to work on that assignments, but at the moment my brain is too busy asking if throwing up might make me feel better. :-(  And I’m annoyed that this rather nice day has to end with me feeling sick! Because I had a great day.
I met with some Iserlohn hockey friends at a Chinese lunch buffet and then watched the game against Frankfurt in the afternoon. I haven’t seen much hockey yet, only the game of Cologne in Iserlohn early in the season. My #1 team Cologne really really sucks at the moment, it’s frustrating and painful and embarrasing. They’ve now reached the bottom and rank as 16th of 16 teams in the league. Cologne usually is one of the Top5 teams, with a huge budget, good players and the expectation to make it to the playoffs. They were the runner-up last year!! And now they’ve reached the lowest low they ever had to experience and nobody can explain why or has any idea how to get back on track. Thank God that our fan friends in Iserlohn were very nice about it, they didn’t gloat or anything but felt really sorry for us, because they understand how frustrating this is for any fan.

The game against Frankfurt was a really good one and it was so nice to cheer for a team who obviously knows how to play hockey and who can play really well. It’s so pathetic that I have to watch a game in Iserlohn to get my happy hockey moments. But I’m glad I got to do that today, because it was a lot of fun. Except for a not so gripping second period, the game was exciting and Iserlohn scored 3 goals in the first period with our favourite player Paul Traynor scoring with a great shot from the blue line. Yay!
Since Frankfurt was Iserlohn and Colognes opponent in the playoffs I grew to detest quite a few of their players. The #8 Sebastian Osterloh is one of them. He even is on Team Germany but I didn’t like him much there either. In this game today he checked Iserlohn’s #19 Brad Tapper in the boards, which itself wasn’t penalty worthy. [We watched it on TV later]. When Tapper tried to get out of Osterlohs grip, he might have pushed is ellbow into Osterlohs neck. That’s what it looked like on TV and the reporter even said Tapper started the fight with this, which is ridiculous.
Anyway, Osterloh punched Tapper in the face, Tapper falls down and Osterloh violently punches him in the head again. While Tapper was already down! I’m already getting furious again just re-telling these events, so you can probably imagine the fury of the audience. But that is part of the game and that’s what makes it so emotionally rewarding to watch a hockey game :-) You can experience joy and excitment and fury within a couple of minutes. And it’s definitely satisfying to yell and scream and chant against the other team and especially their #8 Osterloh. “Alle auf die Acht! Alle auf die Acht! Alle, alle, alle auf die Acht!” is always on of my favourites and for all non-Germans reading this it could probably translated with “Everyone attack the (Number) Eight…” Of course a fight among several players broke out and one of each team got a minor penalty. But Osterloh got a minor for roughing  and a major + game misconduct penalty for check against the head. And he was so furious about it, that I’m afraid some parts of the locker room might have gotten damaged :-) I really really detest him!

Iserlohn won 4:1 in the end and now rank in the top 5, while Cologne is still down down at the bottom *sigh* I will probably see a game in Cologne next Sunday and show my support because of course they still are my favourite team. I’m not sure what to think of the fact that some players have either lost their knowledge or the desire to play hockey, but I still love the hockey club per se, so I will be watching. And having my heart broken with loss after loss, I’m afraid :-(

So, the day was great, the queasy feeling in my stomach is not so great and I really hope some TV show on DVD will distract me. I’m more and more convinced it was the fish and the garlic sauce at the buffet… I really should try to get that icky taste out of my mouth.

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