The Lone Ranger(s)

The hubby won tickets to a Sabres game courtesy of Labatt Blue Light. The whole beer drinking thing can pay off, apparently!

While he could have taken Son #2 to see the NJ Devils, instead he chose a Rangers game so that he could see one of his favorite players, hailing from Rochester, Ryan Callahan and so I could see my Swedelicious* boyfriend in action. (*Term coined, to the best of my knowledge, by my Swedish friend Krister.)

Amen to that.

Free tickets = awesome! Free tickets also = nose bleed. Fourth row from the tippy tippy, vertigo-inducing top. So high in the rafters that the Hindenburg-like blimp that drops tchotchkes on the crowd was flying below us.

As much as I like the Sabres when they're playing pretty much any other team, last night I had to root for my favorite team: the Rangers. That meant wearing Son #1's camoflauge Rangers knit hat in front of a crowd of over 18K Sabres fans. The hubby wanted to know if I was looking to get my a*& kicked in the parking lot.

When you're spawning upstream through a wave of Sabres jerseys while sporting a Rangers logo, you feel a sudden kinship with the handful of other Rangers fans you spot along the way. Little smile. Thumbs up. It's like being overseas for a while and hearing an American accent: it doesn't matter how big of a dork that person is, s/he's suddenly fascinating. That drunk dude with the painted face? My new best friend. The chick in the furry blue hat with yellow horns who keeps turning around and giving me the snake eye as I cheer for the Rangers? Not my new best friend. No, not at all.

For the majority of the game, we could pinpoint the other Ranger fans in the crowd. Look, over there, thirteen rows down, to the left, there's guy cheering for Lundqvist. See? But, at the very end of the game, a slew of guys in Rangers jerseys came and sat right behind us. Comrades in fun. And the last few minutes were, indeed, tense, action-packed fun, especially when Buffalo scored in the last minute and brought the score from a shutout to 2-1.

The crowd went wild for a few waning seconds only to give it back up in 4, 3, 2, 1. Oh darn.

I think Henrik clearly knew (or definitely felt in the depths of his soul) that I was there. (Yes, I'm kidding.) He was en fuego. And, with that score, they sucessfully ended not only the Sabres' four-game winning streak but also their own three-game losing streak.

Saturday night: date night. Thanks Labatt. Thanks hon. And thanks mom for watching the kids.