Blues vs. Canucks
This evening, at 5:36, I received a call from Paul, asking me if I was interested in going to tonight’s 7:00 Blues game against the Vancouver Canucks. A friend of ours was going to the game and had an extra pair of tickets, and he was wondering if we would like to use them. I immediately agreed, and then I went on to ask Jude if he wanted to come. We were both eager to go, so we took care of a few things and got ready to leave for the game.
We arrived in downtown St. Louis approximately 6:30, and we parked a good eight or 10 blocks from the Savvis Center. Instead of paying to park in the attached garage, we decided to walk a little bit and save a few bucks. We found a parking spot on Pine Street, so we stopped and started jogging towards the arena.
Eventually, we met up with our friend, who gave us the tickets. He showed us to some very nice seats, probably a good 30 rows back, and he went on down to his seats, which happened to be four rows behind the glass.
Well, we were pretty thrilled to be in these seats. I was happily snapping away pictures throughout the first period, and we were having a blast watching the game. Mike Sillinger of the Blues scored a goal, and St. Louis had the 1-0 lead entering the first intermission.
About halfway through the intermission, this friend of ours came up to us and told us that there was a pair of empty seats near them. So Jude and I followed him down, and we ended up sitting in the third row, directly behind Blues goalie Curtis Sanford!
I couldn’t believe we had such great seats! Needless to say, I was snapping photo after photo. I got some pretty good shots, but I was having a little bit of trouble with getting the right settings. The speed of the game and the fact I was shooting through glass made it kind of difficult. Despite that, though, I managed to come up with a few really nice shots! I even got a picture of a breakaway goal by Christian Backman in the third period. 
That was pretty neat.
As the Blues were leading 3-0 in the third with just a few minutes remaining, a few people sitting in the front row got up and left. Jude and I decided to move up a few rows, and we got to watch the final minutes from arguably the best seats in the house! We got to a very close-up view of the empty-net goal by Petr Cajanek to seal the deal with 40 seconds left in the game.
So, to recap… we got free tickets, free parking, and we ended up sitting in the front row by game’s end. Thank You, God! We had a blast. The icing on the cake was the fact the Blues won (4-0), snapping their nine-game skid. They’re still the worst in the NHL, but at least they didn’t play like it tonight.
I’d like to share a couple of my photos sometime soon. I was disappointed that I didn’t get that many spectacular shots, but I got quite a few pretty good ones.