Oh What a Night and By the Way You Can Call Me Al!

Words cannot describe how that game felt tonight standing for most of it in Section 304 bellowing my lungs out to the man who raised Lord Stanley's Cup four times, has now coached 1500 games and won 740 for my beloved Long Island team. Al Arbour, the man who definitely got his due this evening was a remarkable sight to see tonight and even better the boys played as well as I expected them to (Ask anyone from my section I predicted Miro would score at least to tie it). I love this feeling at the end of long hard-fought game where your voice is spent and you're tired and your head hurts but you feel greatly satisfied knowing you just witnessed a piece of local history. So thank you Al, for the memories and please do come back and visit more often we love having you around!

As for the officiating in this game, I wasn't too pleased with how things went for the first two periods. Especially in the first with two interference calls: the first on Bruno Gervais and the second on Brendan Witt. Gervais' I can forgive but Witt's I cannot. In my professional opinion: THAT WAS AN AWFUL CALL!

The goal scored by Tyler Kennedy in the second period (his first in the NHL so congrats to him) was absolutely a goal and I'm baffled as to how I saw it from 304 and the referee who was 8 feet away waved it off. Everyone around me was basically telling me to go to hell until the officials pointed to center ice 1:51 later. Then I got: How the hell did you see that? The trained eye never fails my friend.

Lastly, I'd like to send out a personal note to Sidney Crosby: STAY AWAY FROM MY GOALTENDER! Ricky went down like a sack of potatoes and I even called the 4 minutes before they put it up. You could just tell, a gut feeling. I hope that Rick is ok and will have enough time to recover from this right eye injury to face the Anti-Christ(Avery, Hollweg, Lundquist, Orr just pick one) and the Rangers on Tuesday.

I would like to extend a huge Thank You to my friend and brother Mike Matranga for getting me the tickets to this game. I am indebted to you for life. One thing I can't believe was that I'm 23 and managed to be at both this game and the game on January 25th, 1997 when the 739 banner went up and now has come down. Very strange and awe inspiring. Al, again thank you for the memories and to boys in orange and blue: Thank You for the thriller and a well-deserved and hard-earned win.

For questions, comments and dumb penalty calls: e-mail me at DougD84@optonline.net