Go Canucks Go!

Such an epic weekend...don’t think I’ve had that much fun in a long time. On Saturday, Brian’s girlfriend threw him a surprise party for his birthday that’s coming up. We had a nice dinner out at a restaurant downtown with his closest friends (we’re all fairly close to each other, so we were all comfortable with each other and had a good time) then headed out to the night market out in Richmond just take a look around at what all the little stalls had to sell. And on Friday, Brian, Nate, Iris and I played “truth or dare” card games (even though it ended up all truths) where the winner would ask an embarrassing/personal question and the loser would have to answer (questions ranged from “who was your last crush” to “your favourite porn habits”). So funny, I loosened up a little and gave away some of my dirty little secrets. Those guys were pretty shocked with some of my answers...I don’t think they expected such brutal honesty out of quiet, reserved little me =P. Best part of the weekend though was watching the Canucks game earlier that night with the guys and Iris...

I’ll admit it, I’m not a huge hockey fan...at all. But it’s hard not to be a bandwagon fan when the whole city, even the whole country is talking about nothing else but the Canucks. It’s so stereotypical Canadian, but hockey just stirs up that much excitement and emotion in people up here; everywhere you look, people are wearing jerseys, employers let workers off early on game nights, there are street parties all over the city, hell, the Canucks are even making national headlines. Anyway, since the rest of the guys are such huge hockey fans, Danny decided that we were going to go downtown Friday to a pub to watch game 5 of the series and join in on the festivities. At first, I was a little uneasy with the idea because 1) I hate crowds, especially DRUNK crowds and 2) I like order and structure, which definitely doesn’t get included in Danny’s haphazard planning, but I’m glad we went anyway. We never did end up at a pub because we met up down there way too late and all the pubs were full (there was something like 75,000 – 100,000 people downtown that night!), but we did join the huge street party watching the game just outside Rogers Arena where the Bruins and the Canucks were playing and it was just insane! The crowd would cheer every time we got the puck, applauded every save by Luongo, and when we won? Absolute insanity...everybody was high-fiving each other, jumping up and down, screaming and cheering, towels spinning and flags waving, just utter madness. As we were leaving the downtown core, you could hear the cheering and partying still going on in the distance, if the people hanging out cars honking and shouting “GO CANUCKS GO” didn’t drown it out.

Moments after we won...it was more chaotic than it looks!

This is only one block of the party...it went down a couple more blocks both ways from the intersection.
Tonight’s game 6 of the 7 game series, and we’re up 3 games to 2, so if we win tonight, it’ll be the first Stanley Cup Vancouver’s ever won, and this city’s going to erupt, guaranteed. Despite the game being in Boston this time, it’s going to be an even bigger party than when the Olympics were here last year for sure, that’s just how crazy hockey fans are here. I’ve got Brian and Nate coming over in a few hours to watch the game and get the barbecue fired up...should be fun!

Later guys,

-Matt