On New Years Day we drove up to Pittsburgh to watch the Winter Classic ice hockey game. Every year on 1 January, an ice hockey game between 2 of the best teams is played outside. This year it was between the Washington Capitals and the Pittsburgh Penguins at Heinz Field, the American football stadium. There has been a huge build up to this game. HBO has been following the teams for the last month filming a documentary about each team's preparations. The Caps haven't been playing very well recently so Chris wasn't sure that they were going to win. I'm always optimistic about these things and of course never doubted for a second that they wouldn't!
The game was due to start at 1pm so we'd planned to leave DC really early on the Saturday morning. We were expecting it to be freezing cold and probably snowing but in the days leading up to the game we kept checking the weather forecast and it forecasted rain. Rain is a problem, they can't play ice hockey in the rain, it's too dangerous. Late on New Years Eve they made a decision to delay the start of the game to 8pm.
We ended up leaving DC about lunchtime on Saturday and the journey took about 4 hours. We checked into a hotel when we arrived in Pittsburgh. We weren't originally planning on staying the night but when we found out the game was starting at 8pm we decided it would be a bit late to drive home afterwards.
We had our fingers crossed not only for a Caps win but for the rain to hold off so they could play the full 3 periods. And we got both wishes, the Capitals won 3-1 and despite the rain coming down quite heavily in the last period, they completed the game.
The best part of any game for me is when they have a fight and there was a good one in this game, the gloves even came off. I love the way the refs just leave them to get on with it!
Tempers started to get lost again towards the end, everyone seemed to be joining in!
The winning moment!
