9.22.2007

A Night at the Shark Tank

Kate was lucky enough to score free tickets to the first home pre-season San Jose Sharks game from work, so we spent a fun Friday exploring downtown San Jose which included Kate playing a pawn-shop concertina, some happy-hour mojitos (aren't we hip?), and sampling Dustin's favorite sushi restaurant in SJ.

After that we headed over to the HP Pavilion arena with the throngs of anxious Sharks fans, ready to get the hockey season underway. The Sharks were playing our rivals to the south, the Anaheim Ducks (they were once the Mighty Ducks, but alas no more - I guess some 15 years after the Disney movie people are wondering why ducks would be mighty, or indigenous to Anaheim). Friday's game featured a lot of power plays for the Sharks, which was fun because our favorite part of a Sharks game precedes each power play for the home team. Fortunately for you, Kate captured me getting in on the action on film.



In the end the Sharks won 3-1, while outshooting the Ducks by a wide margin. Both goalies made some great saves, and there was a lot of offense (probably due to the 23 penalties) and near-misses. One cool thing about the arena is the new HD video monitors that are huge and literally as clear as watching the actual game itself from the stands (pictures of its construction this summer are here). Pretty impressive, and it really improved watching replays, especially for a sport like hockey where it's hard to follow the puck sometimes. Finally, I always get cracked up by the local advertisers - look at center ice. The Sharks' primary sponsors are Seagate, SanDisk, Barracuda Networks, and Best Buy. Ahhhhhh, Silicon Valley.

2 comments:

Steve said...

Is Intersil still a sponsor? They sponsor IBM Burlington by making a lot of chips here, but we definitely laugh at the Sharks games highlights... forget Molson and Dunkin Donuts, let's hear it for chips.

Tom said...

Intersil... Charity, isn't that where Jeff works? You there, Charity from Chapel Hill? Come in...

But no, I didn't see any Intersil signs.