On the Ice

If you're ever in Indianapolis during hockey season, check out an Ice game at Indiana State Fairgrounds. My first experience there was awesome.

The Arena

The Ice play most of their games in a nearly 60-year-old barn called the Pepsi Coliseum. The Ice's other home arena is Conseco Fieldhouse. As with most minor league, really junior league, prices are reasonable. I paid $15.00 for about a tenth row seat behind the benches.
The arena seats 8,200 for hockey, so there's really not a bad seat in the house. Most of the seats behind the safety netting are covered so patrons aren't allowed to sit there. I wonder if that includes the 8,200 or not. I'd probably think so. I guess if a game is nearing a sell-out those seats would then be opened.
Anyway the coliseum is quite charming in my opinion. The players cross the concourse to enter the arena. So if you're walking around when the players are scheduled to appear on the ice or coming off it, you'll be stopped by an arena employee. Waiting for ice resurfacer to cross too might also impede your movement.

Hey Junior

So yeah, I was mistaken yesterday when I said the Ice are a minor league. They are an amateur junior league, USHL, team owned by Colorado Avalanche player John-Michael Liles. He was born in Zionsville, Ind., a suburb or Indianapolis.

Miscellany

A major plus - Molson Canadian on tap! That's amazing to me. I didn't expect that at all. It's hardly a hockey game if you can't enjoy a Molson. The freshly popped popcorn is good too, bypass that boxed stuff. It looked pre-popped.
The Chill Girls are a nice bit of eye candy for heterosexual guys and homosexual women. When on the ice, they don't wear skates, figure or hockey, as far as I could tell. Sorry I don't usually sit around during intermission, but from the photos on the Ice's MySpace page it doesn't look like it.

Also the jerseys the players were wearing last night were really cool.

The logo doesn't do much for me, and the photo doesn't really do it justice, but they look pretty cool in person. By the way that's a dark blue to light blue gradient. The Thrashers should have done something like this for their third jerseys, now their home duds.

The Game

So last night's game pitted the Ice against the Ohio Junior Blue Jackets. The Ice started out positively, scoring two goals - one in the first and one in the second. From there though it was all Blue Jackets who scored six unanswered goals - two in the second and four in the third. Dan Hobbs tallied a hat trick for the Jackets. The Ice are now 35-10-6 as their regular season is coming to a close with just nine games remaining.

What's next?

Hopefully I can attend the Ice's last regular-season game, against Ohio, but this time at Conseco. I saw an IU - IUPUI basketball game there last year, and that was cool. Can't wait to see what an ice hockey game there is like.