Last week I had the opportunity to play hockey down at the American Airlines Center before a Stars game. The event was put together by a friend of a friend, and included dinner with tickets to the game. I left work early and hitched a ride to the arena a ride with my fiends and fellow hockey enthusiasts Matt and Mark. After fending off security and having our gear thoroughly searched by drug-sniffing hamsters, we were escorted down to our locker rooms on the event level of the arena. It was pretty freaking cool to be walking around down by the Stars locker room where mere mortal fans never get to go… But alas, I am a Superfan! One of the security guys even mistook me and another guy as LA Kings players (they were the playing the Stars that night). We just smiled and nodded.

Getting to skate on the ice at the AAC was surreal. Even though the arena was totally empty, you could still feel the energy of the building pushing you to skate harder. The highlight of the game had to be Daryl “Razor” Reaugh (One of the Stars broadcasters) peeking out from between the players benches for about 10 minutes and asking us if we were having fun. Razor is one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met – he has a great blog here.

The time went by way too fast, and we were rushed off the ice promptly after the buzzer sounded signaling the end of our hour. After showering and taking our gear back out to our cars, we had to go back through security again (body cavity search – sans hamsters) and get to the VIP lounge for dinner. The food was pretty good withstanding one glaring omission… BEER! Serving a room of hockey players dinner without beer is pretty much inciting a riot… Never a good idea. Anyway, Razor came in after dinner as our VIP speaker and joked around for about 5-10 minutes. He promised to get us some beer but was vetoed by the AAC staff which resulted in a chorus of “boos” and several items of food being hurled at our host. The seats were great, but the Stars-Kings game – not so much. More like a complete and total ass-kicking by LA. The Stars lost 6-3.

All-in-all, a night to remember.