Mystery, Arizona?

I went to see the Icecats (U of A club hockey team) play rival ASU last night. Five minutes into the first period, there are already two fights. After a ten-minute pause for a clean up crew to scrape the blood off the ice, hockey broke out once more. By the end of the first period, another fight had broken out, and ASU was winning 4-1. It looked like it would be a long, boring, fight-filled, lopsided game. (And it's pretty weird to see hockey players toss the gloves and start throwing punches in the same place that you once saw the Dalai Lama give a lecture).

But somehow the Icecats came back, and they were down only 5-4 in the third period. With 90 seconds left, they pull the goalie, and with an ASU penalty they have a 6-4 man advantage. They're crashing the net like crazy, and the clock's ticking down... until with one second left, four or five people are lying down in the crease, and an Icecat player just lobs a little shot up over the pile and into the net. It was amazing. The stadium erupts, the U of A players form a dogpile, even the coach--who our former-UofA-undergrad companions informed us has been here for like 30 years--looked excited. But the ASU team just gets up and leaves. The photo above shows the scoreboard, tied 5-5, with one second left. The U of A team is milling about the ice, but the ASU team is gone. Apparently, they thought the game was over and the tying shot was too late, so they were the winners. And they just left. By doing so, they forfeited... with one second left. Ridiculous. I felt terrible for the ASU players. Instead of a tie, their coach pulls them off the ice, and they have to forfeit with only one second left.

Don't get me wrong, the Icecats were pretty terrible. They would consistently swing and miss at the puck, check themselves into the boards, and fall down on their asses. I used to go to hockey games at Penn State, and even the intramural teams there were as good as Arizona's best. But I've never seen a more compelling hockey game, and the Icecats and Sun Devils were certainly evenly matched. I'm glad that in the end, my university's team turned out to be the good guys... it's nice to finally be able to heckle ASU with something better than, hey, your astronomy program sucks!