Chilliwack Bruins Season Opener

I went to the Season opening game on Thursday not really sure what to expect but I figured it would be something of a spectacle as this league is a big step up on the recently departed BCjHL Chilliwack Chiefs. With more money involved and more exposure including a live broadcast on Shaw TV I guess I was expecting a big show of some sort.

I arrived at 6pm for a scheduled 7pm game start and wandered around the rink waiting patiently for the festivities to start. As the start time grew close I was surprised to see lots of people still wandering and not really seeing anything happening to indicate that some sort of ceremony was going to take place. About 5 minutes to seven an announcement was made indicating all the lights in the building would be turned out at 7pm. So I proceeded to my Standing room place to prepare to watch the show. At 7pm the lights dropped and the TV cameras came on to show the Shaw broadcast team along with the Bruins Play by Play team. This was shown on the Scoreboard with the sound a little tough to understand making it sound like jumble of unintelligible sounds. This went on for 10 minutes , then 20 minutes and the crowd was growing restless with sporadic cheering. Finally after almost 40 minutes of waiting in the dark trying to understand what was being broadcast without any luck, four fireworks rockets were set off which I guess was designed to wake up the fans. With this the Player introductions began, each Chilliwack Player was introduced and they skated onto the ice through what I thought was supposed to be a fireworks light bar to light up their entrance. This did not to work as planned and only after 7 players had entered did the light bar finally go off and then only for two players. Also during the this process the scoreboard was displaying a Bruins logo and even though there were TV cameras on the ice the clock remained dark until almost three quarters of the team had been introduced then suddenly the picture was broadcast for all to see. After all the players were introduced the opponents for the evening the Kelowna Rockets hit the ice and we had the Ceremonial First Puck drop and a series of sparklers which were located around the top of the glass were fired off with only half of the sparklers going off. Finally after taking about 5 minutes with ladders all over the ice to take down sparklers and clean up the ice the game began. Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining it is just that I figured this would be a little more professionally put together and a little bit smoother.

The game itself was a good back and forth affair with Chilliwack scoring first and taking a 3-0 lead into the third period. While Kelowna did break the shutout bid of Alex Archibald with a goal midway through the third period. The style and pace of the game was excellent making it well worth attending to see the game. With the excitement with which this team plays it will be well worth it to see more games this season whether the Bruins win or not it will be a good brand of hockey.