Ice hockey or UFC?

Last night one of Mr.B's colleagues took us to an ice hockey match at the local stadium. Happily we also had use of one of the corporate boxes, so were able to watch in some comfort and with a free cup of coffee.

It wasn't the first ice hockey match I'd ever been to (I went once in the US a few years ago) but to be honest, most of what I know comes entirely from playing EA Hockey on the Megadrive. And the main thing I remember from playing that is that it's ok to fight members of the opposing team. Which is what happened last night. (Not me, the players).

There was a particularly nasty shove by the opposition of one of the home team which left him injured, but for some reason went unpunished. A couple of minutes later someone decided to punish the culprit himself by taking a swing at him and was promptly sent to sit in the corner for 10 minutes to think about what he had done. However the home team's blood was well and truly on the boil by then and it wasn't long before another fight broke out but on a much larger scale than before. I couldn't help but be bewildered at the sight of two men having a full on brawl (helmets and gloves off) whilst 4 match officials just kind of stood and looked on. Apparently that was because they were trying to stop everyone else from joining in - although there were still a couple of other scuffles. The fight went on for at least 5 minutes and the spectators were starting to get a little restless. Eventually the referees put a stop to it and then proceeded to spend even longer deciding on who was going to get punished and by how much. They read a big long list of names and penalties out after that, but it didn't mean an awful lot to me.

Interestingly, the chants that were used wouldn't have been out of place at any English football match. The away supporters were very vocal (and there were quite a few of them considering the distance they had to travel to get there), but I was quite disappointed in the lack of home supporters. To my knowledge, our team are currently near the bottom of the table where they have been languishing over the last few years, and the supporters have got a little frustrated and started to give up on them. Which is a shame as it's times like that when you need your supporters the most. But then, they did play pretty badly so I can kind of understand why. The supporters were also at their most vocal when cheering on the fight which was quite depressing.

Final score: Södertälje SK 2 - Skellefteå AIK 7 (One SSK goal was scored in the first 2 minutes, and one in the last 2. The rest of the time they were mostly fighting and falling over.)