Since my last post, which was all the way back in October (yikes), I figured this tournament would be the perfect time to make a post due to my busy school schedule and just not having time to make posts that much during the year.
This past week I had the greatest opportunity to be able to be a stats crew volunteer during this entire tournament. During my time, I got to keep stats of face-off wins, plus/minus, and shots during games such as Sweden vs Germany, Germany vs, USA, even the gold medal match for USA vs. Canada, and many others. How many people in college can say they got to keep stats during an international tournament like this one? Not many. Some other little things, that may not seem so little, is that I also got to do pre-game stats such as getting the team line-ups before warm-ups and getting starting line-ups as well. Every head coach I got to work with was extremely nice and I was surprised that we did not hit any problems up until the fifth day with our stat system, but it was mostly little minor things.
One of the funny things that I still kinda laugh about is before I left for the tournament I was on the phone with my dad and he would say things like "remember they are just normal people," when he would talk about the players and I said "it's not like Auston Matthews is going to be there." Sure enough, I was taking face-offs for my first game and I looked near the benches and I see someone and he looked like Matthews and I thought that could not be him. The people I was working with started talking about current NHL players who used to play for the National Development team and someone brought up Matthews and the spotter mentioned that he was there and I whipped my head back to the spot I was staring at and sure enough it was him. Some other people I saw there was James Van Riemsdyk, Jeff Blashill, and the former head coach of the Michigan State Hockey Team Tom Anastos. But, even when I walked past them and some of the girls I was completely fine. I will admit I only knew a couple of girls in the whole tournament, but I knew I was not going to be crazy because I knew I had to be professional.
One of the games that was really crazy to work for was the USA vs Germany game on Thursday, April 6. For those who did not watch that game, the end result was a USA victory with a score of 11-0. I was the spotter for this game which basically means I just called out whenever a shot was made, who was taking the face-off and who won it and trying to yell out the numbers for plus/minus (that was probably the hardest one to do). The whole time USA was just taking shot after shot while team Germany had about ten shots during the whole game, which was pretty easy for the girl writing shots down for them. I was honestly pretty surprised I did not lose my voice after screaming numbers for the whole entire game.
The best game I worked for overall would have to be the gold medal match by far since that was my first real championship game I ever got to witness in person. That day I was at the arena from 1:30 up until almost 11:30 at night and I thought my feet were going to fall off from all the running around and standing I did that day. Again, I was the spotter for this game again and did start off at a pretty fast past with both teams taking shot after shot. After a week of being at the tournament, this game was by far one the most exciting, but I honestly felt weird because I did not cheer during the whole, but I still love the energy that the arena provided with all the fans there. When the game headed into overtime, I honestly cried a little bit because I just wanted to go to sleep and wanted someone to win at that point so I can make the hour drive back to my room, but the ending made it worth watching. When Hilary Knight made that goal, that whole place erupted, but trying to get the plus players for that goal was the absolute worst. Like props to the people who have to do that on a regular basis because I got sick of that stat during my first game of the tournament. Seeing the team getting their medals and hearing them sing the anthem was a true experience that I will never forget and will forever cherish that I got to take stats for that game and volunteered over 40 hours of my time to work for such a great organization.
I know I have no done a ton of blog postings this past year, but I just simply never had time to make posts. Hopefully, this summer I will be able to get back to writing more between my concerts and my internship as well. But for now, I will just leave it with this one and not write about seeing State Champs for the third time.
Hope you enjoyed this post and cannot wait to write more starting next month!
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