Penguins at Blue Jackets - Pregame - 10-30-09
PREGAME
Hey. Guess where we are:
-Greetings from a fantastic day in Columbus. It's 80 degrees, a little windy and there's not a cloud out. This is an amazing day for any season, let alone mid fall.
-Some sights from our ride out this afternnoon. Downtown Columbus:
-Lots of these ugly, red, overrated stickers in town:
-Lots of these in town too:
-There's a pregame picnic/festival going on outside of Nationwide Arena. They couldn't pick a better day for it. :
-The area around the arena is very well developed. Lots of restaraunts and bars and other places for fans to hang out and have fun before and after events here:
-We really dig how a lot of the road and walkways around this facility were created out of brick:
-Hopefully, the area around Consol Energy Center can flourish as well as this.
-A Darius Kasparaitis jersey:
-A Mario Lemieux Wales Conference jersey:
-The ice:
-A Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins jersey:
-This jersey also had a patch from the 2001 AHL All-Star game:
-The cannon they have here for all the Blue Jackets goals:
-Some Penguins fans posing with the cannon firing dude:
(Was there any sort of military rank for someone who fired a cannon back in the day?)
(The reason our cannon photo is blurry is because the cannon dude told us not to get in front of it. It was loaded.)
-There's a jersey for former Blue Jackets and former Penguins forward Tyler Wright on display here:
-The stick used by former Penguins goaltender Ron Tugnutt in Columbus' first home shutout is on display as well:
-A Flyers fan with a Blue Jackets hat:
-It's a jersey foul on account of the mixing of team logos, but having a Flyers jersey at a Penguins game is fair game based on the Third Party Rule.
-The Blue Jackets allow high school teams to sell 50/50 raffle tickets here in the arena. Tonight the Newark Generals are raising some funds:
-Classy move by the Blue Jackets to let these teams do that.
-The hat trick bin will all the hats collected over the years:
-This was the ramp to the Blue Jackets' locker room roughly one hour before the game:
(Notice the Ben Roethlisberger jersey.)
-This was the Penguins' ramp:
-Grey Cup foul:
-Here's the practice rink adjacent to the arena:
-They like their Civil War hats here:
-No idea who this guy is rooting for:
-Walking in from Front Street:
-A Mike Rupp jersey with an autograph:
-Just like at Mellon Arena, high school jerseys are on display here:
-A Bowling Green:
-This gentleman wasn't aware that Bowling Green is Dan Bylsma's alma mater:
-We assume this Sidney Crosby fan whacked this Henrik Zetterberg fan in the shins:
-Syl Apps, Jr.:
-Warm ups:
-Tons of Penguins fans here:
-This photos isn't really representative of that, but we'll give a generous estimate of this place being 40 percent Penguins fans.
-The Penguins' scratches are Mark Letestu, Tyler Kennedy and Evgeni Malkin.
-The Blue Jackets' scratch is Nikita Filatov.
-Your starting goaltenders are Brent Johnson and Steve Mason