[FlameFanStuckinEDM]

Not really embarrassing, but cool at the time. When I was about 12 years old (1990), my family decided to do a trip to Southern California. I had an Aunt and Uncle who lived in Redondo Beach and were good friends with the equipment manager of the LA Kings. The Kings were going to be playing the Flames one night during our trip.

We got to go to the practice facility and watch the Kings practice. I got to go into the dressing room before practice and got everyone's autograph. I talked to Wayne and bunch of the guys, except Bernie Nicholls, as he was gone to a funeral. When I first went to meet Wayne, he was busy talking to another guy's wife on the phone. No idea what they were talking about though. I play goal, so I was talking to Kelly Hrudey and Mario Gosselin a bit more than the other players. Mario G. asks me who my favorite team was and the entire room falls silent and all eyes are on me. Not wanting to get into too much trouble, I sheepishly say the Flames and there is a huge groan. I think there were even some threats of being thrown out of the dressing room. But I quickly said I like the Kings second and that seemed to calm the masses a little. We stayed to watch the practice for a while, but it was kind of boring and so we went and did some other stuff. I wasn't until later that I was told the Flames would be practicing next and I could have met them as well. I was soooo pissed.

The night of the game between the Flames and Kings, my Uncle's friend comes up to me and asks if I would like to go into the Kings dressing room after the intermission. I think it was after the first intermission and I was waiting downstairs watching the Kings walk back to the ice and then they let me into the dressing room. It was pretty cool. I remember they had what was at the time the biggest TV I had ever seen. There were a couple of the undressed players riding bikes watching the game on this huge TV. I think the Flames ended up winning the game 5-3.

At the end of our trip we are waiting for our flight in the airport and my Uncle's friend comes up to us and has a couple of autographed pucks (signed by Hrudey and Vernon) and he has an Autographed stick of Mike Vernon's that he hands me. That was awesome as Vernon was my favorite player at the time.

So we get on the plane and I have to put the stick in the closet at the front of the plane. I got to sit in first class with my Grandma because my Aunt worked for Air Canada at the time. As I we are waiting for the plane to fill up, Ed Whalen comes up to me and asks me if the goalie stick in the closet was mine. We talked to him for a little bit and he ended up sitting behind us on the way home. I was really excited to meet him because of his work on the 2&7 broadcasts and Stampede Wrestling.

One funny encounter with a player was in the 98-99 season which was my first year working at the Dome as an Usher. Back then there was one day during the season that they allowed the staff to tour the building and go into the Flames dressing room. It was one weekend when the Flames were away and there was a huge group of us in the room. I believe it was Robert Reichel who was injured at the time and he was in the dressing room with his family and he had the weirdest look on his face. It seemed like he was wondering what the hell was going on with all of these people in his dressing room. He seemed a little pissed off as well.

A couple of years later when Montreal was in town playing the Flames, I was still working as an Usher and I was walking downstairs to go for my break. As I get down to the area under the bleachers, Gino Odjick stops and asks me how he can get back up to the press box. I completely forgot about the elevator that he could have taken and I gave him directions for how to get there by walking through the crowd and up all those stairs, but I didn't realize this until after a few minutes. As I was walking back upstairs to my section, I see Gino (who looks kind of ticked off) walking on the mezzanine level looking for the right access to the stairs to get all the way to the top. I kind of hid behind some fans hoping he wouldn't see me and recognize me.