[FireGilbert]

A few more thoughts:

-New Era’s comments were right on if only looking at the 1st. The 2nd and 3rd was great.

-I had to laugh at the pre game interview with Gio. The Chinese interviewer was trying to get the crowd pumped and asked if the Flames were going to smash the Bruins. Gio gave a very stereotypical nice polite Canadian response. It was great.

-The arena looked great with excellent sight lines. Also the pre game light show was excellent. It was a strange experience though. The concourse makes the Dome look spacious and there was extremely limited food and drink options. Many fans were leaving the arena and bringing back Big Macs. It was also a little odd the merchandise was cash only with no ATMs in the building.

-It definitely had the feel of a Flames home game with Lanny, Beesley, and Harvey all there. We even got find the hidden Timmy’s doughnut. The crowd was definitely pro Flames with all the neutral fans going for the good guys. When Gio tied the game late the place erupted. My only issue was the white towels they were asking us to wave. White towels are for dirty Nucks fans and I refused to wave it on principle.

-The ice seemed pretty good considering it was 35 and humid outside. Lots of strange bounces off the boards though.

-Halak was amazing. He made himself like look big and also had great lateral movement on a few huge saves. It was nice of Boston the let us watch the great Tuukka Rask for 5 minutes though.

-Gillies looked very shaky in the 1st and needed to have the 2nd goal. He definitely settled down though and made some good saves on the 3rd period 5 on 3 and the OT 4 on 3.

-FU Marchant! Of course he scores the tying goal in the shootout.

Overall it was a great game. Bring on the season.