Fernie Ghostrider Home Opener

Fernie Ghostriders Sign

Saturday September 24th, I had the opportunity to go to the home opener for the Fernie Ghostriders, our local hockey team here in Fernie! It.Was.Awesome! With both Ashley and myself being new to Canada this was an grand experience.  We are both from New Zealand and were super excited to hit our first Ice Hockey game.  Luckily that was just what the next Red Tree Lodge Deskie Adventure was scheduled to be!

Hotel Close To Fernie Hockey Rink

We agreed to meet at the Red Tree since the hotel is so close to the Fernie hockey rink.  From there we picked up our discounted tickets from the Front Desk, and then headed across the street to the Fernie Memorial Arena. The game was the Fernie Ghostriders vs Creston Valley Thunder Cats, and we were eager to see the season start here in Fernie.  There were a couple of guests of the hotel looking for something to do that evening, so we invited them to join us at the game and walked over to the rink.

ghostriders hockey gamePuck TossWhen we arrived, a table full of hockey pucks caught my eye! Oooooo! I wandered over and saw they have rubber pucks numbered from 1 to about 200. These were for the ‘Puck Toss’ $2 a puck – if you are not familiar with the puck toss I will explain. The aim is to toss your hockey puck into or closest to the target in the middle of the rink. In this case the target was a bucket with a burger on it. I bought two pucks but with my luck reached no way near the target, of course! I don’t think Ashley did any better either. We also got our inflatable “Bam Bams” from this table too! They were fun, loud, and eventually got annoying thanks to me being an overenthusiastic fan. I was just supporting the boys all the way!

The start of the game was unreal – they turned the lights off and each member of the team came out one by one with an individual announcement. Once all the Ghostriders were out on the Ice, the lights came back on and two figure skaters skated around the rink, holding the Canadian flag as the National Anthem played, which was really cool and unexpected.

Fernie Ghostriders Hockey

hotel close to Fernie hockey rinkhockey warm up

The game was so much fun to watch!  Even though I’ve never been to an ice hockey game before, I mostly understood what was going on – I think! Luckily, this was a fairly high scoring game so there were lots of excuses to make some noise.

The snack bar at the arena had an awesome selection for food and drinks from popcorn to poutine (I’m coming around on this Canadian staple!). On tap they had the Fernie Brewery beers and some Palm Bay coolers.

 

Ghostride ZamboniAfter each period, we got to watch the famous Zamboni resurface the ice.  I had heard of these machines before but never seen one in action, so that was a treat.  The driver even had his own Ghostriders sweater with his name! I would say, with such an important job that he’s a pretty big deal around the rink.

Ghostriders home opener 2016Unfortunately for us Creston won this one 8-2, but not to worry. We will get them back…. I’m happy to say I will now be a regular in the Ice Hockey scene – such fun! It won’t be hard with the hotel so close to the Fernie hockey rink! Our next home game is October 1st against Castlegar – good luck to the team, and we’ll see you there!

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