Hey, thought I'd give you guys an update after all your help.
My girlfriend and I eventually decided we wanted to go to Oakville, on the off chance of seeing Connor McDavid, after watching a few Youtube videos.
So we headed from Danforth on the GO! train through to Oakville, which has a nice little area of retail parks at the station, so we got lunch there then headed on the 19 bus, because that's what Google maps said. It took us through some really damn nice looking housing estates - I mean every turn was just more nice big houses, there's nowhere that's as consistently safe and clean looking in the UK, haha. How do you guys do it? Walking up to the rink wasn't as easy, Google had given us a bad route, and we were essentially walking in the side of a 4-lane (each side) 60km/h road with no sidewalk for most of it. I noticed that the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex isn't particularly accessible on foot from any angle though, definitely made for cars.
But the complex itself was pretty impressive to me, I'm sure you guys have stuff like that everywhere, but we'd kill for something like that in UK hockey. 3 training rinks and a lovely little 1500 seat arena at the end of it. To put it into perspective, Disney on Ice take my local teams arena for the month of September, so our guys train 1 hour away from our home rink and play on the road all month, because that's how far away the next decent sized rink is.
But yeah, all very nice, all very clean - I loved the Oakville community a lot. I was getting looks from my girlfriend as if to say we should be living here! Haha.
$5 to get in, fantastic. Got myself a puck, my girlfriend got a Steelheads shirt, and I got a set of cards to have a look at the team. The game itself was pretty damn good, thankfully McDavid was in the lineup, couldn't have been happier as he didn't play many exhibitions. But he wasn't the only talent on show by a long shot. A lot of guys impressed me, the teams were perhaps a little undisciplined defensively at times - but that may just have been the fact it was an exhibition game too. We got a show from McDavid, with 5 points - one particularly awesome assist for number 12 (who's name I forget
), who reaped the rewards of being on McDavid's line all night, but looked pretty good himself.
Wasn't a big fan of the Otter's goalie, but may have been a backup, as it was an exhibition? Felt he sold them short, and was the difference in the game, as Steelheads goalie was pretty solid. I liked Sean Day and Nick Zottl on the Steelheads defence, they both looked excellent. My girlfriend liked McLeod, and I couldn't disagree. For Otters, I liked Betz, Strome and number 27, whose name I've missed again. I have the teamsheet somewhere.
After the game, I managed to get Sean Day to sign his card, which I had purchased - I said to my girlfriend when I heard they were doing autographs, that I'd get the guy I liked most in the game to sign his card. So there's a nice honor for him.
All in all, I got a lot of goals - I saw the next big thing in hockey, saw a nice little neighborhood and facility and had a good time.
Thanks for the recommendations and help, I may well just have to keep one eye on the league from now on.
One final thing, does anyone know where I could get a box score on the game (mainly just the goals/assists)? I was keeping on myself but at one point I came out of the app and forgot to save it, so lost a few and couldn't remember the assists on the goals.
Thanks,
Andrew.
