The traditional Boxing Day Hockey Game
Hey everyone. I got home from the game about an hour ago. It's a tradition in Sweden with Boxing Day hockey and Djurgården is often lucky (maybe not luck, we usually always have a lot of attenders and especially games like these) to often have a home game on Boxing Day.
Today we were up against Växjö Lakers, a team I can't really say I care about. It's just there and I want it to go away so that a team I actually hate can be in SHL instead.
Hovet or Globen?
In Stockholm every team has to rent the arena, we have two choices, either Johanneshov Isstadion (8094 attenders) or Stockholm Globe Arena (13,850 normal games, 12,500 at derbys). Today the game was played at Stockholm Globe Arena with 10,078 attenders, here's a picture of Stockholm Globe Arena during a derby a few years back.
Here's a picture of Globen.
The hockey game
Before the game
Before this game Växjö was at third place and we were at twelfth.
We have one defenceman at the Junior World Cup (David Bernhardt) and our best defenceman was suspended this game, this was all set for disaster. We also have some injuries on important players (Possler and Fällström) and Jonathan Davidsson was supposed to be at the JWC but didn't get the last spot, he's going to play next game though.
I was excited this morning, I thought we finally would have some good time on the home stand with high volume and lots of fun since there would be a lot of people attending. I was wrong. This was one of the most boring games I've been at, really... Though we did play decent hockey.
I took a picture right before the game started, not a very good one though.
First period
DIF started out good, good passing, good skating and good job in the defense. The game went back and forth during the whole period but Växjö scored with a few seconds left because our goalie didn't really do as well as he usually does.
Second period
We started out good again, we scored about 3 minutes in and tied it up 1-1. Växjö got some pressure, two DIF-players went on the same guy which opened up for the ex-DIF player Philip Holm, 2-1 Växjö. We lost all our momentum there, we played awful after that goal.
Third period
DIF started out good once again, Växjö couldn't do much at all. The puck just wouldn't cross that bloody goal line. We played very well and with 0.6 seconds left, 6v5 (empty net) we finally scored 2-2. Everyone bursted out with joy, not often you get this happy by scoring in December against a team you don't really care about.
We played good enough for their coach to say that we deserved a goal in the third period.
Overtime
We had everything here, we played well. We could have closed the game several times,unfortunately we didn't and the game went to penalty shots.
Shootout
Robert Ohlsson (our coach) decided to switch goalies, out went Adam Reideborn and in came Mikael Tellqvist. Reideborn isn't as good as "Tellan" at SO. But Tellan didn't do a very good job, I don't blame him. It's not easy to jump in 65min+ into the game and try to win in the shootouts.
We lost the game and I feel that Växjö stole 2 points, we should have gotten 3 points - not 1 point.
Here's some highlights from the game!