Hockey in Geneva?

Tuesday, October 12 2010

Who knew?  Actually, the Geneva hockey team (the Genève-Servette Hockey Club) is apparently in a pretty legit league, where future NHL players wait to get called up and where older NHL players stay competitive in their later years.  One of our friends from work, Michelle, and her husband Mike scored some free tickets to last Tuesday’s game and invited us along.  

The atmosphere of the stadium was pretty typical to what you would find at a minor league hockey game back home.  We’re guessing the stadium held about 5000-6000 people.  At one end was the typical rambunctious crowd of 1000 or so, who never stopped reciting their cheers (in a language we did not understand).  The rest of the stands were spotty with attendance and the lower “prime” sections were pretty bare, too.  The biggest tragedy is that they didn’t even have seating around the glass where all the action was!  Maybe we should write a letter or something.  The game break “fillers” were very much similar to any event in the states.  They had the mini blimp flying around, the t-shirt launcher, and the mini-games between periods where the fans did crazy things to win prizes.  Dave even bought a club T-shirt -- we felt right at home!

We did find one glaring difference from sporting events back home.  During the game’s intermissions a lone singer would come out on a small stage and entertain (at least try to) the people walking around the concessions area.  So weird.  We’re not sure if this is typical European or just something they were trying out at the game.  His rendition of “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas was the perfect candidate for Flip-video – you can watch a portion of it below.  It was kind of funny that people just walked on by as if they didn't even notice the guy performing (other than the 1 lady who was obviously loving it).

The game itself was a pretty typical minor league hockey game; only it lacked a lot of the hard hits (actually, any hits) and fighting that you would normally see in the states.  Apparently that wasn’t a fluke, in Europe they focus more attention on the sport rather than the hits.   Interesting…they do know they're playing hockey, right?  Oh well.  All that matters is that the home team won -- the final score being 4-2 over “LAK” (unfortunately we were unable to determine which team/city that actually was).

So there you have it.  If you were at all curious about minor league sporting events in Europe we hope this shined a little light on it for you.