Flames at Wild or My Severe Fan-girl Moment

As you are all aware I don't hate the Calgary Flames and I have a crazy inexplicable love for Miikka Kiprusoff.  (Seriously, I can't explain it so don't even bother making me try.)  I went to St. Paul with my sister and two friends for the Wild Flames game.  And beforehand Jen wanted to know if I wanted to make a sign for Kipper in Finnish.  She is learning Finnish and got some of her Finns to give her something to put on it.  She drew it and I colored it.  It was awesome.  She had one for Olli Jokinen.  They were Finnish salmon jokes.  Mine said something to the effect of "No salmon in Miikka's fish trap".  I'm not sure what Jen's said but it was something about salmon.

So naturally the plan was to go down to the ice level for warm-ups and see if we could get a reaction.  Miikka is always very focused and never reacts to signs, so we didn't expect much from him.  We headed down to the ice a few minutes before warm-ups started and hung out on the flames side.  Kipper lead the flames out and I completely fan-girled out.  I know I squealed and there might have been some giggling and jumping.  Jen busted a gut laughing at my reaction, which cause me to laugh even more. (never ending cycle)

Olli Jokinen skated by us a few times, and you could see him looking at our signs out of the corner of his eyes.  I think it was a "did that say what I think it said" moment or he was correcting our Finnish.  Either way it was awesome.  Around the same time some random flame was shooting pucks at the glass where were were standing.  Olli kept looking at us, and Miikka kept stretching or hanging out in his net. I was distracted taking pictures of Kipper when Olli started doing push-ups.  I missed it, but I got some pictures of him stretching right after.




Olli then came over and bumped the glass in front of us.  I was kinda startled.  And then Jen was like take a picture, I was trying, but the camera wouldn't zoom out quick enough.  I got a few eventually.  Olli stayed for a while, talking to one of the baby flames.  And Sarich decided he needed to do a back-bend in front of us.  I got a good shot of Iggy, a bunch of Olli, that I never thought I'd want, and who knows how many of Kipper.  I take back every thing less than stellar I've ever said about Olli.  And he is way better looking close up than I always thought.  He still looks like Taylor Hall's older brother though. (Sorry Olli)

Legs????

The game was pretty slow for the first period and a half.  But the second and third were pretty lively.  We giggled a lot, in part because the guys behind us who didn't really know what they were saying were very emotionally invested in this game.  Kipper got the win, but he let some salmon in his net.  Olli had the game winner.  About 10 minutes before he scored, I told Jen that Olli needed to work on his putting fish in the basket thing.  Oh and Maskless Kipper is my favorite!

Henrik Karlsson