Seeing Sammy: Panthers @ Wild

I was awake for almost 24 hours on Thursday. Not that I'm complaining, it was a very eventful and fun day, but a little tiring for a variety of reasons.  Part of what lead to my long day was the fact that I went to St. Paul to see the Wild take on the Florida Panthers. This meant Mikael Samuelsson!! (And Tomas Kopecky and Ed Jovanovski).  I'd planned for weeks to come up with a sign for Sammy, and my Swedish tweeps translated it for me.






I made the sign that morning.  My sister made one for Tomas Kopecky.  She's a big fan of his.  I have some Slovakian friends that translated her sign.  Her's read "Kopecky for Captain" "Kopecký za kapitána". Mine said "Det Svenska ordet för "clutch" är Sammy!" or "The Swedish word for "clutch" is Sammy!". Sadly, it was soon after that we found out that Sammy was going to be a healthy scratch. Needless to say my heart was broken.  I was holding out hope that he would still take warm ups.

After we got back up to St. Paul, with our friend Jen, we went to the science museum to see the pirates exhibit.  Afterwords, my sister let us do something I've always kinda wanted to do. Go wait by the St. Paul Hotel and see if we could see the Panthers.  She really wanted Sammy to see my sign.  I really wanted Sammy to see my sign, hell my Swedish tweeps wanted Sammy to see my sign.   So we went to the St. Paul Hotel, there were about 6 relitivly creepy men chasing down hockey players, we mocked them.  And then we saw Sammy, he briefly glanced our direction, but I'll never know if he saw my sign.  Alas, I shall pretend that he did.

Kopecky

We then went to the amazing Tom Reid's Hockey City Pub for poutine.  I am in love with the stuff.  That's when we made a sign for Sean Bergenheim (a Finn) some salmon joke and a quick Go Jovo! sign.  Good times.  So then, it was game time, or well, warm-up time.  We staked out a good spot near the net and put out signs out and waited.  We got a smile from Bergenheim, Kopecky noticed and smiled, as did Jovo!!  Success was ours!  And Scott Clemmensen hung out for a long time.  We didn't really mind.

Bergenheim

Obligatory Koivu Picture 

The game was kinda slow, but it picked up in the end.  The wild tied it up with mere seconds to go and then won quickly into overtime.  I missed Sammy.

Versteeg