The ice hockey season starts with the Challenge Cup games. The opponents were Manchester Storm. The arena was almost completely full. A fun night beckoned.
I'd joked with friends that 27 years is the "ice and violence" anniversary. There was a surprising amount of violence in this game. Lots of punch ups resulted in 38 minutes of accumulated penalties in the first period alone. A Storm player got done for "checking to the head". Later a Devils players incurred a 2 minute, 5 minute and 10 minute penalty all for the same incident. The 10 minute was for "instigating" because he started the fight.
The actual hockey in between the scraps wasn't great. Cardiff were the better side but only scored their first two goals when they had an advantage of a power play. Their third goal came after Storm had a late goal disallowed - I think because there was interference with the Devils goalie. With just a couple of minutes to go Storm took their netminder off to give them an advantage in attack but the Devils broke and a player scored from the halfway line into the unguarded goal.
There was a reminder among the honours banners of how thing were different in ye days of olde. Remember cigarette sponsorship?
So the final score was 3-0. A reasonable win and a happy result for our anniversary.
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