Hockey Expo

Every year during the first weekend of March, downtown St. Paul becomes a hotbed of all things hockey. The boys high school state tournament takes place at the Xcel Energy Center (where the WILD play) and adjacent to the tournament is the hockey expo. It is an absolute madhouse with every vendor/company/camp/training center/gear, etc company you can imagine. But of course, if you love hockey, there is no better place to be. Matt has gone to the Minnesota boys state hockey tournament every year since his freshman year of college and has enjoyed taking Wyatt the past few years to see the state's finest.

Wyatt's first hockey expo and state tournament when he was just one year old

And now in 2012!!

Matt and Wyatt were going to go to the quarterfinal games on Thursday night and then the Semifinal games friday night. The tickets for each session (2 games per session) go on sale one hour before the first game. So I drove downtown with Wyatt (while my good friend watched Sadie and Blake) to get in line for tickets until Matt could meet us there. We got there at 4:15pm and the line was already incredibly long. By the time they opened the ticket window at 5pm, the line wrapped all the way around the Xcel as well as the RiverCenter next door (where the expo was). When Matt and Wyatt got up to the ticket window, there were only standing-room-only tickets left!!!! Keep in mind that the Xcel seats just over 18,000 people and this was to see a boys high school quarterfinal game---not college or pro and not even the semifinals or championship game!!! Wyatt was pretty tired after waiting in line and Matt didn't think he would last several hours standing to watch the games, so they headed outside to see what scalpers were asking for their tickets. $50 a piece!!!!! Matt was able to negotiate one guy down to $35 each and since it didn't appear they would be going the following night, they paid the $70 and got great seats and saw some great hockey. All that to say that the next day, Friday, we went to the hockey expo as a family around 3pm and ate dinner downtown and then watched the games together at home!

The goalie masks are always so exciting...especially when they are the kids' sizes!

The few pics I could get of the boys trying on the newest Bauer skates--they were incredibly lightweight and if I can tell, you know it must be true!

The smallest skates they had were a size 2....Blake wears a toddler size 8. But he didn't care one bit!

One of the people working in the Bauer tent came up to the kids and gave them the last three Bauer sticks they had left and Blake played hockey with his new skates and stick for at least 20 minutes.

A representative from Bauer even came over and took pictures of him!! It was lots of fun, even for Sadie and I, the non-hockey players.