They call it the bat­tle for Ontario. The Ottawa Senators against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

One of the pub­lish­ers I deal with at work schmoozed me, along with Joel and Louise. We’ve given them a fair amount of busi­ness over the last lit­tle while, each of us involved in a dif­fer­ent part of the process, so he treated us to a Sens game. Even though my team (the Leafs) got pounced 7–2, it was still an excit­ing game; lots of end-to-end action, close penalty kills, and Heatly scored a hat-trick. The Leafs were sim­ply out-finessed. Great seats too. Coincidentally, we ran into Rockstar Jeff at the game.

Eva Avila, this year’s win­ner of Canadian Idol, lead the national anthem. To my sur­prise, I was able to fol­low with the French, but it was all pho­netic. Something I learned in grade school, but never actu­ally understood.

It was a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing to see how every­thing is so com­mer­cial­ized. Scotiabank place, VIA Rail goals (com­plete with train horn when some­one scores), Jubilee Timex time. Even Pizza Pizza spon­sors a free slice if the Sens win and score six goals or more.

There were prob­a­bly an even num­ber of Sens fans and than Leafs fans, but the lat­ter were def­i­nitely more vocal. Any Sens chants were drowned out. It’s easy to tell how gal­va­nized fans get in such a rivalry from com­ments I received on a pre­vi­ous post.

The best part was before the game even started. Master Corporal Paul Franklin from Edmonton, who lost both his legs in a sui­cide attack in Afghanistan, came to drop the cer­e­mo­nial first puck. They rolled out the red car­pet to cen­tre ice, and he hob­bled along with metal legs. Both sides of the rivalry cheered and clapped as one, louder than any other point in the night, proud of their sur­viv­ing soldier.

It was quite a poignant, misty-eyed moment.