When I’m on the road, and I am seeing two teams where I don’t care who wins, I try to pull for the home team. It’s fun to cheer with the fans, and live and die, for one night, with a team you don’t know much about.

But I found it hard to get behind the Allen Americans, and it took me a little but to figure out why. It was the jerseys.

If you were to take the style of the Phoenix Coyotes jersey, and combine it with the colors of the Red Wings, you have the Allen Americans. Just look at the font for the names and numbers on the backs of the Americans’ jerseys. It’s the leftovers from the Coyotes.

Yeah, I had a problem rooting for the home team. I wasn’t openly cheering on the Rush, but I did find myself a little more excited by their play.

The Allen Event Center is a nice, new building, but after you get inside, you could be in any new building. There isn’t anything to distinguish it from any other new arena out there.

I realize there is still some fascination with that Sacco kid that did the speech from Miracle, but this is getting a little ridiculous. He’s doing it for the Allen Americans in their pregame video? This kid has officially jumped the shark. Or jumped on a shark, or a shark jumped on him.

Look at the players in the background. Yeah, they are really feeling it.

Moving on, hey, where have I seen this before?

Oh, yeah, it was the at the Colorado Eagles vs. Laredo Bucks game, where the ref handed out two unsportsmanlike minors for abuse of the official. And look, it’s the same ref, and he handed one out in the first period of this game. A pattern? Maybe. Hey look, the ref does suck:

Slurp.

OK, on to the game pics. As ever, clicking on a picture makes it bigger, saving you the bandwidth and loading time of pictures you may not be as interested in. You are welcome.

   

It almost looks like this guy took a stick in the no-nos.

Moving on, the defense for the Americans weren’t doing their goaltender any favors. They weren’t clearing pucks when the goalie would make an initial save, and after the second or third whack at the puck, the Rapid City Rush would end up with a goal.

   

  

Even though there were no fights in the game, it got a little rough:

   

At the end of the second period, the puck took a strange bounce and got past the Americans goalie, prompting a change in net. It wasn’t his fault, but at that point, something had to be done.

It didn’t help. Take a look at the upper left side of the net. Yep, that’s the puck, and that puppies in there:

Everyone is looking to the right of the picture, except the goalie. OK.

The Rapid City Rush won the game, 6-1. Not much of a shock, considering how the defense was playing. After the game, I hung out with Ben Ellis from Big D Hockey, and talked some Texas hockey with him. You’ll hear that on an episode of The Rink Podcast soon enough.

I’m all caught up on games, but I still have one more Texas game to go to.