I didn't find hockey, hockey found me.

I admit that my very first hockey game was October of 2009 when I was hired as an intern for a local ECHL hockey team, the Florida Everblades. At the time, I liked my icing on cake and my wings on pigeons, planes and deep-fried in buffalo sauce. Oh, and Wayne Gretzky? Was that the guy that Marion Morrison played in those old, gun-slingin' movies? Oh? That's John Wayne? Right.

A lot has changed in a season.


Halfway through the season, the other broadcasting intern quit. I had been relegated to filming all of the games up until that point (back and forth... back and forth... follow the puck...) and was starting to hate my job. I was bitter at Canada for a stupid sport I knew nothing about, I had to wear a scratchy suit and my toes were regularly frostbitten (mind you, Germain Arena was unanimously voted by visiting broadcasters to be the coldest arena in the ECHL).

I was inches from quitting.
One random day, my boss decided, "Caity? Want to write game recaps? Oh and go on the ice and interview players about the game?"

Excuse me? You want me to break down a play? And then go on live radio and talk about it? To professional hockey players? I had two choices: figure out the concept of vulcanized rubber shooting down a sheet of ice meant, or, I could fail miserably and probably become a YouTube viral video or some sort of awful Internet meme of the Florida girl who needs to leave all things Canadian alone.

So I watched hockey. A lot of it. I widened my vocabulary to dirty-sounding terms like, "five hole," and decided upon an NHL team to follow (the Panthers. In retrospect, horrible decision. But I digress). I watched every single home game and wrote. Most of the time my boss tore it apart (rightfully so, I was awful) but I still wrote.

I even went to my very first NHL game (Boston Bruins at Florida Panthers. Any idea who won? Hint: not the home team).

By playoffs that same season, I was on the ice during every intermission grilling the players about the game. I was terrified out of my size six Manolos, but I did it anyway. I asked a few not-so-great (okay, terrible) questions, and other times I was channeling my inner-Bob McKenzie (okay, that's probably a stretch, but I started asking decent questions).

Somewhere in that end-of-season stretch and a playoff run halted in the second round (suck it, Reading Royals. I'm still bitter about that), hockey put a little bit of ice into my warm Florida blood.

My only regret?

I'm forever stuck with being a Panthers fan.