Skipping all the bad stuff and going right for the gold, Tuesday night was our first trip to Buffalo Wild Wings for Bud Light’s Hockey Night in Chicago. For about half of the Hawks’ road games this season, they host an event at different area BWW locations, with giveways, a season long air hockey tournament, and a packed house with lots of hockey fans.  They’ve been doing this for a few years now, but this was our first one.

Last night’s game was against the Edmonton Oilers, who despite being last in their division were on a bit of a roll winning 5 of their last 7 games. They even recently knocked off the league’s best San Jose Sharks in OT, who the Hawks haven’t been since 1812 or something like that.  Regardless, the Oilers are never a team to take lightly.

And the Hawks did anything but that. With a season record 5 goals in the second period, the Blackhawks provided all the firepower to keep a lot of wings fans (the buffalo kind) very happy despite horrible driving conditions and multi-hour travel times people had to endure to get there. The Hawks finished the night with a 9-2 win, which made everything else seem trivial.

As if a Hawks goal scoring spree and a few drinks wasn’t good enough, the Hockey Night in Chicago event was a blast. They hold a season-long air hockey tournament, which my brother and I both signed up for. While my name wasn’t picked to face-off in the tournament that night, Bobby’s was. It was a short game in the first round, and he ended up getting bumped out by some 320 lb giant. The air hockey table itself didn’t look that great, and I think my brother might have broken the other guy’s finger with one of his shots. Hilarious.

Even though my name wasn’t called for the tournament, it stayed in the box for some of the other giveaways they were having. Which turned out to be pretty sweet because about 30 minutes after Bobby was eliminated from the tournament, my name was called as a winner of 2 tickets to the Jan. 14th game against the Buffalo Sabres. Nice!

Needless to say, with a late 8:30pm start in Edmonton, the game lasted until about 11:30pm. The commute home was about 750% faster than the drive out there, which was great. Getting home around midnight, we mostly just crashed and, as a result, I’m getting a little later start than usual this morning. Well worth it.

The Hawks website has the schedule for the other upcoming Hockey Nights. While most of them are out of decent driving distance for us, there are at least two more that we’ll likely go to. We highly recommend going for anyone that has a chance and loves the Hawks.