acquired for the playoffs: a lot more pipes that spout sparks, making for a very smoky intro

We went to the first game of the playoffs in the Finnish hockey Liiga yesterday and saw our neighborhood team, TPS, fairly beaten by Hämeenlinna's HPK. The visiting fans had claimed a whole chunk of the top balcony with giant flags and everything, a much larger contingent than I've seen at a hockey game before (first playoff game I've seen though). However, the man with a tiny little daughter in the seats next to us were also HPK fans (with much better seats than the balcony: ours were presents from Ticketmaster because Wax is valuable to them. I've never been that close before) and they were kind of isolated in a sea of TPS fans, to the tiny fan's sometime dismay.

There were some guys with extreme clapping and chanting stamina a bit behind us, and some antsy teenagers in fan jerseys in front of us who kept getting overemotional and leaping from their seats. And the chanting of "TPS" sort of ebbs and flows throughout most of the game, and every now and again the tiny fan, who was sitting on her dad's knee and dwarfed by the smallest size of fan jersey (age 5ish?), would look around in dismay at all of that chanting and then start chanting "HPK!" along with them. Not super audibly, but she remained defiant. Go her.

Also we apparently shocked her by clapping for both teams. Her little jaw dropped and she gave us some seriously evaluating sideeye. She probably has not encountered "I just hope everybody has fun" in Finnish hockey previously, I would guess. (I do mildly want TPS to win, if only because I've learned their names and sympathize with them a bit more, but I'm not really invested in it.)

Finally, as I also related on Twitter last night, HPK's uniforms have the word "STAMP" (leima) printed across the butts, which is almost unbearably funny. (It's a brand name, of course. But it does literally mean stamp.)