It was the first real hockey game I'd ever seen if you don't count the time myself and four other guys rented a motel room in North Carolina on the way back to Boston from Spring Break for the express purpose of watching the Harvard hockey team barely lose the National Championship to the Michigan State Spartans who were a faster and bigger team (the announcer said) something like Rambo Meets Dorothy Hamill (the announcer said) but then I don't remember much else of the game because we had stopped in Macon, Georgia and bought several bottles of homemade Georgia Peach Wine which tasted a little like the juice from Libby's Canned Peaches spiked with Everclear grain alcohol and which we had drunk very quickly and with little regard for personal well-being which didn't keep any of us from shouting at the top of our lungs "Sieve! Sieve! Sssssieve!" whenever a Harvard shot-on-goal penetrated the Spartan line.

So the Stanley Cup match-up was the first real professional game I'd ever watched end-to-end (If you don't count occasional interruptions for the Miss America pageant) and maybe the most interesting thing I saw the whole game was a player from Calgary and Montreal "mixing-it-up" on the ice.

First, they threw off their gloves then off came those Friday the 13th facemasks and then they kind of started slugging each other over and over in the face. It lasted about a minute or so and the officials stood back with their arms across their chests and slightly maternal boys-will-be-boys frowns on their faces. When the players got tired of hitting one another they sort of did a slow dance on the ice and the crowd got real quiet and then they started slugging each other in the face again and the roar of the crowd welled up like a stock car engine at the Firecracker 500: rrroooAAARRRR! the crowd said. Just like that: rrroooAAARRR! Then the players were thrown in the penalty box and the camera showed them spitting up blood and looking like Hello-I-Eat-Reinforced-Steel-Bolts-For-Breakfast. It was actually a pretty entertaining fight and the players seemed to enjoy raising a ruckus so I tuned out the ESPN announcer who was pontificating about sportsmanslike conduct. A few minutes in the penalty box, I thought. A couple teeth. A little blood. The crowd likes it. The players like it. I like it...Everybody's happy!

So all in all it was a fine night in Newton, Massachusetts.

Beer. Pasta. Miss Texas. Bloodsports.

With no exams. Or papers. And a plane four days away.

Could any poor soul ask for anything more?