One thing I learned at the Frozen Four is that there is an art to traveling to the Frozen Four. There are definitely pieces of knowledge I wish some more experienced college hockey fan had passed on to me before I jumped on the plane to DC. Thus, RIT, BC, Miami and Wisconsin fans, this is Part 1 of my advice to you before you head off to Detroit Wednesday or Thursday morning.

For Part 1, I present to you an Insider’s Guide to Detroit. I contacted one of the first folks I ever followed on Twitter, Jamie Favreau, PR and Marketing Goddess and Uber Hockey Fan. She resides in Detroit, and I knew I could turn to her for the insiders view of the city.

Kat: What is the best means of transport from the airport to Ford Field or main hotel area? (Bus, subway, taxi)

Jamie: I would call the hotels to find out if they are having a shuttle service. This is a big event so they might be offering something. Rental car or taxi is the best way if shuttles are NOT offered. (Kat’s note: In DC we took public transportation and a taxi to and from the airport, completely ignoring the hotel shuttle services that existed. Looking back, I wish we would have either taken our hotel’s shuttle or the SuperShuttle. Thus, definitely take Jamie’s advice here – taxi’s can jack up their prices if they are heading to the airport.)

The People Mover is best for getting around downtown Detroit.

K: Friday afternoon is when most Frozen Four attendees go site-seeing – besides team practices, the day is relatively quiet until the skills competition and Hobey Baker presentation at night. For those who have never been to Detroit, what three places are must-sees?

J: Slows BBQ and Lafeyette Coney Island are the best places and a must when in Detroit. I have a few ideas as far as what you can do. Greenfield Village and The Henry Ford Mare great places if you have a car and can get to Dearborn which is outside of Detroit. If you are staying in the City, there is a Wheelhouse Bike Rentals and DTours. You can also go to the Detroit Institute of Arts which is in Midtown. If you want to find out some more events you can visit the Downtown Detroit Partnership or for a short list visit Detroit Moxie. The NCAA has a list of what is going on this weekend as well.

If you have a passport, you can always bring it with you so you can go to Windsor, Ontario.

K: Are there any good sports bars either downtown or near Ford Field?

J: If you are looking for cheap drinks you can visit the Anchor Bar. $2 Blue and Blue Light Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Free shuttle to and from the games. Door prizes, giveaways, fun. The Anchor is located at Fort/Cass stop of the People Mover.

Alumni associations are hosting viewing parties at the following bars. Miami is having a VIP party at Hockeytown Cafe, but I am sure you can get in even if you aren’t a VIP. Wisconsin is holding a viewing party at Cheli’s. RIT home base is Angelina’s, but you need to register to attend. Boston College will be holding its viewing party at Bookies. Please contact your alumni association to find out if there will be a VIP event as part of the viewing parties. (Kat’s note: Definitely contact your school’s alumni association before attending any of those parties, even if you are a student. There may be special deals for registering and/or a cover charge. Plus, Alumni Associations always appreciate the heads up on what they can expect for attendance.)

K: Your team has just won the Frozen Four – where are you celebrating that evening?

J: I would be at one of those bars listed above or the Old Shillelagh in Greektown, Hard Rock Cafe at Campus Martius or Foran’s Irish Pub off of Woodward.

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A big thanks to Jamie for her help! This definitely makes me want to hop over to Detroit this weekend, even without my team being in this year’s Frozen Four! Stay tuned for Part 2 Tuesday night.

Jamie Favreau is a freelance interactive marketing specialist. With a passion for hockey and technology, her passion is to help sports clients get noticed. Being active in the social media community in Detroit has helped her understand and get excited about the start up community. You can reach her at her blog, @jfavreau on Twitter or on Linked IN.

So given all that has happened to me sports-wise in the past year, I have nearly too much fodder for a “What I’m Thankful” for post. I’ve whittled it down to some of the most amusing or important points – I apologize if I’ve left out anything or anyone.

Thank you, Rian Lindell (#9). (Photo: BuffaloBills.com)

- Like last year, I am thankful for Rian Lindell. He is the only consistent part of the Buffalo Bills. I still do not understand why more baby boys born in the Western New York area are not named Rian. He’s made 90% of his field goals this season, and is a perfect 100% on point after touchdowns. He’s trick play savvy, and may actually be a better quarterback than any other quarterback currently on the Bills roster (just kidding…I think.)

- I am thankful for the Penn Quarter Sports Tavern, located in Washington, DC. This tavern became our home base while in DC for the Frozen Four. The bartenders were accommodating, hysterical, and can handle large crowds of somewhat rowdy college hockey fans extremely well. When I was back in DC for some work travel in August, I went inside and the bartender – who is known to wear either a UNH hockey jersey or a Normar green Red Sox jersey when he tends bar – remembered me and got excited because another New Englander was at the bar. Penn Quarter, hands down, is my favorite sports bar of all time. Thank you for taking good care of us college hockey fans.

- Thank you to Curt Styres and the Rochester Amerks for making AHL hockey relevant again in my hometown of Rochester, NY. I attended an Amerks game at Christmas time last year, and while it was the one of the highest attendances of the year, it was anemic compared to the crowds of my youth.

This season, the Amerks have turned it around. After owner Styres contracted Ted Nolan to work for the franchise over the summer, forked over thousands of his own wealth for player salaries, and seemingly convinced Florida (their parent) that it was important to grow quality players in Rochester, the team has gone 15-2-1. 15 wins, including 11 consective wins. This is Amerks hockey, folks – they’re back, and the rest of the AHL needs to get used to it.

- I’m thankful that I can listen to WHTK, Rochester’s young sports radio station, online. It’s important that I perform my Boston-sports-blogger penance and listen to WEEI and The Sports Hub on a regular basis, but listening to anything more than the bare minimum of both stations leave one screaming at their radio dial and lamenting the downfall of society. To reaffirm my faith in human sports-fan kind, I’ll turn on WHTK online. It doesn’t always work, but when it does and I get the opportunity to listen to the John DiTullio Show, I am a happy camper. People talking about sports – all kinds of sport, all teams, all genders, with a understanding of sports history thrown in – in an intelligent, civilized, indoor-voice manner is wonderful.

- Thank you to the Food Network for keeping me company while I was recently dignosed with H1N1. Your channel was the only one I could watch in my fever induced dizziness. I am especially thankful for Sandra Lee, whose programming may be funnier than anything on Comedy Central. (I’m a lazy cook, don’t get me wrong, but Lee takes it to new levels of laziness.)

- Thank you to the 2008-09 Boston University men’s hockey team. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Their season not only gave me awesome blog fodder, but convinced me that there is no better sport in this country than college hockey.

- Thank you to every blogger, Twitterer, writer, journalist and editor that I have worked with or who has promoted my work in my first full year of actively pursuing freelance sportswriting as a large hobby/second job. Thank you for giving me venues to share my writing. I may not be the world’s best writer, but regardless, I’ve been given so many opportunities to contribute.

- Thank you to the bloggers and journalists out there who I am not huge fans of. Just because I don’t like their work doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. Additionally, many of them have much larger audiences than I have, meaning they have to be doing something right.  As someone still working up the ladder, I can learn from every single one of them, even if I do not agree with them.

- Lastly, thank you to my fiance and my cat. They put up with me writing lacrosse stories until 2am after coming home from my full-time job at 8pm. I have no idea why they let me do what I do, but I am thankful they do so.

As any early reader of this blog might have discerned, I may have been a giant Bills fan as a youngster, but in addition, I was a giant Steve Young fan. After Young won Super Bowl XXIX in 1995, thirteen year-old me asked my father if he thought Young would make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “Maybe. It really depends what else he does,” said my father.

“Well, if he does, can we go to Canton to see the ceremony?” I asked.

My father, knowing that this was several years down the road at that point, if it happened at all, nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

I’m sure he thought I had forgotten his promise, until I called him on a Monday morning in February of 2005 – ten years later – to tell him I had four tickets to the Enshrinement Ceremony, and that we were going to see Steve Young get inducted.

Being in Canton during Enshrinement Weekend was one of my favorite experiences as a sports fan. It is a true celebration of the sport of football, one that even the most marginal of football fans will appreciate. To read about our trip to Canton in 2005 – the first family vacation my immediate family had ever taken – read the following blog post: “Earning the Fabiola.”

I plan on returning to Canton at some point – hopefully for a 2010 induction of Jerry Rice and Steve Tasker? Rice is next year’s shoo-in, and as evidenced by both Wilson’s and Smith’s speeches this evening, Tasker greatly deserves the honor, but he’s been overlooked by voters for a few years now. Maybe his continued broadcasting career will help him in securing spots in the voters’ minds. All I know is that if I was choked up watching Smith’s induction speech on NFL Network tonight, I would just bawl through Tasker’s.

The bracket banner outside the Verizon Center. (Photo by me.)

When I was thirteen, I read Peter King and Rick Telander’s coverage of Super Bowl XXIX for Sports Illustrated and decided right then and there that I wanted to be a sportswriter. I wanted to be there to watch someone reach a pinnacle in their sport and then encapsulate the entire emotional experience for those who couldn’t be there in words.  I can not pin point a single paragraph or passage of the lead article by Telander that inspired me the most, because there are just too many – from the passage about Jerry Rice, to Eddie DeBartalo and Carmen Policy trying to fathom ways their team could actually lose, to the end passage about Steve Young being so emotionally and physically spent that paramedics had to be sent to his hotel room (which also mentioned his girlfriend of the moment, which slowly broke teenaged crushed me’s heart). At that moment, I knew one of my life goals was to watch an championship sporting event – be it a Super Bowl, winning game of a World Series or Stanley Cup, or even a Calder Cup. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to write about it.

Fast forward fourteen years, to April 11, 2009 in Washington, D.C. In the most unlikely of sports to 13 year old me, college hockey, I finally saw a championship in person. And a week and a half removed from said event, I am finding that encapsulating that moment of victory into words is the most difficult thing I have ever had to write.

You see, there are no words that I can find that describe what it was like to be in the arena when Boston University won the National Championship in overtime. And there is no single story that encapsulates the spirit of the event. And yes, I have stories upon stories upon stories that I could tell surrounding the game and during it – of the pre-game gathering with hundreds of BU fans young and old who had traveled from literally around the world, to when I paced the concourse with mothers when they went down 3-1 in the third, to the priceless interactions between players and their families at the post-game gathering – but I don’t know if they would ever do justice to seeing a team win a championship, a pinnacle in their particular sport.

I have struggled for days about what to write about the Frozen Four, the trip, the games and the overall experience, and the only conclusions I have come to, after about fifty drafts, have been 1) it was the single best thing I have ever done in my twenty-seven years and 2) how difficult it had to have been for the Telander to write that piece in 1995, to envelope what the 49ers Super Bowl XXIX win meant to them and those players, Young in particular, because that piece made me feel like I was there, and there are no words that I can find that describe that well what it is like to be there for something of that magnitude.

It was just about the neatest thing ever.

The celebration after BU won the National Championship in OT. (Photo by me.)

Just like many of my friends and colleagues did in January, I am emptying my savings accounts to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime experience in our nation’s capital. Except my once-in-a-lifetime experience doesn’t involve watching the President’s inauguration, but watching a college hockey team. It’s one of those moments where I feel…hmm…less academic and more frivolous than most people.  But what can you do?

If there is anything in particular you would like me to report back on from D.C., please let me know. Anything in particular that you want me to take pictures of? Let me know, and I will try to oblige.

My Partner-In-Crime took this picture in Freeport, ME

For Valentine’s Day, my fiance and I traveled to Orono, Maine to cross yet another Hockey East arena off our list and see Boston University take on the University of Maine Black Bears.  Because of our work obligations, we could only make the Saturday game and missed Friday evening’s BU blow-out.  I followed the game on the radio and online Friday night, and knew we would see some angry Black Bears on Saturday evening.

Saturday evening’s game was uneventful. It ended in a 2-2 tie, which could have been anticipated -you weren’t going to see another blow out evening. Maine was too angry, and Dave Wilson, who they inserted halfway through Friday’s game and started again Saturday, isn’t too shabby of a goalie.  He’s very quick and is able to cover much of the net. Wilson’s shorter than Scott Darling – who, like Ben Bishop before him, should play for the basketball team, not the hockey team – which gives him a bit of an advantage in moving around much quicker and fighting low shots.

Maine’s fans are of their own variety. The people are relatively nice people – until you get them in Alfond Arena. And then, they want to bite your head off if you are for the other team. Which is fine – I’m all about fan loyalty. However, at the Alfond, you are shoulder to shoulder with these Maine fans in the crowded bleachers under a second level filled with students that leaks unknown liquids and has garbage falling from it, and then their rabidness just starts to make you the slightest bit uncomfortable. I could not move my arms without encountering a low growl by the Maine fan next to me. Sorry for wanting to get the circulation back in my right hand, m’am.

So while smushed up to your new best friends from Bangor, you look up and realize, “Ooh, not only is the second level leaking things on me, but there is no net at the ends of the ice.” And while you are thinking about that, whack! – an errant puck comes flying at your head.

Awesome. So now you have fast moving hard rubber objects flying at your head, you can’t move your arm, and you have a sixty-something woman from Bangor with blue face paint low growling at you.

Then the Maine student section starts hanging their stuffed life-size referee by a noose in the second level. And then the Maine lineup comes out of a giant inflatable bear’s head. And then the video board uses Comic Sans as it’s primary font. And then there is the random guy in back of you screaming, “Go Black Bears, go!” in a French accent over and over and over again. When things didn’t go the Black Bears way, he swears in French.

This all being said, the Alfond Arena is an experience that all Hockey East fans should take in at some point in their lives, unless you have a really short fuse, are claustrophobic or have a problem with strangers touching you. Then you might not want to go to the Alfond.

A few notes:

- At the start of overtime, a Black Bears defenseman (I think it may have been Simon Danis-Pepin, who really ought to be on the Black Bears basketball team- he’s the tallest hockey player I’ve ever seen) decided to defend his net by sitting on A-Number-Twenty-One. When I say “sat on,” I physically mean he sat on him. A-Number-Twenty-One had the puck, was nearing the net, and Danis-Pepin, who is at least a foot taller, just sat on him, like he was a chair.

I think it was the most random piece of hockey defense I’ve ever seen.

The State of Maine wants you to stretch.

- The lovely people of the great state of Maine are so concerned with others’ well-being that they have labeled all of their rest stop trash cans with a label saying, “For your good health, barrel picking is prohibited.” They also have signs around all of their rest stops telling motorists who are tired of driving to stretch in their cars. How nice of them. I felt cared for.

-While in Freeport (where I successfully refrained from purchasing anything at the Coach outlet even though everything was 60% off clearance prices and they had an awesome red leather Legacy collection purse that I really, really wanted), my fiance saw the sign at the start of this post. “Sinners will be towed.”

Only in Maine.