Busy streets, cold but happy faces, and a lot of pride for the city, the last weekend of January in Tampa was nothing but electric. Tampa’s annual Gasparilla event aligned with the NHL Stadium Series at Raymond James Stadium, featuring the Boston Bruins against the Tampa Bay Lightning. This was the first time a Stadium Series was held in Tampa and the first time the Bruins participated in the event.
The game itself was better than I could have ever imagined, with on-theme Gasparilla pirate decor covering the stadium and an introduction that matched the energy from the day before in downtown Tampa; the freezing temperatures felt like the least of anyone’s problems. The game even featured the exciting, but rare, “goalie fight” between Boston’s Jeremy Swayman and Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy.
The Tampa Bay Lightning scored within seconds of the puck dropping, and the crowd erupted in cheers. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as the Bruins struck back with multiple goals, leading to the score being 3-1 by the end of the first period. It was a major back-and-forth in the second period, with the Bruins scoring twice more but the Lightning coming back and almost tying with their opponent. It wasn’t until the last period of the game that the score was tied. Nobody knew how this game would end; one slip on either side, and it could have been devastating.
There were no goals for the rest of the game, which led to overtime. After a quick five-minute battle, there was still no winner. The last resort to find the champion of this year’s game was a shootout. It took until the fifth shot, a Tampa player named Jake Guentzel, to finally bring a conclusion to the long night. The Tampa Bay Lightning home team had won, and it was the perfect ending to such an electrifying event.
While it was definitely an event that I would remember for years to come, and I was celebrating with all of the strangers around me, I couldn’t help but notice something. In the past, when I had attended games, I would come across misogyny, and sometimes it didn’t even seem like it was purposeful. “Where’s your dad?” and “Do you know where you’re going?” people would ask me (the only girl), and none of the men around me.
Luckily, the fan culture is changing in a good way. I’m originally from New England, so I have gone to over a dozen hockey games in the years, and I could not help but notice how many more women were also at the game. Not just wives or girlfriends with their hockey-loving partner, but women who were there for the love of the game. I helped take pictures for groups of older women, was able to talk to college-age girls about the teams, and even saw a level of respect out of men who were there. I was able express how I felt about the players without having a weird look thrown back at me. It was refreshing to be a part of the fanbase without having to prove myself first.
I hope that other college girls who are just getting into the league because they find it interesting, have friends who like it, or just watched Heated Rivalry, have the same experience. While I do think that the stadium series was very different from a regular-season game, I do not think it was a one-time occurrence. This is a generational shift of sports culture that is being witnessed in a time where it seems like all that is happening is separation between views.
When Guentzel scored that final goal in the shootout, and screams were louder than my ears could handle, I didn’t think about whether I had the right to be there along with anyone else, and I don’t think anyone else did either.