A raid = a hockey game?

Went to a hockey game yesterday, the first in more than 15 years I think. I live five minutes walk from the hockey rink and our local team is pretty successful, but I have not really been that interested really... But this time one of our subcontractors from work who sponsors the hockey team was hosting the game this evening and invited me to come along. So I did. Good food, imba seating, free beer and wine, and this particular match was between the two league leaders (=supposedly intense exciting fight) so how could I not go?

Anyways, the game was pretty intense, and the visiting team scored their first goal after just a few minutes of play. Our local heroes defended well and evened it out after just a few minutes more.

As I sat there watching the game play, screaming in joy when our team scored and muttering away when the visiting nasties did, I experienced a very tangible echo from our raids...


I could almost hear our GM if he had been raid leading the hockey team, "guys, guys, why did the other team score?" and almost see the rest of us standing there trying to look inconspicous "who me? did I do something wrong?".

The tempo of the game also reminded me of raiding, fast intense action followed by a whistle blow and a lot of waiting around, or in our case, fast intense killing followed by a break and the ressing of any dead people lying around.

Even the constant switching of hockey players, chains going in and out (I am not a hockey fan even in Swedish so I apologize if I use the wrong English sports term) reminded me of the main/alt switching that sometimes happen in our raids. Need two warriors for the trash pulls up to the curator? Niemas problemas, I log my druid or our GM his warrior. Could use another shackle for Moroes? Say no more, let me pull my shadow priest out and replace my warlock.

As the game progressed, the visiting team got the upper hand. 2-2 after the first period and the second ended 4-3.

Our local boys' usual goalie had been injured in a previous game and the goalie standing in today was just borrowed from another team. He was not used to playing with our team and they not with him. This became obvious as the visiting team kept pushing and pushing and scoring and scoring...

Sometimes when we raid we are like the dura-bunny, like a well-oiled machine, we all know each other, we are prepared without having to think about it, we cover up for each others mistakes and we just keep going and going. Sometimes when we raid we have new people with us. We must stop and explain things. We must adjust. We must react to things that we are not used to and we do not understand each other that well all the time. During these raids we occasionally (but not always! not by far always!) wipe. With those groups we need more team practice before we can go on and on and on and on....like our home town team and their borrowed goalie.

Despite the not-so-good prospects of winning our locals kept trying to get back and score and keep the fight going. Much like us on our last ZA attempt, when we wiped and tried again and wiped and tried again. Unlike our hockey heroes, however, we ended my first ZA raid by getting that damn troll boss down (tired, sweaty fingers, high heart rate, dry eyes from staring at the bloody screen, damn scared of missing a taunt or getting an unlucky crit, but we did it!), but the hockey raiders had a time limit to contend with as well and after 3x20 minutes played they had to admit defeat to the visiting mobs.

The game ended 7-3 to the visitors and it was a downtrodden team and audience who walked home from the hockey rink that night....