We left Ottawa at around 5 am in order to make sure we would be at the store before its opening at 10am as a "wristband" policy was in effect. This meant that the first 80 fans that made it to the store would receive a blue wristband and a guaranteed autograph. Everyone else would receive a numbered yellow wristband and would only receive and autograph if time permitted.
We made it to the store early enough to grab the blue wristband, looked around the store for a bit and then headed into the city. The Q&A and autograph session wasn't until 2pm. We headed to the Eaton's Centre to look around for a bit and then went to Wayne Gretzky's for lunch before returning to the ACC.
When we returned, there were roughly 75 people in front of us in line for the Q&A, which meant we wouldnt have a great spot to see the players. The players were about fifteen minutes late for the 1 hour event. C'mon Leafs.... late for the Q&A and autograph session.... always late for the playoffs etc. The most notable question asked was "how much of a hard-ass will Wilson be on Monday at practice after bringing home the silver medal". After a brief Q&A the autograph signing started. Again, like most sessions, there were no posed photos with the players.
After the signing we tried to figure out what to do, so we looked for any junior games that were being played around the area. We only had one game to choose from: the Barrie Colts against the Niagara Ice Dogs. And hey, we found out about a signing in Alliston, Ontario, on the way to Barrie with Maple Leaf great Wendel Clark. We had a problem though, nothing for him to sign. Panicking, we tried to find an internet cafe to try and download a photo which we would then take to Wal-Mart to get printed. There were none near us. Next plan, take my sister's I-phone and download a picture and somehow try and extract that at the photolab. She had her hookup for her phone which had a USB hookup which helped. We found a good picture and booted it to Wal-Mart to get some prints. Sure enough the USB and the printer couldn't read the I-phone. So, what did we end up doing? We bought a memory stick, took one of the demo computers in Wal-Mart, hooked the I-phone up to the computer and copied the picture to the memory stick. Somehow I felt that this might not have been appreciated had the staff known what we did. We then hurried to Alliston and made it just in time for the signing.
We then headed to the Barrie Molson Centre for the game and luckily I had already had some prints done for this Friday's upcoming game in Ottawa against Barrie. Having never been to the arena, we didnt really know where to meet some players after the game, so we tried to find the token crazy fan with autographs all over their jersey. Sure enough, he told us where to go after the game. The one problem we had was that Alex Pietrangelo, the Team Canada defenceman and 4th overall pick in the 2008 draft. He had been suspended earlier in the week for throwing water at a referee after a disputed call. I figured he would be somewhere in teh crowd, and sure enough, we spotted him in the media box. Because the arena is so small, the media must go down through the crowd to exit.
With about two minutes to go in the game, we headed to where the players would come to sign autographs. With about a minute left in the game Pietrangelo came our way to head down to the dressing room and I was able to get a picture signed by him.
One by one, the players began coming up the stairs to sign for the fans. We were then able to get Stefan Della Rovere on a picture again.A pretty good day for autopraphs.
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