Three Star(dom)s at the NHL Fan Fair

Ottawa hosted the NHL All-Star Weekend this year so Max, Henry and I decided to take in one of the public events, the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fair. The Fan Fair was a massive, interactive indoor hockey festival held at the newly renovated Ottawa Convention Centre downtown. There were two full floors of booths and activities.

One of the real highlights of the day were the various mascots walking around. We had stopped for a snack and were seated beside the escalators. Mascots were coming up the escalators every few minutes! They were also having a blast hot-dogging down the escalators which the kids loved. After a bit of hesitation, Max got right into it and was high-fiving everyone. I took a few photos:

Max with Wildwing (Anaheim Mighty Ducks)

With Sparky the Dragon (New York Islanders)

With N. J. Devil (New Jersey Devils)

With S.J. Sharkie (San Jose Sharks)

We also saw Thunderbug (Tampa Bay Lightning), Tommyhawk (Chicago Blackhawks), Carlton (Toronto Maple Leafs), and Nordy (Minnesota Wild). The mascots were AMAZING - interacting with kids and adults in goofy ways, posing for creative photos, engaging the shy kids, etc. Sadly, there were no Spartacat sightings.

Another fun feature of the event were various booths where you could get cool photos taken and sent to you via email. Here, we do our best Ron McLean and Don Cherry impressions on a faux Hockey Night in Canada set:

Channel-hopping over to TSN:


With some dress-up clothes in the Scotiabank Photo Booth:

We enjoyed some time in the kids' area with Max playing Timbits hockey and all of us building some hockey-themed Mr. Potato Heads. We didn't line up to get our picture with the Stanley Cup but Max loved seeing it.

Classic Max - Smelling the roses while the hockey action is very clearly going on somewhere else.

Henry reaching out for some Mr. Potato Head love.

Max with the Stanley Cup in the background.

Max at the Sirius DJ booth. Shortly after this, he danced his butt off to the Justin Bieber classic "Baby".
The Fan Fair was absolutely HUGE; I think we saw less than half of it but we were totally spent when we left. I wasn't entirely sure how much Max got out of it at first because it was a really overwhelming experience but he spent a big chunk of time that night telling John about all of the things he did and saw so I know that he enjoyed it. It was definitely a once in a lifetime event for me so it was really special to share it with Max.