Featured Fan Friday - Capital Punishment

Life as a hockey fan is tough. You're anxious, nervous, excited, and about a hundred other emotions all bagged up into one on any given night. Especially game night. Life as a hockey fan growing up in Potomac, MD in a family full of Capitals fans however, must be really tough!

That's where our featured fan found himself in the early stages of his life, and its our focus point this Friday.

Meet Yehuda. His friends call him Goose, and since we're all friends here at PensU we'll go with that too. Growing up a Capitals fan and an admirer of Olaf Kolzig, Goose played defense and rooted on his "hometown" team up until 9th grade. When he was 15, he moved to Pittsburgh to attend high school. School became the priority and hockey got sent to the penalty box.

Then on one faithful day back in 2006, Yehuda attended a game against the Rangers and got introduced to 'Student Rush'. The entire first period was filled with chants of "Lets Go CAPS". By the time the second period however, that all changed. You see, this was the first time Goose was seeing Crosby on the ice, the first time he's ever heard of him in fact. According to him, he's never seen anything like Crosby on the ice.

"The moves he made during the course of the game, along with the energy the crowd had, changed me forever. I actually left the game with a brand new Penguins baseball cap."

From that day back in '06 he's been bleeding Black & Gold ever since. He started playing hockey again, took some training camps and even formed his own team named the 'Mighty Geese' and based the logo off the old Mighty Ducks one.

His wife likes to tell a different side of his hockey obsession. They met back in 2009 during the cup run and she quickly realized that Yehuda LOVED this sport. So she had a choice. Either become a hockey fan and date him, or don't. Luckily for Yehuda she chose the

first one and is almost a big a fan as he is.

Their favorite Penguin memory together was at a game against Boston where Bill Geurin scored with 0.4 seconds left on the clock to send it into overtime where Pascal Dupuis scored the game winner for a 6-5 victory.

In his spare time Goose currently attends Point Park University pursuing a degree in Information Technology. He also works full time in Murrysville (my hometown!) as a Quality Assurance Agent for a software development company. When he is free from all of that he has his own blog call "The Penalty Box" and cares for his daughter who is already a Penguins fan as you can see!

If you'd like to know more about Goose or his passion for Pens hockey you can follow him on twitter @PenaltyBoxMan.

And as always if you wanna be featured on an upcoming Friday please let me know @DeniedByFleury and we'll be in touch!

Let's Go Pens!!

Posted in: Fan Friday,washington capitals