[twitter]The Scotiabank Saddledome has been quiet this season. With the Calgary Flames re-building, and the Calgary Hitmen knocked out early the city has been missing a spring spark.

Cue the Calgary Roughnecks who are through to the second round of the NLL Playoffs after a thrilling #PlayoffParty overtime victory over the Colorado Mammoth this weekend.

I’ve only ever been to 3 lacrosse games, but man do I love it.

Despite being an official winter sport of Canada, the passion for the game hasn’t reached the heights of hockey, soccer, or football in this country. Which is too bad, because as a spectator sport it almost can’t be beat.

Lacrosse is a little bit of basketball, a little bit of hockey, and a lot of action. The basketball feel comes in to play as their is music playing the entire game and the play is broken up into distinct sessions of offence and defense.

The hockey feel because it’s in a rink, there’s sticks, goalies, and a net. You’re trying to score and there’s a little bit of that rough stuff that Canadians seem to love in their sport.

Like basketball, there is lots of scoring, but not so much that you’re constantly getting up and down. With each team scoring between 10 and 20 times in a lacrosse game there’s enough action to have lots of cheering every couple of minutes.

The clock just rolls, there are no face offs, the play goes back and forth. At one point, it looked like Calgary scored, the goalie falling back into the net, but the ref waved it off, and the play just kept going. There is non-stop action in lacrosse and the fans love it.

I’ve never been to an arena where people eagerly get up and dance with the music during timeouts. Outside of a baseball game, or a Neil Diamond concert, I’ve never seen a crowd stand up and sing Sweet Caroline. At the Calgary Roughnecks game, they did. And why wouldn’t they, the official hashtag for the season is #PlayoffParty.

There is another #PlayoffParty at the Saddledome this weekend as the Calgary Roughnecks host  the Edmonton Rush in the first of their 2 game playoff series. You can get discounted tickets (starting at $25) by using the code: RNX047 here. They use the tag line “come for the party, stay for the game” when promoting lacrosse and it is bang on the money.

SEE ALL THAT’S BEEN SEEN IN CALGARY