Game on!

My sons Ciaran (left) and Aidan (right) take a break from pond hockey in Ontario, Canada. 

I’m a big hockey fan.  That’s not really true.  Let’s face it: I’m a hockey fanatic.  I’ve been playing on and off for over fifteen years.  I was the Captain of my adult league hockey team for several years (which is like herding cats).  I was an assistant coach for my boys’ hockey teams for several years (which is like herding kittens).  

In my previous life as a flight attendant, I would often bid my overnights around the NHL schedule.  I’ve seen games around the U.S. and Canada in half the NHL arenas (Montreal is my favorite).   

My wife is from Louisiana and SHE started playing hockey (how cool is that to have a wife from Louisiana who plays hockey), AND she was the Captain of her adult league team.  I think she once scored the winning goal in a shoot-out.  

(You have better odds of winning the state lottery than a forty-something Mom from the Bayou State has of scoring the winning goal in a shoot-out.)

She coached the boys’ mite and squirt teams for a couple of years.  She was the only female USA Hockey Level 3 certified youth hockey coach when we left Santa Rosa.

Our two boys, now 16, started skating when they were three, and were playing competitive hockey when they were six.  They have since traveled to Toronto, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and all over California for Travel hockey.  

This year their Midget 16 team won the California State Championship.  My son Ciaran was the team’s captain (a greater honor and more important position in hockey than any other team sport), and my other son, Aidan, was the team’s leading scorer in the playoffs.  In one game against the top team from Southern California, he had five consecutive goals:  in the FIRST period.  

They both play on their high school’s roller hockey team and Varsity ice hockey team.

We’re a big hockey family.  

During crucial times of the NHL season, I’ll check my favorite hockey blogs for the latest NHL news before I check my e-mail.

So how does a young boy who grew up in San Jose become such a hockey fan?

I don’t remember the exact details of the first time I attended an NHL game, but I’m sure it was with my father in Landover, Maryland, in the Washington Capitals first year of existence (1974-1975).  The team was new, it was easy to get tickets, and my Dad was always looking for a suitably manly outing for his young boys.

The Capitals went 8-67-5 that inaugural season, setting a record for expansion futility that stands to this day.  I remember it as pretty cool, but it didn’t hook me.

Fast forward about ten years and I’m going to college in Los Angeles.  One day a friend asks if I’d like to go to a Kings’ game at the “Fabulous” Forum.  Hockey in L.A.?  Who Knew?  Nobody in L.A., as it turns out.  This was the “pre-Gretzky” era, when the Kings were a motley crew of cast-offs and also-rans, banished to hockey Siberia.  If you could get a good tan and a Fatburger with fries in Siberia.

The Kings’ claim to NHL notoriety at that time was the “Miracle on Manchester” (the Forum is located on Manchester Blvd.), a thrilling come-from-behind playoff win against Wayne Gretzky and the upstart Edmonton Oilers on April 10, 1982.  The Kings were down 5-0 after two periods and came back with five unanswered goals to tie (with five seconds left in regulation), and then win the game in overtime.  The stunned Oilers went on to lose the series in five games.  It was, and remains, the greatest NHL playoff comeback of all time.

But I missed those Kings.  I came on board a year later.  The L.A. Lakers with Magic, Kareem, and “Showtime” were the toast of the town.  The Kings were an easy ticket.  So easy, that they sold “student rush” seats for $5 two hours before each game.  They were ALWAYS available.  

These were nosebleed seats closer to passing planes on final approach to LAX than they were to the ice.  The place was empty.  More people saw “Heaven’s Gate” (I just lost anyone younger than forty) than watched the Kings that season.  

So once the puck dropped, we would start working our way down closer to the ice.  At the first TV time-out, we moved into the first row of the upper section.  By the second TV time-out, we were sitting pretty in good seats in the lower section.  By the end of the first period, we were sitting like kings, pardon the pun, in the “Senate,” or Club, seats, about ten rows up from center ice.

Senate seats in the old Fabulous Forum were the best seats money could buy before every arena in the land was ringed with luxury boxes.  Good seats back then were close to the action, not up in the rafters.  One low six-figure price guaranteed you the same seat at EVERY event in the Forum all year long.  The Boss to the Lakers to the Kings; these seats were yours.  And they would place a plaque with the seat holder’s name right under each Senate seat.

Every game we would look under the Senate seats we were “borrowing” for the night to see who owned them.  The area around the Forum was heavily populated with hospitals, medical centers and doctors’ offices.  So usually you looked under your seat and saw “Centinela Hospital,” “Pfizer” or “Dr. Singh, OB/GYN.”

But one night we slipped into a couple of perfectly situated empty Senate seats and looked under our seats for the plaques.  

Inscribed on a small brass plaque were the names “Michael Keaton” and “Harry Columby."

Yes, that Michael Keaton.  Batman.  But this was years before Batman. He was fresh off of Nightshift and  Mr. Mom. Life was good for Mr. Keaton in the mid-‘80’s.  Columby was his manager.  I assume they used their seats for Bruce or the Lakers games, or at least until Wayne arrived in THE TRADE in 1988.

So if you sit in Senate seats at the Fabulous Forum cheering on the likes of future Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne, a young Bernie Nichols, Dave “Tiger” Williams (the team goon, natch), all led by bench boss Rogie Vachon (just saying Rogie Vachon is fun – try it – “Rogie Vachon” – isn’t that fun?), and after two or three seasons at $5 a game, you’ll come to the realization that “this is a pretty sweet deal.”  And it was.  

A bench-clearing fight in those days was a complete “yard sale” bench-clearing brawl.  Helmets, sticks, and gloves all over the place.  Blood everywhere.  It would take the officials 15-20 minutes to figure it all out and assess all the penalties.  It was an indelible spectacle for $5 a pop.

And then the Kings got a new owner, who later would do hard time, but that’s another matter, and he went out in the summer of 1988 and made THE TRADE.  Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, the undisputed best player in hockey, was heading to Hollywood.  And if there’s anything Hollywood loves; it’s a star.  And Gretzky was a star.  The Kings were hip.  So the stars came.  Everyone in L.A. wants to see and be seen.  And out went the $5 student rush Senate seats.  But I was hooked.

Now flash forward a few years to the summer of 1991, and my once sleepy hometown of San Jose has done got up and got ‘em a bona fide National Hockey League expansion team.: The San Jose Sharks.  But they don’t have a building in which to play.  At least not in San Jose.  That would take a couple of years.  So they’re going to play their first two seasons up the road in the Cow Palace, or Le Palais du Boeuf, as it came be known in hockey circles.

The Cow Palace was a dump.  A genuine barn.  Never has the word “palace” been more of a misnomer.  The Cow Palace, built in 1941, was old and dilapidated by 1942.  By 1991 it was held together by baling wire and cow dung; the home of ice shows, tractor pulls and wrestling. 

(Oddly enough, it was the site of both the 1956 AND 1964 Republican National Conventions – go figure!)  

The Sharks were forced to go on a LONG road trip in October their first two seasons because the building was booked for a rodeo.  A rodeo!

But it was hockey.  NHL hockey.  Bourque, “Lucky” Luc, the “Russian Rocket,” Roy, Gretzky, Lemieux.

(In the Pittsburgh Penguins’ first trip to the Bay Area, I watched in amazement as Center Mario Lemieux lit the Sharks up for 6 points en route to a 8-0 thrashing of our boys in teal.  I’d like to report that 8-0 beating was the Sharks’ worst home loss of the season.  But that would be a lie.).  

My mother’s business bought season tickets for the newest pro team in town.  And my wife and I lived in San Francisco.  A mere slap shot from the Cow Palace.  Most people down in San Jose didn’t exactly jump at the chance to drive for an hour in rush hour traffic and watch the Sharks get pummeled in the Cow Palace on a Tuesday or Thursday night in January and February.  So my wife and I saw a LOT of hockey those two years.  A lot of bad hockey.  In their second season in the Cow Palace, the Sharks went on to lose an incredible 71 games in one season (still an NHL record).  We are just now, twenty years later, getting the smell of that place off our shoes and clothes.

But it brought me full circle back to the days of my youth watching the equally inept expansion Washington Capitals.

We were hooked, and after two seasons the team finally settled in to new digs in downtown San Jose.  They started playing in a brand new arena that locals quickly dubbed the “Shark Tank.”  Many corporate names have officially graced the building since then, but most locals still refer to it as the “Tank.”

And a miraculous thing happened that first season in San Jose.  They won.  Not all the time.  But they won enough to barely make the playoffs for the first time.  And then they went on to upset the dreaded Detroit Red Wings in the playoffs – still the greatest playoff series in Sharks’ history.  It was a special season.  

(SIDE NOTE; My wife and I flew down to Anaheim for the day - we were flying for free back in those days - early in that season to see the Sharks beat the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in their shiny, new “Pond.”  After the game we raced up the 405 to LAX for the midnight flight back to SFO.  We scored a couple of seats in the first row of First Class and settled in.  A moment later, the players on the Sharks, tired and battered and bruised, and looking younger up close than you could possibly imagine, wearily shuffled down the aisle and settled into their coach seats.  We could tell we weren’t the only fans who had made the trip down for the game that night, and a buzz built in the plane as fans started to recognize the players.  Rookie Head Coach Kevin Constantine came in after the players and took his seat in First Class, directly behind my wife.  When the plane arrived in SFO and everyone got up to leave, there was a moment when we were waiting for the door to open, and my wife caught the eye of the coach and said, “thanks for the win!”  He looked down, sheepish and unsure quite how to react, and managed a muffled, “you’re welcome.”  A quick glance at his face showed he must have been thinking “this is weird.”)

Everyone who watched a game that season in San Jose was hooked.  The building gets louder and louder every year.  Now virtually every game is sold-out.  And kids all over the Bay Area started to play hockey.  And adults all over the Bay Area started to play hockey.  Last season six kids from California were drafted into the NHL.  And today more adults play hockey in the Sharks practice rink in San Jose than any other single ice rink west of the Mississippi.

And that’s how I became a hockey finatic.

Next time I’ll write a few stories about my brushes, real and imagined, with Wayne Gretzky, hockey’s exalted “Great One,” whose all-time scoring records will probably never be broken.  They end, most memorably, on a cool, blue sky winter morning where I finally get to meet and talk with Wayne for a brief moment in, of all places, Scottsdale, Arizona.