Showing Some Appreciation

I’ve always believed that every good sports experience has its own distinct feel.  As a Giants fan, the 2012 NFC Championship victory over the 49ers at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park had a feeling of swagger and confidence, as if a trip to the Super Bowl was all but guaranteed.  Team USA’s last-second victory over Algeria at the 2010 World Cup felt like desperation-tuned-jubilation as a win-or-go-home situation was flipped on its head in the most dramatic of ways.  On Saturday night, I returned to Nassau Coliseum for Game Six of a first round playoff series between my Islanders and the Pittsburgh Penguins, and experienced a combination of fear and appreciation unlike anything that I had previously felt as a sports fan.

I will definitely miss the Nassau Coliseum when the Islanders move to Brooklyn.

While most of my fellow Islander fans might be too proud to admit it, Game Six had an ominous feel from the start.  Yes, there was a great energy at the Coliseum from the moment we entered the building, but it seemed like much of the air had been let out of the proverbial playoff balloon once the Isles reached the brink of elimination.  Coming off of a disappointing Game Five shutout loss in Pittsburgh and more shaky play from their goaltender, the Isles and their fans were a bit jittery throughout Game Six.  Even when the home team took the lead – three separate times, in fact – neither the players nor the crowd ever felt truly confident.  Once the game went into overtime, everyone in the arena was thinking the same thing: We were about to witness the end of the 2013 Islanders season.

This isn’t to say, however, that the sense of fear made Game Six a bad experience - quite the opposite, in fact.  While the nervousness was noticeable, it was overpowered by a sense of appreciation that I found refreshing.  After six years without a playoff appearance and a certain future that will see the Islanders move to Brooklyn in two years, the Long Island faithful had so much pride for this young, rising, energetic team that it made me proud to be a New York Islanders fan.  Even after the Penguins scored the game winner in overtime, the fans didn’t turn away (something people typically associate with fans of other New York teams, particularly the Mets and the Jets).  Virtually everyone stayed until well after the final goal, sending off star play John Tavares with “MVP” chants and thanking the team for everything they did for Long Island this year.

It was uplifting to see the positive response even in the face of playoff elimination, because Islander fans truly do have much to be thankful for right now – and the bulk of the blue-and-orange faithful recognized that on Saturday night.  After years of futility, things are looking up for this young team led by an MVP candidate who is only getting better.  After years of hearing that their team would move to Kansas City or Canada, Isles fans will have to go no farther than Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to see the team play when they leave the Island.  And, despite the fear, the Islanders gave their fans something that they haven’t had much of over the last several seasons – hope.  And while hope can lead to pain – as it did when the season ended abruptly on Saturday night – it’s also a big part of what makes rooting for a perennial underdog like the Islanders so special.

Head to Head Competition

Despite NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's background as general counsel at the NBA, the two leagues are completely separate entities.  While the two organizations are loosely tied together by the fact that a number of American (and one Canadian) arenas house both NBA and NHL teams (and in some cases, like New York's Madison Square Garden, Toronto's Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment or Washington's Monumental Sports, the teams are owned by the same company), they are operated independently and, in many cases, actively compete with each other for viewers, game attendees and sponsors.  Nowhere is this more evident than during the playoffs, where many U.S. markets have basketball and hockey teams simultaneously competing for market- and mind-share.

New York is one of those markets, and I've been a fan caught in the middle.  Not only are the Knicks and Islanders both in the playoffs at the same time (hardly a common occurrence), but they're currently on the same game schedule.  On Wednesday, I had to choose between Knicks @ Celtics Game Five and Isles @ Penguins Game One (not to mention a nationally televised Braves game against NL East rival Washington).  Tonight, I'll be put in the same position as the Knicks try to close out their first round series in Boston while the Islanders try to even their series in Pittsburgh at the exact same time.  While I've been trying to flip back and forth between the two, I've been undoubtedly watching more basketball - mainly because I like basketball better as a sport, find the NBA playoffs more compelling than the NHL's, and have more positive memories associated with the Knicks postseason runs than I do the Islanders.  Plus, how can the NHL compete with the NBA's tradition of great nationally televised basketball?

While I'm all for open competition between the two leagues, I don't think it's too much to ask to have the NBA and NFL talk to each other about playoff scheduling, particularly in the first rounds when both leagues have eight series going on simultaneously.  I know there are a lot of factors to consider - television schedules, arena availability, etc. - but I find it difficult to believe that the Knicks / Isles schedule overlap couldn't have been avoided (especially considering that neither the Penguins nor the Islanders have an NBA team in their building to worry about).  Maybe there aren't a ton of fans of both the Knicks and the Isles - most Knicks fans are Rangers fans whereas Isles fans my be slowly gravitating towards the Nets, especially since the two will share Barclays Center in a few years - but there are enough to justify some rescheduling.

With the lack of playoff successes (and appearances) the Knicks and Isles have had over the last decade, perhaps I shouldn't be complaining - I feel lucky to have them both in the postseason this year, and flipping channels isn't the worst thing in the world.  Hell, it's even given me a legitimate excuse to use my picture-in-picture functionality.  But this week of playoff fun would undoubtedly be more enjoyable if I had one game to watch each night rather than two games scheduled simultaneously every other evening.  My fiance might disagree - we do have a lot of episodes of The Voice to catch up on, after all - but hopefully going forward the NBA and NHL scheduling departments will coordinate a bit more openly.

Through the Plexiglass

Even though I previously covered my experience at Raleigh, NC's PNC Arena (formerly known as the RBC Center), my second trip to the home of the Carolina Hurricanes was certainly unique enough to warrant its own post.  The first time around, I credited RBC for being a well-run, efficient hockey facility inhabited by a great fan base, especially considering that a) the Raleigh-Durham area doesn't have any other professional sports franchises and b) North Carolina isn't what comes to mind when you think about a hockey-loving state.  For my second trip, however, I got to do something that I've never done at an NHL game before - sit in the first row, right behind the glass.  More specifically, as the picture below will attest, I was sitting directly behind one of the nets with a goalie's-eye view.

If you thought the prospect of being an NHL goalie was terrifying before, you need to experience a hockey game from these seats.  The first thing you notice is the pure speed of everything - the puck, the players and even the referees are moving so quickly that losing focus for even a split-second can be catastrophic for a netminder.  The fact that there aren't 10+ goals scored by each team, each game seems incredible to me.  Even more amazing are plays like the save highlighted in the video below, which I had an absolutely perfect view of (if you look closely, you can see me right behind the net in a grey hooded sweatshirt, sitting next to my Dad in a dark green polo).   

I've had the opportunity to sit in the front row for MLB games and courtside for NBA games, but nothing can compare to the wow-factor associated with these rink-side seats directly behind the goal.  Even from other great seats, I've always felt like I was watching a game.  From these seats, however, I could feel an adrenaline rush normally reserved for someone playing in a game.  I found myself adopting a goaltender's mentality, scanning the ice for developing scoring chances and even positioning my own torso to mimic Hurricanes goalie Justin Peters.  When Peters shifted towards his right (like in the photo below, which gives you a great feel for my view), I couldn't help but do the same.

Now I know what an NHL goalie sees during a professional hockey game.

The other incredible thing about sitting right up against the glass was how loud everything was.  The sound of the puck smacking off of the glass on an errant shot consistently made me flinch - although I knew I was completely protected, I couldn't help it.  Every time the players crashed into the boards behind the goal (which happens more often than you might realize while watching the game from a different vantage point), you can hear and feel a thunderous boom that underscores the strength and speed of NHL athletes.  After sitting in these incredible seats at PNC Arena, I honestly think I have a new-found appreciation for the sport of hockey.  With the league (and the Islanders) heading into the playoffs later this month, my timing couldn't have been more perfect.  

Missed Opportunity

The NHL is a league of missed opportunities.  Most recently, the league decided to follow up a Los Angeles Stanley Cup victory - and the chance to boost the popularity of the sport in the country's second-largest market - with a near-season-ending lockout, once again damaging the NHL brand and slowing the momentum created by the Kings.  This is far from the first time the NHL has dropped the ball (or puck) on an opportunity to boost league popularity.  Earlier today, the Calgary Flames traded forward Jarome Iginla to the Pittsburgh Penguins, which got me thinking about one of the league's most underrated and un-talked-about screw-ups.

For those of you that don't watch hockey (or have forgotten), Iginla was one of the NHL's best and most dynamic players during the 2000s.  He led the NHL in points with 96 in 2001-02 (and was league MVP), and topped the 90 point mark again in 2006-07 and 2007-08.  He scored 50 goals in a season twice, led the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals (they lost to Tampa Bay in one of the least watched NHL finales in league history) and Team Canada to the 2002 Olympic gold and was incredible to watch.  Perhaps even more important from a marketing potential standpoint, however, is that Iginla is half black - his father was born in Nigeria.  In a league starving for racial diversity, the NHL had a bi-racial MVP and never used that to help market the game to a new (and growing) set of potential hockey fans.

Arguably the NHL's best minority player, Iginla languished in Calgary for 16 seasons.

People criticize the NBA for being overly star-driven and for marketing individuals as much as teams, and some of that criticism is fair.  At the same time, I've felt for a decade now that the NHL was doing itself a major disservice by refusing to use Iginla as a tool to grow the sport of hockey among minorities.  While the NBA has used players like Dirk Nowitzki to tap into Europe and Yao Ming to expand in China, not once have I heard about the NHL leveraging Iginla's notoriety and build its brand with non-white fans.  Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Iginla played for Calgary up until today; perhaps if he was on the Rangers, Kings or Capitals he would have been a bigger star and a role model for potential minority hockey players.  But I find it hard to believe that the NHL couldn't have done more to build Iginla's brand.

The NHL has a loyal fan base made of almost entirely of white males from Canada, the Northeastern U.S. or the Great Lakes region.  While other professional sports leagues have successfully expanded internationally (like the NBA), regionally (like the MLS) and culturally (like the NFL), hockey has remained stagnant and has failed to capitalize on opportunities to tap into new segments of sports fans.  As the USA continues to become more diverse and the percentage of Caucasian Americans continues to decrease, the NHL will likely struggle to grow.  Jarome Iginla could have been a key tool in helping professional hockey expand its reach.  Instead, the former MVP is now a 16-year veteran whose trade to Pittsburgh barely made the ESPN Headlines this afternoon.  Add Iginla's story to the long list of the NHL's missed opportunities.

One Way Rivalry

As you'll see from the relatively few hockey-related posts on Caught Looking, I don't make a habit of watching a ton of NHL games on TV.  Despite the fact that I grew up following the Islanders closely, the league's deterioration over the past decade (a lost season, yet another lockout this year and the consistently disappointing play of the Isles) has driven me away from the ice and much closer to basketball.  Whereas I've always been a diehard MLB and NFL fan, as I've aged the NBA has taken over the place in my heart where hockey used to live.  Now, my role as a relatively-casual Islanders fan (and yes, it hurts to classify myself as such, but it's true) is to do little more than check the box scores, follow the race for the 8th seed in the East and make a point of watching every game against the Rangers.

As a kid growing up on Long Island, Islanders versus Rangers was actually a big deal.  In the days before Interleague Play and baseball's Subway Series in 2000, the Mets / Yankees rivalry was minimal (and you'd constantly run into kids who claimed to be fans of both teams), whereas the Giants and Jets rivalry was essentially nonexistent (they play only once every four years and throughout my lifetime Big Blue has always been New York's NFL alpha dog).  Isles / Rangers was the only true New York sports rivalry - two teams, separated by a short train or car ride, who regularly competed in the regular season and occasionally met in the playoffs.  I can distinctly remember regularly joining a pack of other Islander fans in chanting "1940!" at a group of blue-and-red-clad Rangers supporters, mocking their 50+ year Stanley Cup drought (this was before the Blue Shirts won the title in 1994).

Almost twenty years ago the Rangers won their first Stanley Cup title in more than half a century.  Not only did this end the Rangers' misery and all of the "1940!" chants in the middle school hallways, but it was also the beginning of the end of the Islanders / Rangers rivalry.  Since 1994, the Isles have done nothing but underachieve, cut payroll and continue to let the Nassau Coliseum fall apart, whereas the Rangers have remained competitive, spend freely and play in a newly renovated Madison Square Garden.  What was once a fun inferiority complex on the part of Isles fans has since become simply depressing, so much so that the Rangers fans have begun to ignore the rivalry whatsoever.  In watching the Isles at Rangers game last night, I noticed that the atmosphere at the Garden was no different than it would be for any other game.  While the Rangers consistently sell out and don't see a game versus the other New York team as anything special, the regular season games against the Rangers are all us Islander fans really have to care about.

With the Islanders set to move to Brooklyn in another three seasons, there's still hope for a rekindling of the New York hockey rivalry.  Until the Isles move to Barclays (and become competitive), though, hockey's battle for New York will remain nothing more than another Eastern Conference game where the Rangers seek to take two points from an overmatched opponent (as they did last night).  I can deal with being hated by Rangers fans - in fact, I spent much of my childhood in heated debates with them, and enjoyed nearly every minute of it.  Unfortunately, now we're in a position where the Rangers just ignore us, and that is truly sad for the Isles faithful.   

Island(er) Hopping

As one of only ~500 New York Islanders fans seemingly left on the planet, many of you have asked me to comment on the recent announcement that the Isles will be moving to Brooklyn in 2015.  Before I get into my reaction to the move, let me first give you a little glimpse of what it's been like to be an Isles fan over the past two decades.  When news of the relocation leaked yesterday morning and ESPN picked up on the story, I was excited just to see to Islanders mentioned among the Headlines on the upper right corner of the ESPN.com homepage - I can't remember the last time anything Isles-related graced anything other than the deepest NHL-only bowels of The Worldwide Leader in Sports' website.  The Isles have set the bar pretty low. 

Sadly, the big headline wasn't focused on something the team did on the ice or even in a roster move - instead, the news revolved around the Islanders' pending departure from Long Island and the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.  To the average sports fan, a move from Uniondale to Brooklyn, separated by a distance of only 28 miles by car, probably doesn't seem like much of a shift; even the Los Angeles Lakers' move from the Great Western Forum to the Staples Center was a 10 mile trip.  Culturally, though, this represents a big shift among New Yorkers.  The Islanders have always been a blue collar, suburban team.  Whereas Madison Square Garden's Rangers catered to the wealthy city-dwellers, Nassau Coliseum was the home of Long Island's Average Joes - a place for fans to share their hockey-related inferiority complexes.  While Brooklyn isn't far away geographically, the sleek new Barclay's Center doesn't exactly fit the team's working class image.

The Islanders will keep their name and logo, but if they change their minds . . .

From that perspective, the move is unfortunate.  As I've written about before, the Islanders have a uniquely Long Island vibe that no other New York area team can replicate.  In a perfect world, Nassau County would have gotten a deal done to build a new arena in Uniondale, providing the team with a state-of-the-art venue while preserving the franchise's Long Island presence.  I've heard a lot of grumbling from disgruntled Islanders fans about how disappointing the move to Brooklyn is, and in a way that's true.  After all, being a fan of the team was always more about being an "Islander" than it was was about being from "New York," and the move to Barclays is definitely going to change that.  While the rivalry with the Rangers will undoubtedly be recharged in a mostly positive way, it will never be the same.  Rather than white collar vs. blue collar, we'll have bankers vs. hipsters - potentially cool, but decidedly different.  Throw in the fact that the new arena isn't really made for hockey (see below), and the solution is far from ideal.  So, no, in my mind the move to Brooklyn wasn't the perfect outcome for the Isles.

A U-shaped NHL arena, coming to Brooklyn in 2015.

However, I'm realistic enough to know that a perfect outcome was not a realistic one.  After years of trying unsuccessfully, it had become painfully obvious that the Islanders were never going to get a new arena on Long Island.  Because the team couldn't possibly make money playing at the Coliseum - I've gone on the record calling it "one of the worst venues in professional sports" - they had to go somewhere else, and for a while it looked like that new place would be either Kansas City or some random town in Canada.  So, compared to the realistic alternatives, I'm happy with the Brooklyn solution.  It's going to be a lot easier for me to get to games, the smaller capacity should help the team move more tickets, and the draw of Brooklyn and the Barclays Center should help attract top-tier players.  Yes, it would have been great to have kept the Isles on the Island for another 40 years.  But no, that was never going to happen, and after judging the alternatives a move to Brooklyn seems like the next best thing.  

Saluting the Sharks

It's Tuesday evening at 7:30 PM - do you know where your friends are?  If you live in San Jose, California, they're probably at HP Pavilion watching the Sharks - last night, I went to my second-ever San Jose Sharks game and saw the home team pound the visiting Columbus Blue Jackets 6-0.  If you told a hockey fan from the 1980's that, in 30 years, an NHL team from San Jose would be hosting a regular season game against a club from Columbus, Ohio in front of a near-capacity crowd, they probably would think you were insane.  But despite the NHL's penchant for overexpansion and terrible markets, San Jose is incredibly a very bright spot for professional hockey in the United States.

I don't know what I "expect" a hockey fan to look like, but it probably involves some combination of pale skin, mullets and Labatt beer.  At a Sharks game, though, the seats are packed with people who represent the population of Northern California - Latinos, Asians, Caucasians and even some African Americans.  The fan base is impressively diverse, suggesting that the Sharks have somehow managed to succeed where virtually every other NHL club has failed - marketing to minorities.  Perhaps more importantly, many of the people at the Sharks game were young (under 25), suggesting that the Sharks will have a steady stream of loyal fans for years to come.

I think the reason people consistently come out for Sharks games is because the team is truly running the best show in town.  Admittedly, part of the reason why this is true is because San Jose is a relatively sleepy city with comparatively limited competition for fans - eventually, this might change as the 49ers, Raiders and/or Athletics move down from San Francisco and Oakland to Silicon Valley.  But it's not just the Sharks' lack of competition that generates their popularity with local fans; the word I'd use to describe a Sharks game is professional.  The pre-game introductions, complete with a giant shark's head / mouth for the players to skate through, is fun and uniquely San Jose.  The arena looks brand new despite opening almost 20 years ago, and the concourses are filled with a good mix of concessions.  The team takes care of its fans with plenty of promotions, in-game entertainment and fan recognition - for example, I led a group of a dozen students from the Stanford Graduate School of Business to the game, and we got our group name on the Jumbotron (see below).

The San Jose Sharks make their fans feel extremely welcome.

Professional hockey teams in cities like San Jose and Raleigh face an uphill battle.  They're stuck in markets where their sport isn't very popular, and have to be a little more creative when it comes to drawing fans.  From what I've seen at both Sharks and Hurricanes games, though, teams in non-traditional hockey markets have been able to rise to the occassion and make the most out of their difficult situations.  Perhaps hockey's core markets (cough - Long Island - cough) should take a few pages out of San Jose's playbook and try to offer a better value proposition to their fans.  If more teams start to offer the game experience that the San Jose Sharks do, perhaps hockey can one day regain its position as one of the country's major sports.

A Blast from the Past

While it might be hard to believe based on the relative lack of coverage it receives on Caught Looking, while growing up I went to more hockey games than baseball or basketball games. Last season, I only went to two hockey games - one at HP Pavilion in San Jose and one at the RBC Center in Raleigh - but as kids my friends and I went to Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York to see the Islanders play multiple times each hockey season.  On Friday, I made my return to the Coliseum after a multiple-season absence to watch the Islanders play host to the New Jersey Devils.
   

Even back in the late 1990s the Nassau Coliseum was considered one of the worst venues in professional sports, and it doesn't seem like any real capital improvements have been made on the arena in the last decade.  As always, from the outside the Coliseum looked like a drab ball of concrete, although now most of the signage for the now-defunct New York Dragons of the Arena Football League has been replaced with cheesy ads for Optimum cable internet and television.  The concourses were still simultaneously barren and crowded (there was a surprisingly respectable crowd at the game, probably because a lot of people were in town for Thanksgiving).  The sponsors whose ads lined the boards of the hockey rink were far from the marquee national advertisers that you'd find at a New York Rangers or San Jose Sharks game - companies like New York Community Bank and CompressionStockings.com (whatever that is) even had their logos embedded into the ice itself (see below).

 NYCB and CompressionStockings.com are low budget on-ice sponsors.

I was, however, pretty impressed with the fans who came out for the game.  Even though the team gave the crowd absolutely nothing to cheer about (and a whole lot to boo about), the fans were relatively energetic and loud.  There was the usual suite of anti-Rangers chants, which happen during every Islanders game regardless of opponent, which always puts a smile on my face.  It was great to see the Islanders only "super fan" - an overweight Long Islander who sits in the first row behind one of the nets and wears a gold wig under an Isles hat - retaining his usual seat and working tirelessly to pump up the crowd.  The game proved that, despite what you might read in the local papers, there will be plenty of angry people if the team does ever move to Kansas City or Canada as is constantly rumored. 

Despite the extreme crappiness of the Nassau Coliseum (it rivals the Oakland Coliseum and Candlestick Park as the worst venues that I've visited in recent memory) and the even worse performance of the team itself (the Isles lost 1-0 to a weak New Jersey team and blew a golden opportunity to tie the game with a penalty shot in the third period), I still had a great time.  Isles games take me back to a time in my youth when the Nassau Coliseum was the only venue that my friends and I were allowed to visit without our parents, since Uniondale was a lot closer and less intimidating for a group of young teenagers than the Bronx or midtown Manhattan.  For that reason, the Coliseum and the Islanders will always hold a special place in my heart, no matter how incredibly dilapidated the Islanders or their home arena get. 

If a Puck Drops in the Forest . . .

As you may have heard, the Boston Bruins won the NHL's Stanley Cup earlier this week.  Then again, you might have only heard about some rioting in Vancouver and not have had any idea of what is was all about - after all, the NHL isn't exactly easy for people to follow these days.  Despite what NHL pundits are calling an extremely extertaining playoff season and a championship series that matched two strong hockey markets against one another, it still seems like sports fans have all but stopped tracking the NHL.

It's upsetting, because ice hockey is a wonderful sport.  The problem is that the NHL has consistently been damaging the game over the past decade.  First there was the NHL lockout, which drove many fans away.  Once the game returned, the league had an unfortunate string of Western and Southern Stanley Cup champions (Anaheim, Tampa Bay, Carolina) which did little to bring in the core hockey fans in the northeast and Great Lakes regions.  This season, though, it's harder to pinpoint the NHL's excuse.

As a result of the league's horrendous national TV deal ("split" between NBC and Versus, with the majority of games on the latter channel), sports fans have to work hard to find playoff hockey.  With so much competing sports content airing on ESPN and the broadcast networks, the question comes down to how much do fans really love hockey, especially when their team isn't playing?  Although I love the game and love the Islanders, I found it surprisingly hard to get myself to watch Bruins-Canucks.  Every time I flipped the game on, I would drift back to baseball on ESPN, the NBA Finals on ABC, and, one time, "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC (Is he joking . . .?).

Highlights were even hard to come by while watching SportsCenter.  At various points earlier in the series, the Stanley Cup Finals was buried below the NBA Finals, regular season MLB action, the French Open, NFL and NBA lockout updates and more.  After the series ended with a Boston victory, the riots in Vancouver got more air time than the game highlights.  If the NHL wants to compete for viewers with the NBA, let alone MLB and the NFL, it needs to focus their strategy on making hockey content more available to the typical lazy sports fan.  Whether it's a more agressive online media strategy or a renegotiated TV deal with the newly-united NBC and Comcast, the NHL must stop forcing its fans to work as hard to watch its games as the players do on the ice.

Down Goes DiPietro

For Islander fans like myself, there hasn't been a whole lot to cheer about over the past two decades.  Because of the team's constant losing, not only is being an Isles fan depressing, it's also difficult.  Unless you live in New York you almost never catch an Islanders highlight, and even while living in Manhattan I only saw the team's clips  after SNY or NY1 finished with the Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Devils, St.John's, and Christ the King High School.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw, while watching Sportscenter a few days ago, that Islanders vs. Penguins highlights were set to air towards the top of the hour.  I suspected it was because Sidney Crosby had become the first player to score ten goals in an NHL game or something, but instead it was because the New York "goalie" (in quotes, because I think you have to occasionally stop the puck from going into the net to be considered a goalie . . .) got his ass handed to him in a hockey fight by Pittsburgh goaltender Brent Johnson.

Now, this post isn't going to be about how it's terrible to be an Isles fan and how they can't do anything, even fight, competently; every fan has a team that's down in the dumps from time to time (or, in the case of the Isles, decade to decade), and you don't need me to tell you that losing sucks.  I do want to talk a bit about the role of fighting in hockey, though.  I've gone to many Islander games at Nassau Coliseum over the years, and nothing gets the fans going like a good fight.  Advocates of the fighting say that it's a crucial part of the game which can swing momentum, intimidate opponents and rile up the crowd.  I say it's one of the stupidest things in professional sports, and the fact that it's still allowed boggles my mind.

Watch the clip above and honestly tell me that that's good for the game of hockey.  Given all of the good rule changes the NHL has made following the 2004-05 lockout (eliminating the two-line pass, making overtime 4-on-4, adding the shootouts to avoid ties in the regular season, etc.), how is fighting still allowed?  What does it do other than make games longer, set a bad influence for younger fans that the league is supposedly trying to attract, and allow old, fat, mullet-sporting fans to talk reverently about the good ole' days to hockey?  Hockey is such an awesome sports - it's fast, it's aggressive, and it's fun.  Everything but the fights, that is, which are slow, lame and primitive.

After learning that the only reason Sportcenter nearly led with an Islanders highlight was because of a fight between the goalies, I suddenly wished that the video wasn't aired at all.  While I can't wait for the day that the Islanders (and the rest of the NHL) are relevant again, I hope it's for something other than fighting.  While the NFL, NBA and MLB work hard to curb excessive violence in their respective sports, the NHL stands idly by and lets things like this happen.  Let's leave the fighting for people who want to watch boxing or (for reasons incomprehensible to me) Mixed Martial Arts, and appreciate fight-free hockey for the wonderful sport it is.

Smooth Skating

This fall alone, I've been stuck in the Oracle Arena parking lot for 45 minutes following a Warriors game against the Knicks and avoided going to the bathroom at Stanford Stadium for hours because of long lines during Stanford versus Arizona.  When I pay big money (or even when I pay nothing at all) to go to a sporting event, I expect the stadiums and arenas to add to, rather than take away from, the live game experience.  The RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina is the perfect type of facility - a modern, clean and efficient arena that is refreshingly well-run.

After an easy ride to the RBC Center parking lot (thanks to parking lot attendants who were actually directing traffic), I entered the arena and immediately noticed a huge selection of food options.  Not only did RBC have numerous fixed concession stands, but the concourse was filled with wheel-able carts selling Carolina BBQ, four different types of sausages, ice cream, healthy options and more.  As I walked around the stadium to our seats, I saw that each of the stands and carts could be found in multiple places, meaning that fans don't have to walk more than a few sections over to find their favorite snacks.  Prices as a whole were between reasonable and typical, and because it was "Family Night" all hot dogs, regularly priced at an already-fair $3, were only $1.

I was impressed with the inside of the RBC Center, too.  Built in 1997 when the Hurricanes moved to Raleigh, the arena had new-looking red seats, tons of nice video boards and a great-looking Jumbotron (similar to the one I saw at HP Pavilion last week).  It's an above-average looking NHL arena - seemingly well-suited to host the NHL All Star game this coming January - and runs as smootly as any I've been to in recent memory.  The people working there are knowledgable, attentive and nice, which coming from New York and having become used to Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum, I wasn't used to.

 Despite the open seats, energy was high for Hurricanes vs. Capitals at the RBC Center.

The game itself - a battle between the Hurricanes and the Washington Capitals - was fine.  The crowd was somewhat sparce, but perhaps that was to be expected for the night before Thanksgiving.  Despite being only about two-thirds full, the arena was loud during key moments and following the Canes' two goals.  I'm not sure how often RBC is full for either Canes or NC State Wolfpack basketball games (it's a pretty amazing venue for a college basketball team, and I had no idea that NC State played there until I saw their banners hanging from the rafters), but when it is I'm sure it's a great place to watch a game.  If you're in the Raleigh-Durham area, take a trip to the RBC Center for an NHL hockey or ACC basketball game if you want to see how a sports facility should be run.

Swimming with Sharks

Have you ever been in a room of people, looked around and realized every single person there was different from you in some obvious way?  It's a very uncomfortable eperience.  Now, imagine if that room contained 17,000 people, and you'll get some idea of what it was like to be an Islanders fan at the Sharks game in San Jose last night.  While most people don't think of San Jose as being much of a sports hot spot (let alone a hockey one), the atmosphere at HP Pavilion was pretty electric and intense.  To pull a near sellout crowd against the Islanders on a Thursday night is solid; for those 17,000 fans to be vocal, knowledgable and confident is impressive.

The arena itself is utilitarian, but elegant in an unfinished-yet-modern sort of way.  It fits well in Silicon Valley, and looks like many of the technology company offices that fill the area (exposed ceilings, unpolished metal fixtures, etc.)  It's plain, but an arena doesn't have to be flashy when it's filled with white, black and teal jersey-clad fans every night.  The food choices were adequate, and while the place didn't blow me away, it was a perfectly serviceable and functional new-ish hockey arena (unlike Nassau Coliseum, which is neither serviceable, functional nor new-ish).

When the Islanders took a surprising (even to me) 1-0 lead in the second period, I stood to cheer.  I looked around the arena and saw about 10 other people standing.  For a sellout crowd, you'd expect at least 5% of the fans to be rooting for the opposition.  The combination of passionate Sharks fans and pathetically weak Islanders fan base, however, made this game extremely one-sided.  With their Sharks down 1-0, the fans didn't panic.  Like actual sharks, the team and its fans calmly kept circling their prey and waited for the right time to strike.  That time came on a 5-on-3 power play later in the second period, and again in the OT shootout where San Jose grabbed the win.

Fans celebrate after the Sharks tied the game in the second period.

Overall, it was a good experience.  It had been some time since I saw live hockey, and I wasn't disappointed with my second exposure to NHL, California-style (I had been to a Los Angeles Kings game once before).  My Isles grabbed a point and pushed the two-time defending Western Conference Regular Season Champions (as denoted by lame, "feel good" banners hanging from the rafters) to a shootout, while the home team got the win they expected and, quite frankly, deserved.  I would absolutely go back to a Sharks game later this season - the game made me realize how much I love hockey live, and the arena and crowd are well worth the price and the half-hour drive from Stanford.

Mr. Movember

As most of you already know, I'm currently sporting an absolutely-awful-looking moustache in support of Movember, a month-long crusade to raise money and awareness for men's health (prostate cancer in particular) by growing a funky 'stache.  From the Movember website:

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month.  The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. 

Before I head to the Shark Tank tonight to see the Islanders visit the San Jose Sharks, I wanted to praise the NHL for taking the lead in promoting Movember in the world of professional sports.  Movember has reported that over 150 NHL players across 14 teams are growing 'staches to raise money for the cause, lead by Anaheim Ducks enforcer and Princeton alum George Parros.  Since the month started, I've wondered why more athletes aren't participating in Movember and using their status to do some good.

Anaheim's George Parros is leading the NHL's support of Movember.

Normally, I'm not one to argue that athletes "owe it to their fans" to do good for society; at the end of the day, sports is a business and the employees (the athletes) have no more responsibility to donate time or money to charitable causes that you or I do.  But Movember is simultanously so easy and so amusing that I would have thought tons of athletes would be doing it.  Why isn't a fun-loving guy like Dwight Howard comically stroking his handlebar moustache after one of his monster blocked shots?  Couldn't LeBron James, a guy who was beloved last year for acting like a kid and having fun on the court, gain some good PR and show the world that he's the "same ole' LeBron" by growing a fu-man-chu for charity?  Could Eli Manning be the creepiest looking guy ever if he grew a hilarious pencil-thin 'stache?  These questions need to be addressed.

In the meantime, kudos to NHL players for not taking themselves too seriously and doing something good for their fellow man in the process.  While I can't force Superman, LeBron or Eli to grow a 'stache, I can and will keep mine growing strong (at least until Thanksgiving break).  If you'd like to donate to my Movember campaign, please feel free to do so here.  Thanks in advance for your support, and Happy Movember.

Rooting for the Little Guy

Halloween went extremely well this year.  My Little Mac costume was met with largely favorable results; as predicted, a lot of people (all of them men) got the Punch Out! reference and everyone else just figured I was a boxer, which was fine with me.  One guy asked me "which Klitschko brother are you supposed to be?" and someone else told me he loved "the De La Hoya costume," but overall it was a good night.  Much better than a few years ago when I went as Marty McFly from Back to the Future and everyone thought I was Tony Hawk (because of my skateboard prop).

Little Mac is one of my favorite childhood characters not only because he was the star of my favorite Nintendo game, but also because it was fun to root for the little guy.  I was always one of the smallest guys in my grade (and, height-wise, I still am), so I could always relate to the undersized athletes trying to do battle with opponents twice their size.  This got me thinking: who are my favorite little guys in sports?

Football: I'm a huge Wes Welker (5'9", 185 lbs.) fan, and respect the hell out of the guy.  The way he can run a route across the middle, take a hit from a linebacker that outweighs him by 60 pounds and manage to hold on to the ball is impressive.  The fact that he does it week in and week out and teams have yet to figure out a way to stop him is fascinating.  I'm not normally a big fan of anything even remotely Boston-related, but Welker gets a lot of respect for me.  The fact that he sports my number 83 is just icing on the cake.

Hockey: Richard Park is a fascinating NHL player not only because he's pretty small, but also because he's one of the few Asian-born hockey players ever to reach the NHL (he moved to Southern California from Korea when he was three).  As a member of the Islanders from 2006-2010, I saw Park take his share of hits, slashes and blocked shots.  While he was never the most talented player on the ice, he hustled as much as anyone else on the team and consistently produced despite his relatively-small size (5'10, 190 lbs.).  Unfortunately Park left the NHL this offseason to sign a contract with a team in Switzerland.  He'll be missed.

Basketball: Though he's moved on to the Boston Celtics, no one lit up Madison Square Garden in recent memory like Nate Robinson.  While he's best known for his show-stopping slams at the NBA All Star Weekend's Slam Dunk Contest (and in particular his dunks over Dwight Howard), Robinson is actually a very talented basketball player when his head's on straight.  He has the potential to be one of the better scoring guards in the league, and his athleticism gives him the potential to be a solid defender and rebounding guard, too.  Though it's been in a drawer for a while now, I'll never get rid of my green number 4 "KRYPTO-NATE" t-shirt.

Long live the little guys!