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The Story of the Winter Classic. Not a Hockey Game. |
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I arrived at Boston Back Bay's Station at 11:30 am with luggage, a wife and two kids. I had dragged the family out of bed at 3:00 am to get the only train that I knew would get us into Boston in time for me to participate in the Media Skate at Fenway that was taking place at 2pm. Why?
Well, how could I miss this opportunity? When you get a chance to skate, you make it happen. Whether that means a men's league game an hour away at 11:45 pm, or an open hockey session at 5:30 am.
This is a chance to get on the rink. That rink could be a Joe's ice rink in Southeastern Pennsylvania or Fenway Park. When you are invited you go.
It's just what hockey fans do.
I walked into the media room and saw the normal cast of characters, the Pierre LeBruns, the Scott Burnsides, all sitting as usual tapping on laptops and seated at long thin tables with power strips and wifi connectivity instructions taped to them. Except also on these tables, resting solemnly next to their computer bags and lunches, inches from their laptop screens, were ice skates. Because even the LeBruns and the Burnsides, men who are around this sport more than they are any other single thing in this world, were not going to miss a skate.
It's just what hockey fans do.
I put my goalie skates up on the table and took off my hat and was quickly razzed for the big white guards on them..marred with black scars from the few pucks my slow legs got to at 11:45pm or 5:30 am.
"Did Bernie Parent know you took his skates?" one great senior reporter from Toronto asked me immediately.
"Yeh, right?" I said laughing, "I figure if I wear goalie skates you Canadians won't mock me as much as you fly past this kid from south jersey who grew up playing street hockey!"
We were guided down to the ice, the best hockey writers on the planet (and me) by a woman from the NHL, and as we went through the gate into the stadium I was struck by the scene inside Fenway. The NHL certainly does understand how to decorate for winter, and no matter how many times you see it on the webcam on NHL.com which shows the progress there is nothing like rounding the corner on your skates (which is essentially directly atop first base) and being face to face with the Green Monster.
I couldn't stop thinking how incredible this all was. How lucky I was, and how cool it was of the NHL to allow me to do be doing this.
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The next day I would stand just outside the entrance of the Red Sox dugout in a snow squall and watch Tim Thomas and others emerge from the dugout with skateguards on and eyes as wide as saucers as they looked up at this baseball cathedral like kids in a candy store. Moments like those are unforgettable to me. These players were in awe of their surroundings and loving every minute of this experience and I was able to experience that with them. How lucky am I?
The atmosphere outside of Fenway on New Year's Eve as the sun was setting was pure electricity as well. It just felt like all that was right with the world. Sports have become jaded, and they always say the most down-to-earth pro athletes that are left are in the NHL. That is definitely true, but it also extends to the fans in hockey. They are more real.
The next day I would talk to a hotdog vender guy who has been selling Fenway dogs for years to Bostonians who are enjoying a warm night in the ballpark and he said that the frozen hockey fans were by far the kindest and most polite he had ever handed a dog and some mustard packets to. Hockey fans are happier.
It's just what hockey fans do
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On New Years eve night I walked through the the Prudential Center to have dinner at Champions where we could watch the USA/Canada clash. The Prudential Center is a big indoor mall. A city within a city that connects hotels and restaurants with strips of upper scale stores and food courts. Really nice, very safe feeling for a city, and clean as can be. The great part of walking around on New Year's Eve was the people you would pass. Part Bruins fans, part Flyers fans, part well dressed hipster yuppy guys with hot chicks dressed to the nines in black mini-dresses headed to New Year's Eve dinner.
The two groups walked side by side and even dined side by side in Champions.
Champions is an upscaled sports bar with a 20 foot screen that had the World Juniors Game on. By the way, the USA and Canada need to ALWAYS play on NY Eve. That tradition has to continue. Since this restaurant was in the midst of the hotels it was populated by Americans and Canadians. Each cheering for their own.
Again the reporters were there. The men and women who take an unwritten oath to NOT be a fan. To never cheer in the press box. They weren't wearing Winter Classic Jerseys, but they were wearing nice leather jackets with the logos of TSN, NBC, CBC, or USA Hockey on them. But guess what? They were chanting and rooting for their own countries and taunting fans from other countries all the same.
It's just what hockey fans do.
I had seen this behavior from the big press people before. It was actually in the press box at the Buffalo Winter Classic when during the shootout these high brow journalist became fans of what they were watching and cheered when Crosby scored. It is awesome when you can't hide your love of a game anymore and you just give in to the fact that what you are covering is not the great war of western civilization. It is nothing more than a kids game played by big kids.
For some reason the Winter Classic brings that out of us. The media has the darndest time trying to keep up the cool facade. We are all just hockey geeks.
Maybe its the fact that playing this game outside reminds us that it is a kids game. I am not sure. But something is different. Something wonderful.
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The next day I woke up all fired up for the game. On a normal game day I work on rumors and head to a hockey game around 5pm. This gives me two hours to really think about the game and shift gears in my head. However, after two solid days around Fenway I was fired up for the game.
So I was quite surprised at how I felt when I actually got to the arena.
Let down. Yes let down.
A few months ago I was talking to my wife about the magic that is the Winter Classic and how much my kids, especially my 7-year-old daughter was just totally getting into hockey...I felt that since we are such Flyers fans I should really bring them to take in history. I left my family at the hotel and they were all fired up.
As this Winter Classic was about to start I walked through the awesome array of fired up Bruins and Flyers fans on the concourse...all bundled up...many already chanting. The atmosphere as people filed into Fenway made you proud to be a hockey fan. When I got to the auxiliary press room, past the fired up families, the smell of Fenway dogs, the venders selling Clam Chowder like bags of popcorn, I was getting more fired up for some hockey in the great outdoors. When I stepped into the heated media room and sat at a table with a TV something felt very wrong to me. I was covering the wrong story about all of this.
I have been to all three New Years Day Winter Classics now, and they all felt completely different. As a member of the press, my job is normally about about covering the game and what the teams could have done differently? What mistakes were made? What line combinations were clicking?
In Fenway, the NHL had to put the majority of the Press covering the game in rooms with no view of the stadium at all. Just some TVs. Really no atmosphere whatsoever. Now understand, this is not a complaint...nor do I fault the NHL. I am thankful for my access and I really do get the point of Fenway. Lack of press seating is a legit trade-off for the pomp and circumstance that comes with a old park like Fenway.
Yet I still had to justify myself to the NHL and all the money spent to get me there. I had to try to find a different story in all of this I started to feel that the story maybe was not the game at all. The story was the fans. The story was the stadium. The fans that were in this stadium, Bruins and Flyers fans joking with one another, etc.
I work for myself, but often I go back to my days when I worked for someone else at a paper and magazine in college as a sort of checks and balances to keep me focused..I pretend to I will need to pitch the story. If I were working for a paper, having someone to report to, an editor to pitch my story to, my lead wouldn't be "This game looks great on TV..."
The Story for the Winter Classic is not a Hockey Game, it's the Game of Hockey.
This day is a celebration of a sport that we all grew up with. In fact, the sport grew with us.
This is the sport that was NEVER the popular kid in school, but on this day, all of the fans, all of us involved in it...all of us who have spent far to many hours defending it trying to show the cool kids that our friend was really much cooler than he looked (if you just gave him a chance and got to know him better)...this day is a proud day for us. And I sensed this among the fans in Fenway.
New Years Day is many things for hockey fans, but more than anything it smells of sweet vindication. They all said the NHL putting together this kind of event on NY Day and going up against the College Bowls was death. Turns out it was the popular kid, college football, that would suffer due to the power of what they once called "The Ice Bowl."
So, realizing the game was just another game, but the atmosphere and the fans were the real story I put on my winter hat, left my myriad of technological devices behind, shoved a mini notepad and some pens into my winter coat and headed to where my family was sitting...Row 8, Seats 1,2,3 in section 42. 8 rows above the right field wall....three rinks distance from the closest corner of the actual rink. Seats with such a partial view that you could only see the players skating when they came inside the blueline on our side. Normally video screens help in big venues, but if you were in the outfield at Fenway you couldn't really see the one good screen that existed.
I do have a small suggestion for the NHL.. In sections like the outfield, it would greatly add to the experience were the NHL to pipe in the play-by-play call of the game over a sound system. That would really help bring everyone into the game and help those people to decipher the little bits of actions they can make out from their seats. Speakers directed to the outfield only wouldn't even be heard on the ice.
I heard fans talking around me and listened for complaints. After all, these seats were about a hundred bucks apiece and that's if you got them directly. Scalpers prices started at $350. That's a lot of money to not be able to see or follow a game I thought. I heard one guy talk about how his flight had been cancelled and the only way to get to the game in time was to fly into New Hampshire and drive a rental car down. He was laughing about it. Not complaining.
The section was almost half Flyers fans and half Bruins fans. Everyone was standing up, some on their seats, as if that would help the view. Everyone was freezing and many were joking about being hung over, and yet people were friendly and thrilled to be watching their unpopular friend get his day in the sun.
Alternating chants of would start-up...
"Let's Go Bruins!"
"Let's Go Flyers!"
"Let's Go Bruins!"
"Let's Go Flyers!"
"Let's Go Bruins!"
"Let's Go Flyers!"
It was all good spirited. No one, but me, seemed to care that you couldn't see ANYTHING.
However, my daughter (7) , who rolls with everything in life, was looking frustrated.
"What's going on?" I asked her.
"I can't tell what's happening I can't find Richards and Pronger. Was that offsides?" she asked.
Now as much as it saddened me to see her face when she spoke, every dad out there knows the point that your kid becomes a real hockey fan, and not just a little person dragged to a game. That point is a MAJOR point, so to see her frustrated by the sightlines actually made me oddly proud.
I said, "Come with me, I have an idea." So I walked with her to a spot I had passed while I was making the trek from the Aux Press room/Area to section 42. There, I explained, we would have to stand against a wall, but we would be able to "sort of" follow the play.
"Great Dad, let's go."
My wife was just sitting and having fun with our boy (4) and taking in the atmosphere. She told me to go ahead and take the girl to a place where she could see something.
So I took my little girl in her little Mike Richards #18 Orange jersey and we started climbing steps. As we passed other Flyers fans walking by they would see her and yell, "Go Flyers!"
She would say "Go Flyers" back as quietly and embarrassed as she could. She was thrilled when we finally arrived at the standing room spot I had scouted. Still couldn't see the puck, but you could see 3/4th of the ice.
"Thanks Dad, this is much better."
It didn't take long, about 90 seconds...we were watching from our proud new perch that Danny Syvret would give the Flyers a 1-0 lead. You could sort of tell the Flyers had scored by the reaction on the ice, when I told my daughter she was elated.
The fans in that area were pretty hilarious and at several points the warring factions of Bruins and Flyers fans would put aside their differences and beat their swords into pruning hooks and find common ground.
"Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!"
For the final period, my wife wanted us all back in our seats because the kids needed to sit for a bit. They had been freezing and playing hard since 10 am in and around Fenway, and thanks to a small fire in our hotel the night before that found us in the lobby from 2-3 am everyone was losing it. At this point I fully expected to return to the seats with the limited views to find frustrated fans who had to be getting fed up with not being able to follow the game at all. I was thinking of angry Philly and Boston fans and I was half afraid for my kids safety if things were to get ugly.
But when I returned I found that everyone was still standing, trying to cheer for events that could only be half conceptualized at best by what was seen in our small field of vision and STILL not complaining. These people, many who paid scalpers money, arranged flights, and found hotels, were still just enjoying being there and taunting each other in great fun. Some funny lines that I heard were...
"Hey I think something interesting just happened."
"Hey Bruins, I hope you are icing the puck and killing the power play!"
"Did anyone see or can tell me what just happened?"
Everyone would laugh, drink their beers and just take it all in. It was then when I realized what I needed to report about for the 2010 Winter Classic.
You don't go to Times Square to get a great view of the ball dropping. You don't go to a major concert in an outdoor stadium to feel a one on one connection to your favorite band. You don't worry if you saw every balloon or band that passes by at the Thanksgiving Day Parade in NY. Millions of people didn't head to Washington DC to see Obama up close personally become the president of the United States.
And in the same way, the Winter Clsssic is not about a hockey game. The Winter Classic is about the game of hockey and our undying love and support for that game, plain and simple. I admit that in my wanting to do a job and hoping my family was ok I missed the true meaning of the Winter Classic.
My wife got it, but I almost missed it.
Suddenly with a few minutes left in the game I actually got it. During a commercial break they had the singing of Sweet Caroline, which a is a Red Sox Tradition, and people were nuts. Crazy fun nuts.
I got it.
Listening to some callers in the radio in Boston, I wasn't the only one. But I did hear one guy who nailed it:
"People need to stop complaining. You can't see balls and strikes from the outfield either. Hockey fans are just spoiled to have their games played in smaller venues. Anyone who has a season ticket to the NFL or MLB knows that you aren't going to see the game as well as you would on TV. You are there for the experience of it all. Hockey is better in person as far as watching the game, than football or baseball."
This day was not about watching hockey. This day was a celebration and a damn good one at that.
It's just what hockey fans do...
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