Reasons We Love Hockey Part 93

The 93rd in our 118-part series.

Being a Season Ticket Holder

When Pookie was in college, her Theater Management professor posed a question to the class: “What can we expect from subscription ticket holders?” While the rest of the class offered up the correct answer, “They are apathetic about the shows because they’ll just show up regardless of what’s playing”, Pookie shouted, “They’re the most dedicated, wonderful, fabulous people on Earth!” Pookie might have failed the class, but can you blame her? After being hockey season ticket holders for a number of years, we’ve reaped all the benefits of being there for 41 games a season. The joy of getting the package in the mail and seeing a season’s worth of tickets bound together. The anticipation of what image would appear on the tickets that season (needless to say, back when we were season ticket holders, the Devils didn’t do any of that fancy “different picture” for each game nonsense). The feeling of ownership of our seats, our parking lot, our entrance, our ushers. Sure, we might have gotten a bit apathetic about some games — “Who is it tonight? Columbus? Calgary? Chicago? All those ‘c’ teams run together.” — but we were also the most, dedicated, wonderful and fabulous fans on Earth!

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Reasons We Love Hockey Part 92

The 92nd in our 118-part series.

Open practices

As training camps have opened across the land, bringing joy and wonder to a hockey-starved nation, a lot of us are planning a trip (or two, or four — you know who you are!) to watch our favorite teams in open practices. We are actually not going to be witnessing our Devils in action, but will be trekking down to our nation’s capital to enjoy mingling with some of our HLOG cohorts and soaking up the sights and sounds of Caps camp. We’ve only been to three other open practices in our lives: a Rangers one waaaay back before we developed brains and learned how to walk upright, a Ducks one during our years wandering in the desert, and a Sabres one last Spring. Our overriding impression from these experiences? NHL practices are both an odd spectacle and an utter delight. What makes them so strange is that they’re short and informal; they don’t seem to last more than about 45 minutes tops, and it’s 45 minutes of watching your team really, undeniably doing their jobs. It doesn’t seem strange to watch them working during actual games, because that’s a performance — there’s supposed to be an audience there. But it’s incredibly bizarre to watch a practice, like you’re tearing down a bit of the fourth wall. Of course, it’s that glimpse into the inner workings that makes it so delightful, too. You’re up close and personal with your favorite players, watching them go about the workaday routines that make them so good at playing hockey, seeing how they interact when it’s not game time, and, for those of us who are not at all athletically inclined, marvelling that grown men get paid millions of dollars to do gym class.

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