Reasons We Love Hockey Part 110

The 110th of our 118-part series.

Magnetic Schedules

We are refrigerator magnet people, and we’re also big hockey fans. So there are few things on the planet that make us happier than the marriage of those two loves — the freebie magnetic schedules teams hand out at games early in the season. No fridge door or office filing cabinet is complete without one, with its bold showing off of team colors, logos and the confetti-like spread of home and away dates sprinkled over the tiny little months. So, Gentle Reader, can you see where we’re going with this? We are unlikely to attend this year’s Devils magnetic schedule giveaway night, and there’s a big empty space on our shiny new fridge door that’s just calling out for that precious magnetic dispenser of scheduling goodness. So if any of you happen to find yourselves in the possession of an spare Devils magnetic schedule or two that you’d like to see find a good home, consider sending them our way. We promise we’ll take good care of them!

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Reasons We Love Hockey Part 109

The 109th in our 118-part series.

Arguing

Being Quakers, we’re more prone to the quiet contemplation, peaceful consensus approach to conflict resolution than we are to knock-down, drag-out fights. Perhaps for that reason, we’re glad hockey gives us something to fight about that’s separate from everything else in life. Arguing politics, religion and money gets personal and hurtful so quickly, but arguing Crosby vs. Ovechkin, Brodeur vs. Luongo, statbits vs. human emotions is always safe because at the end of the day, it’s just hockey. We can spend all night arguing the number of games Marty should play in a season, but sooner or later you can practically hear Doc Emrick chirping, “No matter, the argument is of no consequence!” Flared tempers immediately calm and civilized discourse re-enters the scene. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the particularly fun sub-set of arguing: the arguing when you agree. The shouting for hours with a fellow fan about the slights piled on against your team or players, or the insanity of people who say Sid isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the unfathomable stupidity that is the League’s approach to wining new fans at the expense of the old. Basically, we love having an outlet for being argumentative, cantankerous and curmudgeonly, and real life just doesn’t have enough outlets for that.

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Reasons You Love Hockey Part 14

Today’s Reason You Love Hockey comes from Mara. This is an especially exciting reason to get to post today, because think about it Gentle Reader: in less than a week NHL arenas (or at least the ones in London) will be waking up, too! So sit back, relax, enjoy Mara’s writing, and then commence pommerdoodling!

An Arena Wakes Up

This old place is the closest thing in my life to a cathedral. I like it best when it’s almost empty two or three hours before game time, and the lights in the bowl are off and all you can hear is the HVAC system humming and maybe someone up in the catwalks checking the spotlights.

I like walking out to center ice and looking up in every direction at empty seats and 32 years of banners hanging from the rafters. Cam Neely called this arena home and Grant Fuhr and Trevor Linden skated here. I like the ice when it hasn’t been cut or skated on for a day and it’s not shiny anymore (condensation freezes on it and the surface goes matte). It smells like snow and if you’re lucky there’s a couple feet of fog blurring the ads on the boards across the ice.

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