Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Life Is Great.
Not only did the Lightning win the Cup, but SCTV makes its debut on DVD today.
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A hockey fan's life, interrupted.
I try to avoid the overly personal on this blog (when I write at all), but last night's Lightning Stanley Cup victory has motivated me to recount my life as a hockey fan. So if one fan's hockey memories will bore you to tears, please stop here, because this is going to be long and self-indulgent.
Hockey was the first sport I really followed, beginning as a 9-year-old in 1972 on Long Island and with the birth of the New York Islanders. It's hard to remember exactly how and why it started, but I immediately adopted the Islanders as my team. The 1972-73 season was a trying time to be an Islander fan, as they suffered the fate of most expansion teams. In fact, the Isles set a record for single season futility that first year. In middle school at the time, I took quite a bit of grief from my Ranger fan classmates, especially after a home-and-home weekend series in which the Rangers blanked the Isles by identical 6-0 scores. But there was one especially fond memory of that season: a game in Boston, against the Bruins of Phil Esposito, Bobby Orr & company, in which the Islanders raced out to a 5-0 lead and held on for a wild 9-7 win. The game was shown on WOR, Channel 9 in New York on a half-hour tape delay, but once it got back and forth, I couldn't help myself, tuning to the live radio broadcast to alleviate the suspense.
Thanks to shrewd drafting and player personnel moves, the Isles improved relatively rapidly, and by 1975 were in the playoffs. Unfortunately, in the second round, they fell behind 3-0 to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a best-of-seven series. They then did something that has only been done one other time in all of major team sports: they won the next four games. So it was on to the next round against the Broad Street Bullies, the eventual Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers. Once again, the Isles fell behind 3 games to none. Amazingly, they came back and took the next three, poised to do the unthinkable again. Game 7 was in Philly, and although the Flyers always played Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America", this time they brought the lady in herself to sing, as they did on special occassions, having never lost with Kate in the building. In an attempt to counteract the jinx, Islander captain Eddie Westfall presented Kate with a bouquet of flowers, but it wasn't to happen as the Flyers finished off the Isles 4-1.
So I had already accumulated some lasting hockey memories, but then the game was taken away from me. Our family moved to Clearwater, Florida in 1976, and although I was not upset with the move and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened for our family, Florida in 1976 was not the place to be a hockey fan. At least Clearwater wasn't, as it was not wired for cable and the NHL did not have a national TV contract. I could only read about the Isles in the newspaper (what meager coverage that was available), and all I know from that period is that they remained a very good team that couldn't quite go all the way in the playoffs. By 1980, though, they had finally broken through, winning the Cup against Philly, but I had no way of seeing it.
Finally, after nearly five long years of waiting, we were finally wired for cable, in May of 1981 just in time to see the Isles defend the Cup against Minnesota. It was heaven on earth to see the Isles and hockey again, and I managed to stay on top of the action throughout the rest of the Islander dynasty years, including the close elimination call in the first round of the 82 playoffs against Pittsburgh, the "Bossy Cup final" against Vancouver of that same year, and then in 1983, the sweep of Edmonton in the finals for the 4th cup. That year, I watched the finals in the Eckerd College pub, and a fellow Islander fan and I brought brooms for the occasion for Game 4. Little did I know that night that it would be 21 years before I'd see my team hoist the Cup again, and little did I know it would be a different team, one not to come into existence for another eight.
I'll always remember the Isles' last hurrah in the 1984 finals, when they succumbed to Gretzky, Messier and the Oilers in Game 5 on the eve of my graduation from Eckerd College, and although they weren't quite the dominant team of the early 80s, they still continued to make the playoffs, and I'll never forget staying up until 2:30 in the morning in 1987 and seeing Pat LaFontaine score against Washington in a 4-overtime thriller.
But that was it for hockey for me again. ESPN lost the NHL Contract to SportsChannel, and Clearwater's Vision Cable didn't carry it. So, other than seeing a rare game over a friend's house in St. Petersburg (where SportsChannel was carried), hockey was taken away from me again. But thanks to Phil Esposito, it was coming back once again. He thought the Tampa Bay market could support an NHL franchise, and he put on an exhibition game in 1990 between Gretzky's LA Kings and Mario Lemieux's Pittsburgh Penguins, which was held in the cavernous Florida Suncoast Dome (now Tropicana Field, home of the Devil Rays). Nearly 30,000 showed up, including myself, and between that successful exhibition and Esposito's ability to bullshit the NHL brass about the financial backing he had, the league awarded Tampa Bay a franchise, and in 1992, the Lightning took to the ice. That same year, ESPN regained the NHL contract, and obviously there was considerable local TV coverage of the Bolts as well. That first year, they literally played in a barn at the Florida State Fairgrounds, but it was still fun to attend. Meanwhile, the return of hockey in my life was just in time to see the Islanders make their deepest run in the playoffs since 1984.
This time, the Isles opened against the Washington Capitals, and took a 3-2 lead into Game 6. The Isles rolled in Game 6, but when Islander star Pierre Turgeon scored to ice the game in the third period, Washington's Dale Hunter blindsided Turgeon while he celebrated, slamming him into the boards, and effectively knocking him out of the playoffs. In the next round, without Turgeon, the Islanders were severe underdogs as they faced the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins and Lemeiux. The Islanders fought hard, and eventually forced a Game 7 in Pittsburgh, which they won thanks to an OT goal from the obscure David Volek. The Isles now found themselves in the conference finals, against the Montreal Canadiens, but the wear and tear caught up to them, and the Habs dispatched them in 5 before going on to win the Cup (the last time a Canadian team has done so).
Meanwhile, later that year, I purchased my first home, and vowed never to have hockey taken away from me again. To free myself from the whims of cable companies and NHL TV contracts, I had a 10' C-band satellite dish installed in January 1994. Not only did I get to watch all the games from around the country on the regional sports networks, I also was able to pull in CBC and watch Hockey Night In Canada. It really was hockey heaven. I got to see the Islanders every night, and if I wanted to watch Winnipeg-Los Angeles at 10:30 at night, by golly I could. But whereas the advent of cable brought me into the Islander dynasty, the advent of satellite for me brought me the Isles' last gasp, as in 1994 they were unceremoniously swept by the Rangers in the opening round of the playoffs, as the Rangers were on their way to the Cup.
And now the fallow period began. The Islanders spent the rest of the century losing big and missing the playoffs. My new #2 team, the Bolts, weren't much better. Sure, in 1996, thanks to some vets like Brian Bellows and Petr Klima, and the hot goaltending of Darren Puppa, the Bolts did make the playoffs, but they were quickly eliminated in the first round by Philly, and not to see the playoffs again for the rest of the century either. Still, I watched and watched, sometimes hoping that one of them would at least stay reasonably in the playoff race through January or February. And somewhere along the line during this combined desert of success, I found myself rooting more for the Bolts than the Islanders. They never were a threat to each other, but when they did meet, I found myself instinctively rooting for Tampa Bay. I guess it's just the fact of geography and local exposure that led me to that point, but I couldn't deny it. Nevertheless, I then vowed to myself to root for whichever of the two needed the points more.
By 2002, it was the Islanders that needed the points more, as they finally got new ownership, who brought in stars like Alexi Yashin, Michael Peca, and goalie Chris Osgood. The Isles got off to a blazing start, and grabbed the #5 seed in the East and faced the #4 Toronto Maple Leafs. Despite it being a first-rounder, this might have been one of the best series in recent NHL history, as each team won on home ice and the games were played with a brutish intensity that sometimes went over the edge, most notably courtesty of Darcy Tucker, whose questionable hit knocked Peca out of the series (and for much of the next season). The Leafs ended up taking Game 7 in Toronto, but the Isles had nothing to be ashamed of. Meanwhile, the Bolts continued to make steady improvement despite missing the playoffs, and their future looked bright as well.
In 2003, the Bolts duplicated the Islanders hot start of 2002, while the Isles struggled early. Nevertheless, the Isles got things on track after Peca came back, and Tampa Bay continued to roll, taking the SE division. Suddenly I had both of my teams in the playoffs. The Isles, however, quickly fell to Ottawa, but the Bolts heroically came back from a 2-0 deficit to Washington to take them in 6, before losing to eventual champion New Jersey in 5, a series that was much closer than the 4-1 margin would indicate, as two of the Jersey wins came in OT.
And then we come to 2004. The Lightning, after a rough November and December, became the dominant team in the East, and the Isles struggled to make the playoffs. And here I was in April, with the two having to face off against each other. I didn't want the matchup (at least not until the conference final), but when push to came to shove, I found I had no qualms about rooting for the Bolts, and the rest is (very recent) history.
When Dave Andreychuk hoisted the Cup last night, I'm not ashamed to admit I had tears in my eyes. It was just truly amazing to see this team, that had been so bad for so long, finally build its way to the top, with a core of great, young players. In a way, they reminded me of the Islanders of my youth, and if any team in the NHL right now has a chance to repeat the success of the early 80s Islanders, it is the Lightning. In a funny way, things have come full circle, as just recently I read that the Islanders' coach, Steve Stirling, wants to shape his team more in the mold of the Lightning and their "puck pursuit" style of play.
But with the NHL poised to unleash labor armageddon come the fall, it's questionable whether there will be a chance for the Bolts to repeat any time soon. Despite the fact that I've again reached the pinnacle as a hockey fan, the sad reality is that hockey may be taken away from me for a third time.
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Hockey was the first sport I really followed, beginning as a 9-year-old in 1972 on Long Island and with the birth of the New York Islanders. It's hard to remember exactly how and why it started, but I immediately adopted the Islanders as my team. The 1972-73 season was a trying time to be an Islander fan, as they suffered the fate of most expansion teams. In fact, the Isles set a record for single season futility that first year. In middle school at the time, I took quite a bit of grief from my Ranger fan classmates, especially after a home-and-home weekend series in which the Rangers blanked the Isles by identical 6-0 scores. But there was one especially fond memory of that season: a game in Boston, against the Bruins of Phil Esposito, Bobby Orr & company, in which the Islanders raced out to a 5-0 lead and held on for a wild 9-7 win. The game was shown on WOR, Channel 9 in New York on a half-hour tape delay, but once it got back and forth, I couldn't help myself, tuning to the live radio broadcast to alleviate the suspense.
Thanks to shrewd drafting and player personnel moves, the Isles improved relatively rapidly, and by 1975 were in the playoffs. Unfortunately, in the second round, they fell behind 3-0 to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a best-of-seven series. They then did something that has only been done one other time in all of major team sports: they won the next four games. So it was on to the next round against the Broad Street Bullies, the eventual Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers. Once again, the Isles fell behind 3 games to none. Amazingly, they came back and took the next three, poised to do the unthinkable again. Game 7 was in Philly, and although the Flyers always played Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America", this time they brought the lady in herself to sing, as they did on special occassions, having never lost with Kate in the building. In an attempt to counteract the jinx, Islander captain Eddie Westfall presented Kate with a bouquet of flowers, but it wasn't to happen as the Flyers finished off the Isles 4-1.
So I had already accumulated some lasting hockey memories, but then the game was taken away from me. Our family moved to Clearwater, Florida in 1976, and although I was not upset with the move and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened for our family, Florida in 1976 was not the place to be a hockey fan. At least Clearwater wasn't, as it was not wired for cable and the NHL did not have a national TV contract. I could only read about the Isles in the newspaper (what meager coverage that was available), and all I know from that period is that they remained a very good team that couldn't quite go all the way in the playoffs. By 1980, though, they had finally broken through, winning the Cup against Philly, but I had no way of seeing it.
Finally, after nearly five long years of waiting, we were finally wired for cable, in May of 1981 just in time to see the Isles defend the Cup against Minnesota. It was heaven on earth to see the Isles and hockey again, and I managed to stay on top of the action throughout the rest of the Islander dynasty years, including the close elimination call in the first round of the 82 playoffs against Pittsburgh, the "Bossy Cup final" against Vancouver of that same year, and then in 1983, the sweep of Edmonton in the finals for the 4th cup. That year, I watched the finals in the Eckerd College pub, and a fellow Islander fan and I brought brooms for the occasion for Game 4. Little did I know that night that it would be 21 years before I'd see my team hoist the Cup again, and little did I know it would be a different team, one not to come into existence for another eight.
I'll always remember the Isles' last hurrah in the 1984 finals, when they succumbed to Gretzky, Messier and the Oilers in Game 5 on the eve of my graduation from Eckerd College, and although they weren't quite the dominant team of the early 80s, they still continued to make the playoffs, and I'll never forget staying up until 2:30 in the morning in 1987 and seeing Pat LaFontaine score against Washington in a 4-overtime thriller.
But that was it for hockey for me again. ESPN lost the NHL Contract to SportsChannel, and Clearwater's Vision Cable didn't carry it. So, other than seeing a rare game over a friend's house in St. Petersburg (where SportsChannel was carried), hockey was taken away from me again. But thanks to Phil Esposito, it was coming back once again. He thought the Tampa Bay market could support an NHL franchise, and he put on an exhibition game in 1990 between Gretzky's LA Kings and Mario Lemieux's Pittsburgh Penguins, which was held in the cavernous Florida Suncoast Dome (now Tropicana Field, home of the Devil Rays). Nearly 30,000 showed up, including myself, and between that successful exhibition and Esposito's ability to bullshit the NHL brass about the financial backing he had, the league awarded Tampa Bay a franchise, and in 1992, the Lightning took to the ice. That same year, ESPN regained the NHL contract, and obviously there was considerable local TV coverage of the Bolts as well. That first year, they literally played in a barn at the Florida State Fairgrounds, but it was still fun to attend. Meanwhile, the return of hockey in my life was just in time to see the Islanders make their deepest run in the playoffs since 1984.
This time, the Isles opened against the Washington Capitals, and took a 3-2 lead into Game 6. The Isles rolled in Game 6, but when Islander star Pierre Turgeon scored to ice the game in the third period, Washington's Dale Hunter blindsided Turgeon while he celebrated, slamming him into the boards, and effectively knocking him out of the playoffs. In the next round, without Turgeon, the Islanders were severe underdogs as they faced the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins and Lemeiux. The Islanders fought hard, and eventually forced a Game 7 in Pittsburgh, which they won thanks to an OT goal from the obscure David Volek. The Isles now found themselves in the conference finals, against the Montreal Canadiens, but the wear and tear caught up to them, and the Habs dispatched them in 5 before going on to win the Cup (the last time a Canadian team has done so).
Meanwhile, later that year, I purchased my first home, and vowed never to have hockey taken away from me again. To free myself from the whims of cable companies and NHL TV contracts, I had a 10' C-band satellite dish installed in January 1994. Not only did I get to watch all the games from around the country on the regional sports networks, I also was able to pull in CBC and watch Hockey Night In Canada. It really was hockey heaven. I got to see the Islanders every night, and if I wanted to watch Winnipeg-Los Angeles at 10:30 at night, by golly I could. But whereas the advent of cable brought me into the Islander dynasty, the advent of satellite for me brought me the Isles' last gasp, as in 1994 they were unceremoniously swept by the Rangers in the opening round of the playoffs, as the Rangers were on their way to the Cup.
And now the fallow period began. The Islanders spent the rest of the century losing big and missing the playoffs. My new #2 team, the Bolts, weren't much better. Sure, in 1996, thanks to some vets like Brian Bellows and Petr Klima, and the hot goaltending of Darren Puppa, the Bolts did make the playoffs, but they were quickly eliminated in the first round by Philly, and not to see the playoffs again for the rest of the century either. Still, I watched and watched, sometimes hoping that one of them would at least stay reasonably in the playoff race through January or February. And somewhere along the line during this combined desert of success, I found myself rooting more for the Bolts than the Islanders. They never were a threat to each other, but when they did meet, I found myself instinctively rooting for Tampa Bay. I guess it's just the fact of geography and local exposure that led me to that point, but I couldn't deny it. Nevertheless, I then vowed to myself to root for whichever of the two needed the points more.
By 2002, it was the Islanders that needed the points more, as they finally got new ownership, who brought in stars like Alexi Yashin, Michael Peca, and goalie Chris Osgood. The Isles got off to a blazing start, and grabbed the #5 seed in the East and faced the #4 Toronto Maple Leafs. Despite it being a first-rounder, this might have been one of the best series in recent NHL history, as each team won on home ice and the games were played with a brutish intensity that sometimes went over the edge, most notably courtesty of Darcy Tucker, whose questionable hit knocked Peca out of the series (and for much of the next season). The Leafs ended up taking Game 7 in Toronto, but the Isles had nothing to be ashamed of. Meanwhile, the Bolts continued to make steady improvement despite missing the playoffs, and their future looked bright as well.
In 2003, the Bolts duplicated the Islanders hot start of 2002, while the Isles struggled early. Nevertheless, the Isles got things on track after Peca came back, and Tampa Bay continued to roll, taking the SE division. Suddenly I had both of my teams in the playoffs. The Isles, however, quickly fell to Ottawa, but the Bolts heroically came back from a 2-0 deficit to Washington to take them in 6, before losing to eventual champion New Jersey in 5, a series that was much closer than the 4-1 margin would indicate, as two of the Jersey wins came in OT.
And then we come to 2004. The Lightning, after a rough November and December, became the dominant team in the East, and the Isles struggled to make the playoffs. And here I was in April, with the two having to face off against each other. I didn't want the matchup (at least not until the conference final), but when push to came to shove, I found I had no qualms about rooting for the Bolts, and the rest is (very recent) history.
When Dave Andreychuk hoisted the Cup last night, I'm not ashamed to admit I had tears in my eyes. It was just truly amazing to see this team, that had been so bad for so long, finally build its way to the top, with a core of great, young players. In a way, they reminded me of the Islanders of my youth, and if any team in the NHL right now has a chance to repeat the success of the early 80s Islanders, it is the Lightning. In a funny way, things have come full circle, as just recently I read that the Islanders' coach, Steve Stirling, wants to shape his team more in the mold of the Lightning and their "puck pursuit" style of play.
But with the NHL poised to unleash labor armageddon come the fall, it's questionable whether there will be a chance for the Bolts to repeat any time soon. Despite the fact that I've again reached the pinnacle as a hockey fan, the sad reality is that hockey may be taken away from me for a third time.
How sweet it is!
Lightning win the Stanley Cup!!!
Thoughts to follow.
