The Serenity Player

Mike Smith looked right at me during warmups in Vancouver last night. I mention this not out of personal significance, but because it’s out of character for him. There are players who interact with fans at game time and players who do not, and in my three years of traveling from Seattle to Vancouver for Coyotes games, I have never once seen Mike Smith acknowledge the existence of a world outside the glass.

I’ve also never seen him look as comfortable as he did last night. Throughout the evening, Smith maintained improbably calm and controlled body language, for a man with a documented habit of enraged stick destruction. He seems to have achieved something of a state of zen over his situation: it is not his fault that his team is terrible, and he is more confident of that than he has ever been. It’s a good look for him.

*

In psychology, the definition of “grit” has to do with a person’s capacity to keep working toward a goal without seeing immediate results. It’s the flip side of that phony definition of “insanity” that will never stop being repeated no matter how many times it gets debunked. People with grit are people who don’t give up even when it seems like they’re failing, even when they’ve been failing for a long time and it doesn’t look likely that they’re going to succeed anytime soon. Grit is a form of emotional toughness.

In hockey, “grit” is an intangible quality with as many definitions as there are coaches who use the word, but it usually has more to do with physical toughness than emotional. “Gritty” players are fourth-liners who can take a punch and stick out a long shift without slowing down. Nobody ever uses that word to describe a goalie.

*

Warmups last night were a somewhat grim affair. Arizona was on a seven-game losing streak going into this game, sitting at rock-bottom of the league standings, and no one wanted Dave Tippett to catch them goofing off. At one point Lawson Crouse slammed Anthony Duclair against the boards harder than I have ever been checked in my life as both of them giggled like they were having a tickle fight, and at another point Shane Doan shot a beautifully eloquent “what the hell, man, I thought we were friends” face at a kid sporting Canucks gear, but otherwise it was all business.

I did not have my heart set on a win. The Coyotes had won 11 of 37 games so far this season, and while I did hold out hope that I might witness their 12th, my expectations were calibrated appropriately. I had, in fact, purchased a ticket four rows back at the faceoff dot of our end in the first and third, rather than my usual mid-lower-bowl center line seat, because I knew very well that Mike Smith was more likely to be worth watching than the overall game.

He’s been fantastic this season. You can’t really see it in the numbers, and no one who hasn’t been watching consistently would know, but if the rest of our team weren’t actively on fire he could be in the running for the Vezina right now. The Coyotes are terrible, as they have been for years, but this season no one is blaming Smith.

*

I knew a lot of people who became Blackhawks fans after the 2013 playoffs and cheered for 24 games straight without ever learning what it was like to watch their team get creamed. I thought it was a pretty disingenuous introduction to sports fandom.

Not many of them stuck around after the streak ended. Complacency does not foster grit, and it turns out losing really sucks.

*

Three minutes into the game, Mike Smith played the puck outside the trapezoid and earned a penalty. This was typical Mike Smith behavior. When the PK unit failed to clear, he commandeered the puck in his crease and flipped it all the way through to the other end himself. This was also typical Mike Smith behavior.

Halfway through the first, Connauton coughed up the puck in the worst possible spot and Vancouver scored. Smith appeared entirely unfazed. This was not at all typical. All goalies hate being scored on, of course, but Smith tends to really let it get to him. He gets worked up about his failures, and they spiral into worse failures.

It didn’t happen this time. Arizona lost the game 3-0 (on two completely undefended shots and one penalty shot) and Smith never lost his cool. When he feels on top of his game, he has this habit of banging his glove and blocker against each other between shots--kind of a “bring it, I’m ready for ya” gesture--and it’s easy to tell when he’s in a bad failure spiral because he stops doing it as much. Last night, he kept it up all the way to the latter half of the third period.

It’s not as obvious onscreen as it is from the fourth row by the faceoff dots, but I’d still noticed before seeing him live that he’s been keeping his temper a lot better this season. I wonder if something happened to help him get into a better game headspace, perhaps some wise words from a coach, or if he’s just slowly learning his lesson from loss after loss.

*

I’m going to be that person now and talk about my beer league team. Bear with me.

We’re awful. We’ve played 12 games this season, all losses. I’ve been playing with this team for three seasons now and the same thing always happens: we lose the first half of the season straight through before we win a single one. This is because we’re very open to new players, so we tend to get the people who have never played before at the beginning of each season.

For the last two seasons, we won a few toward the middle and end of the season, and then really got our shit together in the playoffs. It’s hilarious given how bad we are that I have never come out of a season without an emblazoned championship drinking vessel. It’s the standard sports-movie narrative: start out bad, work hard, achieve improbable dreams.

I’m a hopeless hockey optimist, believe it or not. Every year I’m convinced this same story is going to happen with the Coyotes. Even in the death throes of Arizona's playoff chances, as we sink further and further from contention, I always believe in my heart that we’re going to pull off the miraculous winning streak that would be necessary to claw our way to the postseason. A minute from the end of this game, I was still sitting there calculating how many seconds per goal it would take to tie it up. I don’t give up hope until it’s well and truly gone.

I think the experience of losing that final scrap of hope over and over again has taught me something about dealing with disappointment. I want to think so, anyway. I'd rather not consider the possibility of having gone through that for nothing.

*

One of my favorite things about Mike Smith is his ego. It’s not so much that he believes that he’s excellent--no, he believes that he can be excellent, given the right circumstances and the right effort, and he explicitly identifies obstacles to his excellence whether they’re his fault or someone else’s. If he screws up, he admits it, and affirms his confidence that he can do better; if the screwup is on someone else, he says so and doesn’t accept the blame. It’s refreshing, in this overly-tactful sport.

I knew how last night's postgame presser would go long before I watched it. He’d mention the cringeworthy turnover that led to the first goal, he’d call out the offense for the jack shit it accomplished, and he’d say something wry about Miller getting first star for a shutout he barely had to show up for. He’s always been that predictable. But gone were the formerly-just-as-predictable slump to his shoulders and bitterness in his voice.

I can’t pinpoint when exactly it happened, but sometime since the end of last season, Mike Smith has built up a solid stockpile of psychological grit. Maybe that’s why he’s been performing so well under the circumstances. And maybe soon the rest of the team will get their shit together and take advantage of the goaltending they’ve been wasting. Call it grit or call it insanity, but I haven’t yet given up hope.

3/9/16 ARI @ VAN

Warmups are always a highlight for me at NHL games, but this time was particularly great because Max Domi parked himself right in front of me for the stickhandling portion of his pregame routine--as in, he could not have gotten closer to me without hitting the glass. 

I suspect Domi actually chose the spot in front of me on purpose, because just before he set up camp there, he flicked a fancy dick-trick-esque behind-the-back shot into the net and made eye contact with me right as my face was going "HOLY SHIT." That was when he skated over to me and started flipping the puck from behind his back over his head and catching it on his stick blade in front, which I am not confident would normally be part of his warmup regimen. If this is the case, I confess myself unsurprised that the boy enjoys an appreciative audience. (Much as I wish such things weren't a factor, it probably didn't hurt that I was the only young woman there who wasn't decked out in enemy merch.)

Regardless of whether he was showing off for me specifically or not, it was incredible. He was less than two feet from me for about five minutes, doing things with the puck that I could happily watch for days on end. And then he and Duclair started firing short passes at each other, and I had the best view in the house of that too. The hockey gods were definitely smiling on me last night, even if they didn't wind up smiling on my team.

It occurred to me over three hours later that I could have taken video. Whoops. My brain isn't at its best when I'm elbowing distance from my favorite baby rookies, okay.

On reflection, though, I'm glad I stayed entirely present in the moment instead of futzing with my phone. The really cool thing about NHL warmups, for me, is how they make top-tier skills relatable, and that doesn't translate to video. On a screen, Max Domi is straight-up magic. Even watching live from the lower bowl of the arena, the things these guys can do feel completely out of reach to me. It's impressive to watch, of course, but I can't picture myself pulling those moves. That's part of what makes it entertaining.

But in warmups, watching NHL players doing their thing from the same angle and distance as if I were on the ice with them, I don't feel impressed so much as inspired. They may be lightyears better than me, but in that context I can see threads connecting what I can do with what they can do. The sounds of pucks clattering around are the same. The buildup of snow on sticks is the same. The tape holding up socks, the lines scored in the ice by skates, the hey-whassup of teammates bumping shoulders... these are things I know, things that make me feel like I belong, and when I can see and hear them right in front of me, it makes Max Domi's stickhandling feel like something I could do if I worked hard enough. It makes me itch to hit the rink. No phone video could be worth the full impact of that.

Other thoughts from the evening, in bullet-point form:

• This was my first live NHL game since I started playing organized hockey a year ago, and it made such a difference in how I parsed what I saw. I've always gotten a lot out of watching NHLers skate, since I've been skating for years, but now that I play the actual game I'm picking up all kinds of other things. And having now attempted all this myself, I have a much better understanding of how fucking good they are. I am purely astounded at the angle of their leans, the accuracy of their passes, the power behind their shots.
• I was focusing a lot more on skates and sticks than faces during the warmups, because there's so much I can learn from these guys hockeywise, but I'm pretty sure they were less interactive with fans this time. Probably something to do with their shitty recent record--trying to stay in the zone and such. But a few kids still got pucks, because Shane Doan will always and forever be Shane Doan.
• Besides the Max Domi Experience, I think I paid more attention to the skaters in general because Mike Smith wasn't on the ice. When Smitty is there, it's hard for me to process anything but Smitty. But this time I was watching everyone, and had fun picking up on all the little things in warmups, like changes in line combinations from last game, and a couple of the guys (I think one of them was Murphy, but I didn't write it down) playfully butt-checking each other along the boards.
• Doan was in charge of getting pucks out of the net and distributing them to everyone else at the blue line, and every time he did this he would save the last puck and flick it in a high arc to Michalek, who would kind of chest-bump it down to the ice. It was pretty cute.
• The guy sitting next to me was very pleasant when we were chatting, although he spent more time talking to me than to his son, and he kept taking work calls. (Software CEO, apparently. That's what I get for sitting in the lower bowl.) He was wearing a signed Henrik Sedin jersey--he said he won it unsigned at a previous game, then told his lawyer about it, and the lawyer was like, "Oh hey, I live next door to that guy, want me to get it signed for you next time he drops by for tea?"
• I feel that the real takeaway from this story is that Henrik Sedin drops by his neighbors' houses for tea. Important Henrik Sedin fact, y'all.
• I could really have done without the Canucks mascot's pre-game twerking. My retinas didn't need that.
• The anthems were my favorite of any sports anthem performance I've ever heard. It was a bunch of teenagers singing gorgeous harmonies, and a guy in front of me kept doing little fanfare noises in between lines of "O Canada," which exponentially improved the experience for me.
• I wondered whether this game would be less stressful for me without Smitty. Answer: no. Live Coyotes hockey will always stress me out to the max. But I didn't feel quite so personally stabbed in the gut when we got scored on, so there was that.
• Heh. Stress me out to the Max.
• I've never bothered bringing a sign because it would be a pain to lug around, especially in the rain. But if I had made a sign for this game, it would have said STAY OUTTA THE SLAMMER, and sure enough, the Coyotes spent a good chunk of the first period on the kill. Vancouver didn't convert, but still, not good.
• Domingue kept giving me heart attacks by playing the puck behind the net on the PK with Canucks five feet away. He needs to either stop doing that or work on making quicker decisions with the puck, because it almost fucked us over a few times. Smitty's a bad influence on him.
• Overall, Domingue did good. I yelled "LOOOOUUUUUU" for a couple of his best saves--not normally a fan of that, but I got a kick out of doing it in Vancouver. No regrets.
• I noticed Connauton executing excellent plays at least twice before his goal and once after, including breaking up a dangerous two-on-one absolutely beautifully in the third period. He had a really good game. (After he scored to put Arizona up 2-0 in the second, the arena DJ blasted "Wake me up when it's all over..." which cracked me up.)
• There weren't any awful loud people sitting near me, which might be a first for any live hockey game I've ever attended. There was one dude who kept saying "Git outta there!" in any applicable context--the puck being near the net, the Coyotes being in the crease, anyone being offside. Kind of an odd and entertaining catchphrase. He also said "Watch it, that stuff is expensive!" when one of the Coyotes crashed into the glass, which I found a pretty hilarious sentiment at an NHL game.
• During the second intermission, Ben Hutton showed up on the jumbotron worrying about whether he would be able to read children's books without fucking up (video). That was thoroughly delightful. Also, there was a You Can Play spot! Although it wasn't actually very clear what it was about, if people hadn't already heard of the organization. Don't know what happened there, usually they're good about that.
• It's hard to spot other Coyotes fans at Rogers because the Millionaires throwback jerseys are everywhere, and the color is very similar. I think I spotted three or four actual Coyotes fans amid the impostors.
• One thing I've never fully appreciated about Martinook on TV broadcasts is his ability to stay with the puck carrier. At one point on the penalty kill, the Coyotes cleared the puck, a Canuck went back for it, Martinook followed him, and then he just stayed on the guy's ass like a leech. He must have kept the puck in the zone for twenty or thirty seconds, just staying right on top of his man the whole time. That's hella hard to do. I've tried and it has not gone well for me.
• Rieder and Domi both skate so damn low. I know they're not the tallest dudes in the league, but even proportionally, they really get down there. That must be part of why they're so fast. Also, Rieder did this great Fred Flintstone running-in-place thing at one point, and he blocked two shots at short range from Vancouver D-men in the third, in addition to his goal. Eventful night for him.
• Vancouver's arena DJ played "Howlin' For You" (the Coyotes' goal song) during the leadup to overtime. It always surprises me that the DJs don't look up these things. 
• Before this game, I said my expectations were: 1) we would have a goalie in net, some goalie, any goalie; 2) we would not actually set the rink on fire; and 3) Max Domi would do something cool. Domi didn't really dazzle me through most of regulation, but he had a great chance near the end of the third, and then in OT he had a truly spectacular breakaway. I really, really wish that had gone in--it would have been the perfect end to the game. Alas, it did not, and the Canucks wound up taking it.
• I need to accept that I'm a screecher. I keep telling myself at Coyotes games: don't screech, roar! Bellow! From the diaphragm! But no, when shit is on the line and my instincts take over, I shriek. Never been able to override that when something really big is going down. It's obnoxious, but apparently it's me. Sigh.
• Tanguay got third star of the game for his two assists. Looks like that acquisition was a good call.
• There was a kid in a Domi jersey amid a family of Canucks fans with a sign saying he has diabetes too. Domi tossed the kid his stick on his way off the bench. That was a nice moment.
• Once again, a Canucks fan apologized to me for his team winning. Gotta love Canada.

Opening night

Ten minutes into my first beer league hockey game, I was convinced we were going to win the championship this season, because we were the absolute picture of the misfit rabble that bumbles around before the montage in every feel-good sports movie ever made.

About two-thirds of us were wearing practice jerseys with our numbers slapped on in Sharpie, because our jersey orders hadn't come in yet. Very few of us had any idea when to change lines, and very few of us knew each other's names or positions, resulting in constant chaos on the bench. One of my teammates asked, just before hitting the ice, what an offside was. My own first step onto the rink consisted of attempting to jump the boards, falling on my ass, and then slipping and falling again when I tried to get up. The opposing team--a comparatively well-oiled machine with matching snazzy jerseys on every body--had already scored on us twice.

Then we figured out that part of the reason the line changes were so messed up was that two different people were on the roster at two positions, one under their first name and one under their last. I was hastily reassigned to right wing to make up for the nonexistence of multiplicity. We settled on a system of line-changing that seemed to work. And I tossed off a no-look outlet pass that connected perfectly. You know when you have sex so great that you keep drifting off the next day remembering the best parts? Yeah, that pass felt good. Our band of misfits was hitting the montage ahead of schedule.

Alas, life is no movie. After 60 minutes (which actually is 60 minutes in beer league hockey; apparently ice time costs don't allow for intermissions or stopped clocks at stoppages in play), shots wound up being 37-17, and we lost 4-1. At one point we had three players in the box, and we were down 5-on-3 for eons. It was a pretty spectacular shellacking.

But I honestly did not care. I didn't take up hockey to win; I took it up because I love the game, I want to learn it better, and I'm never happier than when I'm on the ice. And I don't know if I can explain this to anyone who doesn't already get it, but when you tumble onto the bench all out of breath after giving your all on a shift, and your teammate whacks you in the shins with their stick and says, "Good job out there," it's... well, it's really something.

Afterwards, in the locker room, the captain read out all the penalties to tumultuous applause and the official bloody foam sword of honor was handed off to our MVP of the game (the hapless goalie). I ended up getting to bed around two in the morning, and woke up a few hours later itching to do it all over again.

Our solitary goal? Scored by #69. I don't know if I can summarize the experience any better than that.

Wednesday Night Pretense of Animosity

I’m absolutely fascinated by the cultural implications of this Wednesday Night Rivalry commercial.

It’s a series of slow-motion clips of NHL players winking, smiling, and throwing bedroom eyes at members of opposing teams–at first from a distance and then in the middle of checks and fights–while The Shirelles gently sing:

Tonight you’re mine completely
You give your love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
Will you still love me tomorrow

Flirting with gay innuendo is nothing new for the NHL, but normally it comes in one of two flavors: no-homo and derogatory. Either it’s slightly uncomfortable teammates laughing a little bit too loudly about their bromances, or it’s used as an insult to put down the opposition.

This is tongue-firmly-in-cheek, but the punch line is not platonic male friendship, and it’s not the inherent undesirability of being perceived as gay. It’s the absolute ludicrous beauty of sports-based animosity. This ad points at the culture-wide shared fiction of rivalries and says, “Guys, this emperor is butt-nekkid. Y’all fuckin’ adore each other.” The implication of homosexuality codes for true affection here, not for weakness.

And it trusts the fans to get that. If the NHL thought a significant number of viewers would interpret this ad as saying “hockey is incredibly gay,” it would not have green-lit this commercial. It could be seen as a PR risk for a major sports league to joke about its stars lusting for one another mid-headlock, and I think just a few years ago this shit would not have seen the airwaves. But now hockey fans as a culture are ready for that joke. They’re ready to quit defaulting to douchery. That’s so great.

Playing through injuries

NHL players skate injured a lot. It happens particularly often in the playoffs, for obvious reasons--but even during the regular season we're always hearing about guys playing with injuries and making them worse, and I'm sure there are way more that we don't ever hear about. A lot of hockey fans seem to think athletes who do this are admirably tough; I and most of the folks I hang out with think they're pretty dumb.

Well, I used to. Something happened today that shook up my perspective on this a bit. I was practicing eagle turns, a move Sidney Crosby uses during games a lot--I read this Justin Bourne article about it a while back and resolved to master it myself. Which, today, I did! I'd been able to execute the motion in a very slow and wobbly fashion for some time, but today something clicked and all of a sudden I could do it. Smooth and solid, every time.

If you've ever acquired a skill after eight months of trying, you know how awesome I felt. I was on top of the fucking world. I spent maybe twenty minutes just doing eagle turns in little figure-eights in the corner of the rink, quietly glowing with pride. I could do Sidney Crosby's thing! A thing Justin Bourne said he couldn't do! I could do it! I could probably do anything! Hell, maybe I could do a one-foot stop on my right foot now! I'd only been able to do it on my left foot last week, but pfft, last week my eagle turns had been awkward like a newborn deer. Last week was ancient history. I was a new woman.

As it turned out, I could not yet do a one-foot stop on my right foot, and in my excessive confidence I wound up wiping out pretty bad. My leg twisted inward and most of the impact hit the inside of my knee, and it hurt so much that for a few seconds I was worried I'd managed to really damage myself. But even while I was thinking that maybe something was sprained or broken, I was already hauling myself back upright.

In retrospect, that surprises me a lot. I'd have thought I would have the sense to give myself a moment to recover from the initial pain and determine how badly I was hurt before trying to stand up again, especially given that I wasn't in a high-traffic area. But no, in that moment my only priority was getting back up and finding out whether I could still skate. And in reflecting on that, I feel like I have a better understanding of NHL players who play through injuries.

I had been assuming that they did it for external reasons--because it's expected of them, because they're afraid of being judged as weak. And maybe that's true. I don't know what's going on in their heads, and a high-pressure televised professional game is a lot different from a tumble on a public rink. But I know that when I got up and took a stride on a knee I thought might be broken, I wasn't thinking about whether anyone was looking at me. That behavior was completely internally motivated. Mastering the eagle turn left me with a deep, adrenaline-fueled certainty that I can do this, that I am capable, that skating is a part of me; and the possibility of being hurt left me with an urgent need to ensure that all that was still true. I was riding a high of competence, and I had to cling to that.

I still don't think anyone should skate on an injury. I don't think I should have tried to skate on mine so quickly, though it turned out not to be too severe. Pushing through injuries doesn't make logical sense. But... well, I think maybe I get it.

11/14 ARI @ VAN game recap

Whew. We needed that.

Not necessarily the win itself, although we needed that too. And not the offense--we sure as hell need that, but we still haven't really found it, despite the 5-0 score. One of those goals came on a two-man advantage, one came on a high stick that should not have been a good goal, and we got lucky a lot. Overall our shots and offensive-zone time were pretty pathetic, and I don't think this game is indicative of five-goal blowouts to come.

But five-goal blowouts aren't our thing. Defense is. Our defense has been struggling painfully this season, and last night we really started getting it together. I'm not saying Smitty has been great, but he's looked way worse than he's actually been because of all the scoring chances our D has gift-wrapped for the opposition. When the backcheck has its shit together, the goaltending looks good, and Dubnyk rode that to the shutout. He had a few good saves, but the vast majority of the shots he saw weren't tough, and Vancouver didn't muster up much on the rush.

(I am not concerned about a "goaltending controversy." Tippett is a smart guy and he knows all this.)

Also, hey, hattie for Hanzal! I have now attended two Coyotes games live, and we scored a hat trick in each. Clearly I am a good luck charm and Arizona should be subsidizing my tickets.

Notes from the evening in approximate chronological order:

• I was amused by the border guard's incredulity at my reason for going to Canada ("Is it... normal for you to drive up here by yourself and back all in one night, just for a hockey game?") until he tried to trick me into revealing my true hockey ignorance by asking why I didn't just go to NHL games in Seattle. Come on, bro, that wasn't necessary.
• Traffic was terrible and I wound up being a bit late, so I tried to find the game on the radio to listen to the beginning while I was parking. I found six stations broadcasting hockey before I finally stumbled across one that had the right game. Seriously. Six. God bless Canada.
• The usher sent me into the section from the side opposite my seat, meaning I had to 'scuse-me-sorry-'scuse-me my way through an entire row of Vancouver fans during a stoppage in play. Their disposition toward me did not improve from there on out.
• I knew after Smitty's poor performance the previous night that Dubnyk would be getting the start, but it was still disappointing to see him sitting there on the bench in his sad little baseball cap. I really wanted to see him play. But it was for sure the right decision--I don't like playing the same goalie on back-to-backs even when he does do well the first night.
• God, I love live NHL hockey. After a while of watching the T-Birds and pickup games at my local rink, it's easy to forget how great live hockey can be. And the better I get at skating, the more I can appreciate the little details of how they move.
• The guy behind me kept calling his team "girls" when they were doing well and "guys" when they fucked up. Is that... a thing? It bemused me.
• "You're, uh, all alone there," commented the lady sitting next to me after I cheered Hanzal's second goal. She was correct. Later, we chatted about how irritating we find fans who get mean to their teams when they're losing, which has been a problem for me at T-Birds games. With all the dirty looks I was getting, I was grateful that she was so friendly.
• They showed a tiny fan on the jumbotron waving around a sign declaring this his first game. Poor kid.
• The dudes who yell "Shooooot" when the opposition has the puck in the neutral zone are always entertaining, but I think my favorite overheard heckle of the night was after Crombeen and Dorsett's scrap, when the penalties for fighting were announced and some guy who apparently had never been to a hockey game before indignantly wailed, "For FIGHTING?"
• I will never understand fans who leave before a game is over--did we learn nothing from It Was Four One?--but I really, really don't get leaving while your team is on the power play, especially given how good Vancouver's PP has been at home. 
• On my way out, a guy in a Coyotes shirt got up in my personal space and tried to convince me he was Shane Doan's cousin, after first implying that he didn't expect me to know who Shane Doan was. Wrong, sir: that is how you are doing it.

Overall not as exciting as the last game I came up here for, but with a much more pleasing result! I'm heading up to Vancouver for at least three more games this season--Arizona again next month, Calgary in January, and Pittsburgh in February--and I'm psyched. Though I should probably find out what a flashing green light means before I drive in Canada again.

Why ice girls are bad for business

So you're an NHL franchise exec, and some of your fans are making a fuss over your ice girls. They're shouting about sexism and poor working conditions, and they're attracting some attention. You have a decision to make: keep the ice girls the way they are, or make a change. What choice do you make?

The one that nets you more money, obviously. And these anti-ice-girl folks may be making noise, but take away the ice girls and you'll learn the meaning of the word "noise." You saw what happened in Philly. The fans have spoken, and the fans want ice girls, so this is a no-brainer, right? The ice girls stay.

Congratulations! Every hockey fan who takes the presence or absence of ice girls into account when deciding whether or not to buy NHL tickets--a group consisting entirely of two drunk nineteen-year-olds named Chad--will stay on board. Net profit from your decision: $145, minus the cost of replacing the seat cushion Chad smeared body paint all over.

Now take a step back for a moment and think bigger.

You know your fans aren't really going to make purchasing decisions based on whether or not they'll see sexy girls at the game. But here's who will: potential fans. The only cash that's really sitting on the fence here is in the pockets of people who aren't giving you money right now, but could be persuaded to; people who would love hockey if they had the chance to check it out, but haven't had the chance.

Here's the demographics of that group:

1. Women.

2. Men who don't identify with the dominant cultural definition of masculinity.

Guess how well the ice girl concept would poll there.

In professional sports, the market of men who feel entitled to look at women in cheerleading outfits is saturated. That kind of guy has already had ample opportunity and encouragement to become a sports fan. By the time they're grown up and making money, members of the give-us-cleavage-or-give-us-death camp already know whether or not they're going to come to your games.

The people who haven't made those decisions are the ones you should be thinking about, if you like money. And those people aren't going to look at ice girls and get tingly in their pants. They're going to look at ice girls, wrinkle their noses, and remember that there's a Buffy marathon on.

The things no one told me about sports

I embarked on the journey of becoming a sports fan in a state of near-complete cultural ignorance. Well, I say "embarked"; really, it was more like waking up in a pitch-black moving vehicle with a pounding headache and no idea where I was being taken. When had I started spending every second of my free time watching crappy streams of a game I didn't fully understand? Where had I gotten this sudden urge to scream at referees who couldn't hear me? Why did I suddenly care what a 'Fenwick' was?

I had no context for this. None. I'd never watched a sporting event of any kind all the way through. My firsthand experience with live sports consisted of one college basketball game when I was ten (I'd spent the whole time with my nose in a notebook inventing a curriculum for my spy school) and a Kansas City Royals game with my girlfriend's family when I was fifteen (I'd spent the whole time making out with said girlfriend, to general disapproval). Having grown up in the '90s, I was familiar with the name Michael Jordan, but I didn't know what sport he played. For twenty-one years, I completely tuned out everything that registered to my brain as sports-related.

I've met a lot of people over the last few years who came to love hockey as adults, like me. Most of them cite a friend as the impetus for their interest, someone who introduced them to the game and got them excited and answered all their questions. I did have hockey-knowledgeable friends to answer my questions, but nobody sat me down and explained how this all worked. I learned the rules of hockey by listening to the announcers and googling the terms I wasn't familiar with, and then reading Wikipedia articles I could barely comprehend.

It wasn't just the rules, though. I didn't only have to learn this sport; I had to learn sports. I didn't understand what a minor-league affiliate was, or the differences between an owner and a general manager and a coach, or what a salary cap meant. When I found out what it cost to buy a jersey, I was stunned. I got yelled at the first time I went to a WHL game, because no one told me to wait for a break in play to go to my seat.

And no one told me how much I would care.

I knew in the abstract that there were people who cared about sports, but it always seemed kind of performative to me, like they cared about it for the sake of having something to get worked up about. Sports in general always seemed like they existed for the sake of something to talk about, as a point of common interest with which to connect to other people. And yes, that's one purpose they serve; one that by definition is more visible to non-fans than the bone-deep, overwhelming caring I never understood until I felt it.

No one told me how much it would suck. I'd heard sports fans complain about losing streaks, but I'd always assumed it was like when terrible things happened on TV shows I loved--they might hurt to watch, but they were still well-executed, enjoyable in a perversely satisfying way. But no. That is not what it's like. There is no perverse satisfaction when my hockey team loses. There is no enjoyment.

And no one told me I wouldn't be able to dial it down. I never anticipated sitting between two people I love at a show I'd been looking forward to for months, dressed up as a glowing cloud, sullenly stewing over the outcome of a hockey game. You can't shut this off. When you're in this deep, you can't get out.

I've developed new interests plenty of times in my life, but this is the only time I've ever shifted the gears of my reality in a way that helped me grasp a whole slice of the culture I live in that I had never really understood or respected. Becoming a sports fan as an adult has allowed me to be aware of myself and to examine my engagement with the game--not objectively, I am sufficiently self-aware to acknowledge that, but perhaps more mindfully than if I'd grown up with it. And so I'm glad it happened this way. Even if I was woefully unprepared.

You never forget your first

Yesterday I drove all the way to Vancouver to root against their hockey team by myself, because my devotion to the Phoenix Coyotes finally, at long last, beat out my totally reasonable phobia of Canucks fans.

It wasn't actually my first live NHL game. A friend and I got SRO tickets to a Hawks/Canucks game in Chicago last month. But I spent the first half of the game circling the top of the arena searching for a spot where I could see the ice, and the second half being pestered by an entertainingly drunk fellow attempting to involve me in his plot to steal some unsuspecting elderly dude's nachos. I had a blast, but I didn't have much of a chance to really focus on the game. This time, I had a lower-bowl seat and no distractions, and I actually deeply cared about the outcome of the game. It was not the same.

I once had the misfortune of rooting against the Canucks in a Seattle hockey bar during a playoff game, which--combined with that whole rioting thing--led me to expect all kinds of abuse at this game. In fact, the only people who interacted with me directly were a sweet old couple sitting behind me who wanted to chat about where I'd come from, two people who apologized to me for pedestrian near-collisions that were both actually my fault, and a child who saw me plodding out of the arena in my Coyotes gear after the game and apologized to me for his team winning. (God bless Canada.) Everyone was very respectful, far more so than the fans at Thunderbirds games, although that's not much of a bar to hop. Maybe the entire fanbase just Hulks out for the playoffs, I dunno. Anyway, clearly the ragged bloody tips I painted on my nails to warn off attackers were overkill.

It was intense, after years of devotedly watching the Coyotes onscreen, to see them in person. I went down to the glass for warmups, which I didn't get a chance to do at the Hawks game, so even aside from it being my team, it was awesome to be that close to NHL-caliber players doing their thing. But knowing these guys, recognizing every number and face, right there in front of me... yeah, it was a lot. And watching Mike Smith deal out a series of gorgeous saucer passes six feet away from me? Not letting go of that image anytime soon.

Then he played the actual game, and, well. Okay, but here's the thing: I am invested in Mike Smith's success as a goaltender mostly because if he doesn't succeed, I won't get to see him play. I want him to play well, but that's really secondary to watching him play, and while he didn't do great in this game, he sure as hell did him. Puckhandling, pulling risky shit, getting into a puck battle along the boards at one point, and then that hilarious thing he does when the puck is flying way over the net and he leaps two feet into the air to try to snatch it. And he did make some killer saves. I would have liked to see more of them, of course, but honestly, all the rest of it is what I really wanted to see from him.

Some more thoughts from the experience, in approximate order:

• The customs guy at the border into Canada was very suspicious and asked a lot of questions testing the legitimacy of my interest in hockey. I know it's not a good idea to be snarky in that situation, which is the only reason I didn't say, "I don't think today's combinations have been reported yet, but I can rattle off our lineup from Friday's game against Edmonton if you want."
• Canadian cheap-ass beer is a lot tastier than American cheap-ass beer.
• Shane Doan, unsurprisingly, was the one who interacted with fans the most during warmups. He smiled at me, but he did it in the process of skating in between me and Smitty, so I dunno what weird hero-worshippy emotions may have accidentally caught him in the crossfire. Sorry, Doaner.
• Vancouver's ramp-up video was truly ludicrous. And I saw Chicago's ramp-up video.
• The anthems were sung by Ugandan kids. It's already pretty silly to involve patriotism in a sport where the composition of nationalities on a team has essentially nothing to do with the actual location of the team, but when you present the patriotism by way of people from another continent, the pointlessness is overwhelming. They were cute, though.
• Rogers Arena contains an unsettling number of white people. I don't think I saw a single non-white person in the crowd the entire time I was there.
• I think it is illogical and counterproductive to distract your team with noise mid-game, especially at key moments when focus is crucial. Yeah, guess who was screeching her fool head off when Kennedy and Halpern had a golden opportunity three minutes into the game. I screeched a lot, actually. Sigh. I'm giving myself a pass for first-time enthusiasm.
• I screeched accurately, though. I wasn't the person in my section yelling "Shoot!" when the puck was behind the net. I did at one point say "Nice keep!" right before the ref whistled it offside and got a few smug looks, but the ref was in fact wrong and Michalek did in fact keep the puck in. (I checked GameCenter just now to be sure I was right on that--yep--and was amused to hear McConnell also compliment the keep on the play-by-play in that same split second before the whistle sounded.)
• I thought this game would be low-scoring, since the Coyotes haven't been great offensively lately and the Canucks have been awful, and the last time these two teams played each other the score was 1-0. But no, Vancouver was so trigger-happy that they weren't satisfied with scoring on just one net; they were the perpetrators of two of the three goals credited to Vermette. Thanks, guys!
• It was cool to see the team interactions the cameras don't pick up. Like when Smitty slid his empty water bottle across the ice to the bench and somebody slid back a full one, and it broke open when it hit his stick. And the kinda douchey way they all skated around treating the ice crew like an obstacle course during commercial breaks.
• Our penalty kill continued to kick ass, as it's been doing lately. That said: Jesus Christ, guys, stop taking penalties. Especially right before the end of regulation. I wasn't screeching during the 4-on-3 in OT because you have to be able to inhale to screech.
• I wish Klinkhammer had been out there instead of Bissonnette. BizNasty can be fun on the interwebs, but he is not a reason to road-trip alone across international borders. The Colonel is a player whose on-ice success I'm actually invested in, and I was bummed that he got scratched.
• One thing it's hard to really get a good sense of on TV is speed. Brad Richardson, incidentally, can fucking book it.
• A Canucks fan behind me was confused about why everyone kept booing their goalie when he made saves. I think this should have been grounds for jersey confiscation.
• I am so fucking frustrated with our zone entries. Sometimes I turn off the sound when I'm watching the Phoenix feed on GameCenter because Tyson Nash is such an idiot about it. "Dump the puck! Don't get fancy!" No, we already dump the puck way too much. Please, get "fancy" and make an effort to actually maintain possession on the way into the zone.
• The game-winning goal was a rebound off a really nice save that I was already applauding when the puck went in. Urgh. But our possession was better, we came back from a two-goal deficit twice, we took it to OT, and Vermette got first star of the game, so. Not the worst Coyotes game I could have chosen for my first.

I can't afford to visit Vancouver every time my team plays there, but man, after this I wish I could. Or that expansion would come through for Seattle. Come on, Bettman, I would make such terrible financial decisions for you if you'd just give me the chance.

Let's celebrate; it's all right

And that is all I have to say about Nail Yakupov and his goal-scoring-related joy.