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.