Meanwhile, the coast of my other home, Los Angeles, may also be in the finals and I suddenly find myself with a rooting interest. Watching the damn games, along with the 19,000 other hockey fans in Los Angeles. Combine that with the 19,000 hockey fans in New York and you'll understand why Stanley Cup finals are never a ratings bonanza for television.
But, I digress....
You'll note the photo above from decades ago. The New York Islanders raising their Stanley Cup in victory. Gee, are they even still around? Back then, I cared and wanted to revel in the moment.
As if it would make any real difference to me. Because, ultimately, I lost complete interest in the sport. After a short but tumultuous ten-year career as a hockey fan.
Yes, I used to be a hockey fan. And not because I was a devotee of skating prowess or the ability of some goalie masked like Jason stopping 200 shots on goal in one game.
Nope. I became a hockey fan mainly because I was desperate to fit in.
Isn't that always the case?
As a kid, my only exposure to hockey was that it occasionally aired on WOR Channel 9 during the winter and pre-empted "Million Dollar Movie." If they were airing an Abbott and Costello movie that week, this was a problem for me. I tried to watch the game but it went so fast that I never saw the puck.
In high school, I met my first hockey fan, who was also a New York Rangers season ticket holder. I'd hear about all the games in the cafeteria during lunch hour. Or, until I completely tuned him out. What the hell is an Eddie Giacomin anyway?
I would soon find out. I went to college. And discovered that Fordham University, which apparently grew hockey fans by the bushel. Working at the college station, WFUV, hockey was almost as popular as breathing. There were more Ranger season ticket holders. There was almost a game the previous night that had to be discussed ad nauseum. For God's sake, they even got behind the Fordham University Hockey Team, which played their games at midnight in the Bronx-Riverdale rink.
If that wasn't bad enough, the guys played hockey in the radio station hallway, using either brooms or somebody's crutches (they was always somebody nursing an injury) to shoot at the appointed goalie who was staring in front of the "net" or door jamb.
What's a non-hockey fan to do?
Well, if you can't beat them, you better join them. It just so happens that the pals I gravitated to were in this penalty box of life. They lived and breathed hockey. I started to inhale and exhale myself.
My college roommate was one of those fanatics with tickets for every Ranger game at Madison Square Dump. I made the half-hearted gesture. Gee, if you ever have an extra....
That happened pretty darn quickly. I soon found myself in a nose-bleed seat one Sunday night, cheering for a sport I knew nothing about. I was told that my first game in-person was pretty darn special. There was a penalty shot and that never happens. Wow, lucky me. I was still trying to find out who Jean Ratelle was.
I feigned fandom pretty good because, thanks to this cadre of college chums, I was at more hockey games than you can shake a high stick at. I even found up on a road trip to Montreal, for Pete's sake. The Vatican of the National Hockey League. I'd hit my knees to pray if I knew what the hell I was doing there in the first place. Oh, yeah, I need to be part of this group of friends. Meanwhile, I'd stare blankly at the ice. Which one is Vic Hadfield?
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I had an even better connection. The league expanded and we were given the New York Islanders, who made their home out in Long Island. This was my opportunity to adopt my own identity with this sport. Just like I had done with baseball. When the rest of my neighborhood were cheering for the Yankees, I adopted the Mets. Now I could counter the Rangers with my own ragtag bunch of guys missing at least three teeth.
I started to follow the Islanders. They had no history with the sport and neither did I. A match made in Ottawa. I now belonged.
Sort of.
As I watched more hockey, I started to understand it.
Sort of.
I never could tell the difference between penalties. And I could never keep track of line changes so I would never know what player was skating when. But these were my boys. Screw you, Brad Park. I had Mike Bossy!
Still, there was something a little unconnected about it all. I wasn't really a true hockey fan. I was merely playing one on television.
When a bunch of the hockey crowd decided to share season tickets for the Islanders, I joined in. Now my desire to be included had a price tag. For the next three years, I found myself driving all the way to Nassau County from Westchester about twenty times a hockey season. In driving rain. In blinding snow. In a complete daze.
I had gone into sudden death overtime in my efforts to be a hockey fan.
Imagine how consumed I became when the Islanders quickly became a respectable franchise. And actually played the hated Rangers in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Not only was I super-engaged in the proceedings, but I actually was now in a competition with the people who had sucked me into the sport like a Hoover vacuum. Oddly enough, the Islanders took only about seven or eight years to actually win the Cup. At the time, the Rangers and their rabid fans had been waiting since Lincoln first went to Ford's Theater. Ultimately, they would win one. But, at this very moment, the Islanders were ahead of them.
And I relished it all.
Or did I?
It was a nice feeling for me. But it certainly didn't have the same sensation as when the Mets won the World Series or when the football Jets won the Super Bowl. I was connected, but only in the loosest of terms.
And, as soon as the Islanders won it all, I lost interest. I was less in touch with that college crowd of hockey mavens. I had established more important identities in the world.
As quickly as I had cared, I stopped. And completely lost touch with the sport of hockey.
Calendar pages fly off. Months and years later, I am in Los Angeles. And a good friend and I decide to go to a Los Angeles Kings game at the Staples Center. Tickets were easy to get in those days. We went as a lark in seats right next to the penalty box. It was a completely different perspective of the game. There was a Kings player who shared my last name. He scored the first goal of the game.
I felt myself being drawn all over again. By the end of the third period, I was thinking that a casual relationship with the Kings might be in the cards. Hmmm, maybe I get one of those ten-game ticket plans. They were getting me.
A month later, the hockey players' union went on strike. They did not return for a year. That killed any chance of Len being seen regularly at a hockey game ever again. Just when they think they have you, they don't.
So, I hear about the finals and this wonderful bi-coastal match-up. I will look in. And cheer on the Kings. Or the other team playing the Rangers.
Or not. Because, when it comes to me and hockey, the most often used adjective is really "ambivalence."
Dinner last night: Bacon burger.
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