Hockey Day in Michigan

With the football season over and March Madness a month away, what's a sports fan to do? Well, where I'm from at least, this is hockey season.

I haven't caught many games this year (mostly because they're on some channel I have no idea where to find) but I'm a big Red Wings fan. Like most anyone who grew up in the area I did around the time I did, I couldn't help but be swept up in the events of a few magical summers spent chasing the cup. Not of the past few years, the ones before the lockout anyway, when the Red Wings became the Yankees of the hockey world. Just superstar signing after signing and you expected them not just to complete but win, year in and year out. But before that? Well, they were the Tigers. Last year's Tigers – the ones from before their miraculous season. Just horrible. My father had season tickets that he shared with a few others at his law firm. And every so often we'd head down to the Joe and catch a game – the taste of rink nachos, all corn and gooey bright orange cheese, is hockey to me the way a the smell of a good stadium dog from the Corner will always be baseball. At the absolute worst, they had maybe 2000 people in the stands on a good night. And they'd give away cars just to get people to show up. We lost those tickets around '89 or '90 or so, when my father's firm moved out into the suburbs to follow their clients. It's a familiar story around my hometown. But anyone who's a Red Wing fan is slapping themselves in the forehead right about now. Because that's when the big red machine really started to roll.

I was a bit too young to realize it at the time, though. It was those playoffs in '94 and '95 that really cemented me as a hockey fan. It was the struggle to get past those hurdles and finally win that cup – at the time, the Wings hadn't won anything since the 50s. We couldn't even use that as a rallying cry because the Rangers had us beat. No, to be a Wings fan then was to be watching a team on the cusp of greatness who just couldn't quite pull it together. Then they won the cup. It was an electric feeling around the city. And in one gut wrenching moment, it was all taken away. And, then, of course, the next summer they went out and won the cup again spurred on by that tragedy and, I'd like to think, the raw emotion of their fans.

Anyhow, I mention this because tomorrow is Hockey Day throughout Michigan. Tomorrow morning, there's going to be an open skate at the Joe. And then a practice season free for the public to attend (And, yeah, they can actually get money for that sort of thing in the exhibition season.). And that night, it's going to be a showdown between UofM and MSU on that very same ice. Along with high school games today and around the state and plenty of other activities to enjoy. So, it seems now is a good time to start caring about hockey again.