Posing with the Calder Cup

Today, I posed for pictures with the Calder Cup. I got the call that the cup was making the rounds of Cedar Park and I dropped everything and ran for a chance share the stage with some hardware. I smiled, the cup shone. For the last 70 years this trophy has gone to the American Hockey League team that wins the league championship. For a few hours, the cup was making appearances to promote the championship series between the Texas Stars and the Hershey Bears.

I first got interested in hockey when the National Hockey League added a team in Washington, the Capitals. They were dreadful. They set records for futility in their first two years. Watching the Capitals in the 70's was the worst advertising the league could have imagined. What no one realized was that watching those truly futile efforts was less frustrating than some of the trials that loomed as the team evolved. I became a hockey fan when Rod Langway became a member of the Capitals. All the jokes about golden gloves on skates went away when you watched him skate. It was Langway that made it clear that to play the game on an upper level, first you had to be a really good skater; not just good, but a strong enough skater to keep you balance on the ice while other large people were doing everything they could to send you sliding down the ice. All professional athletes have special skills, but hockey players impress me with this combination of strength and agility that is completely removed from anything I could even dream of doing.

The Capitals improved and started qualifying for the season ending playoffs. I am fortunate to have seen playoff competition in professional baseball, football, basketball, soccer and hockey. There is nothing like playoff hockey for the intensity of each moment of the game, the emotional roller coaster for the fans and players and the sheer volume of sound in the buildings where these games are played. In my view, the best playoff ticket is Stanley Cup playoff games in the NHL.

I left the Washington area in the late 80's and have not been to another NHL game but I have followed the misfortunes of the Capitals in all of my travels. The spring of 2009 brought a fantastic series of games between the Capitals and the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. The first six games were amazing for the quality of plays from both teams.

At the time, Cedar Park, Texas was preparing for the arrival of the AHL and the Texas Stars. The head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau was very involved in promoting the city and its efforts to make the Cedar Park Center a success after their major investment in the building. She had no previous experience with hockey and we had many conversations about hockey as a game and specifically about the leagues and players. When I became glued to the television to watch the playoff games, she did not show much interest until the Capitals and Penguins started their amazing show. That was the moment that she became a hockey fan; the moment she wanted to understand that icing did not only go on cakes.

I recovered from the disappointment of yet another collapse by the Capitals and the summer provided the views of the Center construction finishing. Our conversations turned to the first year of hockey in Cedar Park and the games that we would be able to see close to home. We talked about the Hershey Bears winning the Calder Cup. We talked about the affiliation with the Capitals and the future Capitals that were beginning their careers in Pennsylvania. I remembered my trips to Hershey when we would visit my grandparents and the wonderful smells that filled the air around the chocolate factory.

We agreed that when Hershey played in Cedar Park, we would go. I remember explaining that the Stars and Bears would not play each other unless it was during the championship round of the AHL playoffs. This information did not seem to dent her enthusiasm in the least. I cautioned that new teams usually needed some time to get to know each other and come together before they made serious challenges for cup winning seasons, so I did not feel that we would be watching my second favorite hockey team playing in Texas any time soon.

I am now in the delightful position of eating those words, fortunately served as a decadent dessert. The Stars have been a wonderful surprise all year and have earned their chance to unseat the defending champion Bears. I have warned everyone that I will be the one person in the stands that is cheering when the Bears score goals; that I have enjoyed the Stars all year but watching the players who have played so well in Capitals and Bears sweaters will be my reward for patience. Of course, if the Bears cannot find a way to repeat their championship run, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that the team I have watched this season finished their remarkable rookie year with possession of the Calder Cup.

Seventy years of AHL history and forty years of personal history have come together in the hill country of Texas. I am also just a little bit jealous that a hockey fan that I helped to create is enjoying this level of instant success. There is no justice in a world that demands that some fans suffer through years of futility while others never feel the agony of loving a loser.

The Calder Cup Attends a Party

Watch party number 5. The bad news is that the Hershey Bears did not look the terror of the regular season and lost. The good news is that Texas Stars found a way to win the first game of the AHL's final series. I did not wear a Bears sweater to watch party, it was too hot for that kind of attire, but I wanted to. At the beginning of the season, there were lots of folks wearing the colors of all manner of teams to Stars games. Now it is the green and white of the Stars that dominates.

The first watch party was on a lovely Friday night when the Stars were playing in Chicago in the second round of the playoffs. It was held in a local sports bar and it was packed. The parking lot was filled with pick-up trucks decorated with Texas Stars flags and decals. The crowd spilled out into the patio and beyond. I don't think that many people attending that night were drawn by anything other than hockey as the crowd was definitely making lots of hockey game noises and everyone was trying to push for the best angles on the many flat screens. The first watch party did not even slow down when the game went into overtime as most stayed to see the Stars get the goal that sent them home happy.

The second watch party was also in a local restaurant and the result was the same, lots of decorations, lots of fans and an overtime victory for the Stars. The video feed for the games in Chicago was not much to talk about. One camera moving up and down the ice following the play. No replays, no close ups of worried coaches, attractive fans or cute kids.

Fortunately for Stars fans, their opponents for the Western Conference finals were a Canadian team. Hockey fans in Canada expect television for all their games, even the lower level leagues. The feed for the watch party from Hamilton was a big improvement with multiple camera angles and replays of the important plays. Significantly, the Stars moved the watch party into the Cedar Park Center so that more fans could see the game. There were roughly 1,000 people spread across one side of the arena as the Stars and Bulldogs played the deciding game.

I know that I am not the only person who has brought my interest in hockey with me from some other area. As I was waiting in a concession line, the gentleman next to me was fretting about the number of shots on goal the Stars were giving up. I tried to ease his troubles by explaining that I had just endured watching the Capitals lose a series where the outstanding play of the opposition goal tender had negated an overwhelming shot advantage for the Capitals. He looked at me and said, I am a Bruins fan… (For those who have not followed the National Hockey League playoffs this year, the Bruins won the first 3 games of their series only to have the Philadelphia Flyers pick themselves up and win the next 4 ending the Bruins season.) Like me, he was watching his adopted team in an effort to soothe the disappointment. We shook hands as I told him that I could feel his pain.

At the other end of the spectrum were the two young women sitting in front of us who were both wearing hockey jerseys, one was from the Buffalo Sabres and I did not recognize the other. We asked her about the sweater and they laughed while explaining they did not know anything about hockey, and had borrowed the jerseys from the their brothers. Typical Texas Stars crowd, full of people who learned about the game in other places and just as full of people finding an enthusiasm for the game on this level of play. I think it makes it easier to explain why icing is not called when you are defending a power play when you know that they really want to know why. There may be a lot of teaching going on at Stars games, but the support for the team is remarkable. The noise from those 1,000 throats could easily have been twice that many when the Stars scored in the third period to take the lead for the first time that night. In the end, the Stars were outshot by a 2 to 1 margin in that final game but outscored the Bulldogs by that same ratio.

For the first game of the finals, Nathan Costa of the American Hockey League, stood guard over the Calder Cup while the fans got a look at the coveted prize. The Stars expanded the available seating, a good idea as attendance increase from the last watch party, to a side and one end zone of the arena. The Hershey broadcast crew (all the games in Texas will be available on television in central Pennsylvania) provided a great video feed. Oddly, for the watch party last night, you could not see the ice surface. The floor of the arena has been covered, carpeted and filled with rows of folding chairs. Not only is it hockey playoff season, it is high school graduation season. The cities around Cedar Park are delighted to have a building large enough to handle their graduation exercises without having to make the 20 mile journey in to Austin. The first of the ceremonies were held last weekend and there are more to come this weekend.

Once the last diploma has been handed out, Cedar Park Center will prepare for another crowd rooting for the Stars and one person sitting on the back row hoping to hear the Bears roar.

Melting the Chocolate

There are times in a person's life when events have just become too overwhelming and the only thing left to do is curl into a chair with a large package of chocolate in one (or several) of its many delightful forms. After watching the Hershey Bears lose to the Texas Stars twice in three nights surrounded by excited and boisterous fans in Cedar Park, Texas, the chocolate of choice is a Hershey bar with almonds, tears and sour grapes.

There will be a list of firsts when the Stars and Bears take the ice for game number 3, and most of them are not specifically hockey related. This will be the first time that the Cedar Park Center crews will have 24 hours to removed the floor, seating and stage that have covered the ice serface for the last two weeks. It is unlikely that planning included having the Stars still in the playoff picture this late into June. To make this task more interesting, the daytime highs have been in the mid 90's (mid 30's C) for most of the last month. More heat has been applied to the ice from the standing room only crowds that attended the procession of high school graduations over the weekend.

The Saturday night game in Hershey set an attendance record for the Bears and tonight will establish an attendance record for a game in Cedar Park as the standing room tickets went on sale after the two wins in Pennsylvania. A brief note on attendance figures for American Hockey League teams during this years playoffs, only Manitoba and Hershey (both with twice the Cedar Park capacity) have higher average attendance for their home games. Average attendance will be over 5,000 when the final games have been played. It is also likely that the number of stressed patrons will hit all time highs for remaining games as well.

The CPC, like all start up businesses, can expect to be hit with various issues on their learning curve. For example, the first game of the second round of playoffs was also the first day of the spring that the temperature was above 95 degrees. There just was not enough air conditioning to cool the building and by the time the game began, you could clearly see water puddling on the ice in hope that it would freeze. Scheduling 3 or 4 high school graduations on a single day has caused the local school districts to hear from disgruntled parents about difficulties in parking and traffic flow and the heavy building usage may well show up on the ice surface again.

Start up businesses also know when they have found a hot item. In this case, it may be that the coolest place in town is the CPC trying to keep the ice from melting. It certainly is wonderful to leave the swelter of the early evening behind and sit in a chilly hockey arena. The watch party for Saturday's second game of the Calder Cup Finals was expanded again. Three sides of the arena were open for seating (the fourth still held the stage for the graduation exercises) and more of the regular game features were back even though the play was on the jumbo screens. The horns were sounded for goals and the goal scorers were announced on the public address system. The lighting around the arena flashed the power play and penalty kill logos and of course the Ice Girls had their T-shirt launcher for between period entertainment.

Both on and off the ice, Cedar Park is showing growing pains to the cheers of a lot of hockey fans. There is no evidence that they even notice the group over in the corner of the building sulking with a Hershey bar.

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