Monday, December 18, 2006

terribly early in the morning

A Very Merry Hockey Hanukkahmas

Leigh-Ann and I are going to our annual midnight Las Vegas Wranglers game tonight (11:59p) - it’s our only holiday gift to each other, since finances dictate that we explore only the giving to others this holiday season.  And even then, I think everyone might be surprised at the odd creativity that was necessary to get this year done.  Enough about that, here’s a story that was in the Canadian newspapers about our midnight hockey tradition:

Las Vegas prepares for annual midnight game

JEFF BRENNAN

Canadian Press

Leave it to a city that never rests to start a hockey game at midnight.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Las Vegas Wranglers of the ECHL will hit the ice for a home game at 11:59 p.m. (all times PST). This time they’ll play host to the Bakersfield Condors on Monday.

The organization came up with the idea as a way to reward a segment of its fan base that can’t always make it out for home games at the regular start time of 7 p.m.

According to some estimates, a third of Las Vegas workers are employed by the gambling industry. Since many casinos are open all night, some hockey fans who want to attend Wranglers games often miss the 7 p.m. starts at Orleans Arena.

“Some [casino] workers don’t have anything to do at midnight so they’re there at the game,” Wranglers president Billy Johnson said from Las Vegas.

While Johnson is into his second season as president, he’s become well acquainted with a holiday tradition that began in 2003.

The game is held on the Monday before Christmas.

“It was done to coincide with Christmas, so our goal was to get out as many different people as possible,” Johnson said.

The late December start is ideal as young fans are on their holiday breaks from school.

Johnson feels the game gives kids an opportunity to enjoy watching hockey at a time when they would usually be in bed.

“We’ve had the weirdest combinations. Grandparents, parents and kids. People in pyjamas,” Johnson said.

Marketing the game hasn’t required much effort, Johnson added. Since its inception, word of mouth from fans who have attended the game has helped get the news out. Yet the team still uses traditional methods.

“We’ll hit the airwaves with TV spots between 12 [a.m.] and 4 a.m.,” Johnson said.

ECHL commissioner Brian McKenna likes what the Wranglers are doing.

“Las Vegas is a unique sports market and the game has been quite successful,” he said from the league office in Princeton, N.J.

Since the ECHL has many teams in non-traditional hockey markets, unorthodox promotions such as the Las Vegas midnight game are more common.

“Some of it’s a little off the wall. But the last few years these things have worked for us,” McKenna said, citing an event like the teddy bear toss that more than a few teams have employed.

Johnson said the Wranglers have also toyed with the idea of starting some future home games at 10 p.m. to further capitalize on the casino worker demographic.

The players themselves don’t mind throwing their routines out of whack every once in a while.

Wranglers defenceman and captain Mike McBain is a veteran of the midnight games, having played in the first three.

What’s different about playing at that hour?

“It’s more of the unknown of getting out of your routine. Everything gets pushed back five hours,” McBain said from Las Vegas.

The pregame skate takes place at around 3 p.m., while the pregame meal is eaten between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.

After that the 29-year-old from Kimberley, B.C., plans to take a quick nap at around 7 p.m. and arrive at Orleans Arena for 10 p.m.

“[The game] is good for the casino workers who are fans who don’t have normal shifts,” McBain said. “We like doing it for them.”

The Wranglers, the ECHL affiliate of the Calgary Flames, have a 2-1 record in the previous three midnight games. They beat the same Bakersfield team in overtime in the inaugural edition, lost in a shootout to the Fresno Falcons in 2004 and last season defeated the Long Beach Ice Dogs, also in a shootout.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

late at night

A Long Tedious Story About How I Became A Hockey Fan

I was cleaning up my desktop and I found a private message that I’d written to someone about how I became a hockey fan.  I took out a few off-topic personal asides and I shall post the rest.  I’m pretty sure I haven’t explained in this much detail here about how I become a hockey fan.  Since I have some work to do, I thought I’d be lazy and use something old, yet descriptive.

It all starts way back in my childhood (see, I told you) - I was born and bred to love baseball, basketball and football. All of my brothers played baseball, high school & college; and I played softball, also high school and college. My brothers played Pop Warner football and I played basketball when we were kids. We all developed an aversion to soccer - we were never much for running around without a purpose, plus the game is so slow. So, being that we lived in Southern California, we felt the same way about hockey. Sure, we watched Olympic hockey, but that was the extent of our hockey watching. We’d decided hockey was boring and that was that.

Fast forward twenty or more years - I met Leigh-Ann, the evil Canadian. Although, for the first good bunch of years of our relationship, her being Canadian was mostly limited to her weird pronunciations of words like scone and has-been and the fact that her parents could send us my new favorite addiction, Canadian chocolate. Coffee Crisp, how did I live without them? After the “war” though, things started to change. I started to look at Canada in a more enlightened way - any country who didn’t support the “war” was looking better and better to me.  Last September (Frozen Fury 7, September 27, 2003) , I went to my first hockey game…to make Leigh-Ann happy. I was going to suffer through it, all in the name of a happy household. We saw the pre-season Avalanche/Kings game at the MGM Grand. Sitting in front of us, three guys dressed as pimps. Sitting behind us, a couple who had just gotten married and were still in their wedding clothes. Sitting across the arena, five or so guys together, dressed as Elvis. Sitting at glass level, a really wealthy looking Asian couple. The woman seemed to feel that every time the players ran into the boards, they’d end up in her lap. It was very entertaining. I still had no idea what was going on on the ice, except that there were a ton of fights and penalty minutes. I had no idea who the players were and really didn’t care. I was entertained. I thought, “That’s nice, maybe we’ll come back again next year.”

A month or two later, we found out about NHL Center Ice and Leigh-Ann was totally beside herself that she could see Hockey Night in Canada while still having lovely mild winters. At first, we watched mostly to see Don Cherry & Ron MacLean (I love him - he reminds me a bit of Leigh-Ann’s dad) and to make fun of the accents on the local commercials. We really did fast forward through the games a bit and watched all the commercials. Nutty, I know. Slowly, we started watching more hockey - the Leafs, of course. It could’ve turned out that Leigh-Ann was a Senators fan like her brother-in-law (he has glass level season tickets), but no, she was a Leafs fan. I slowly started to figure out some of the rules, but I hate not knowing what’s going on, so we bought Hockey for Dummies to clear up some stuff. After a while, I started looking forward to watching games. My family was (and is) horrified. Heck, we even started going to the Las Vegas Wranglers games (our ECHL team) - it was fun and they have a great brand new arena. I digress. So, I started enjoying the Leafs games. And, of course, with enjoying games, you start to figure out who players are. I saw Tie in a bunch of fights and unlike the other enforcers, he looked like he was having fun doing it. No one else smiles during their fights. I figured he was either having a great time or he was insane. lol So, I picked my favorite player. I have a tendency to pick little fast guys as favorites anyway - when I was a kid, Davey Lopes & Ron Cey (he wasn’t overly fast, but I was a third baseman) were my favorite baseball players and Mercury Morris was my favorite football player. When we played football on our street, I was Mercury Morris. I have three older brothers and lived on a street that was basically all boys (next door, they had five boys, no girls), so sports in the street was a requirement.

Yeah, so I decided Tie was my favorite player. Sports aren’t fun for me if I don’t have a team or favorite player to root for. As an example, much to my mom’s chagrin, I’m rooting against the Lakers in the finals. I think they’re spoiled obnoxious babies and they’re nothing like the Lakers of my childhood. So, I’m rooting for the Pistons and I’ve picked Ben Wallace as my favorite player for the series. I like his big hair…and the fact that he looks like he’s actually trying when he plays. Anyway, back to Tie.  I like how he plays, that he cares and has a good time. I didn’t look up anything about him online though, except for going to a couple of hockey fight sites because I didn’t know who Bob Probert was. My complete knowledge of hockey before Fall was maybe a handful of names throughout NHL history. I read lots of sports books, so I have a general knowledge of Hall of Fame people in most sports.

The sports stuff ends and then I start blathering on about “Buffy” and “Angel” and our neighbors and so on.  I’ll spare you.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

the wee hours

Maple Leafs & Dodgers Video Walls

It’s creeping me out that John Bolton keeps showing up in the one of the boxes.  It’s not fair, I chose the Dodgers, not incompetent & mean jerks who represent us at the UN.  Anyway, try it yourself at http://www.blinkx.tv/home

 

Saturday, November 11, 2006

late evening

HNIC, er Las Vegas

Story to follow, after we watch the taped Hockey Night in Canada Leafs/Canadiens game.

(updated) This is the story following.  Today we went to a Sports Licensing convention that had more cool sports stuff than we had time to see in three hours.  We got NHL cards, Maple Leafs magnets, Maple Leafs photos, the above-pictured Maple Leafs goalie mask, some bbq sauce/ketchup/Heinz 57 sauce (there was a tailgate section - Leigh-Ann will have the pictures of the cool trucks with bbqs and tvs attached), and our new prized possession - a one-of-a-kind Maple Leafs scoreboard clock.  It was a prototype and they’re not being sold anywhere.  They sell them for NFL, NBA and MLB, but not NHL for some reason.  It has the time, date, and temperature.  Again, Leigh-Ann will have the pictures.  (update - I linked to the pictures, but remember, they’re cell phone pictures, so the quality isn’t amazing)

I thought it might be silly to wear my Maple Leafs Tie Domi t-shirt, but it was apparently the right decision.  If you want to get hockey fans or Maple Leafs fans specifically to chat with you and give you stuff (or give you good deals), wear Leafs clothing.  Two chants of “Go Leafs Go”, several discussions about Tie Domi, and a discussion about how the Leafs will do while Mats Sundin is out with his elbow injury, got us some neat things.  It didn’t hurt that it was the last day of the convention and most of the people were from out of town and didn’t want to have to pack up and carry extra stuff.  We learned about this at CoffeeFest and SuperZoo - no one wants to carry extra stuff home.  Especially if it’s heavy and not very valuable; i.e., hockey cards, and bbq sauce.  Luckily, the goalie mask could serve as a bucket for holding things because not a single booth had a bag.  It’s the first convention we’ve ever been to where there were no plastic bags with logos on them.  I guess because it was a licensing convention, mostly everyone was there to talk about the products and make deals, not sell trinkets.  By the way, the result of how the Leafs play without Raycroft, Sundin, and Kubina?  Fine.  They beat the Canadiens 5-1.

Friday, November 03, 2006

late evening

Helly, This One’s For You

The first two periods of the game were dull as a dirt, and we were surrounded by small children (in the first and second rows!!!), but the pretzels and cheese made up for that. 

And then, the third period started with the Wranglers down 2-0.  They looked slow and not very, uh, team-y.  Then, in the last twelve minutes, I believe it was, they scored four goals and won 4-2 over the horribly logoed Victoria Salmon Kings.  Whooo!