Running 2022-23 NHL thread

Mine eyes have seen - er, ears have heard - some stupid crap out of Jack Edwards' mouth, yet no one at NESN does anything about it.

 

Tage Thompson with four of the Sabres’ six first-period goals. Just got his fifth late in the second — Dave Andreychuk has the only other five-goal game in team history.

 

Only the second US-born player with five. Mark Pavelichi s the other.

 

Bad enough for the Preds to be losing. Worse when the Lightning are wearing these clown show sweaters.

 

To protect and (ob)serve.

 

Truly crazy that Letang was back in the lineup Saturday, just 12 days after suffering a stroke, and it wasn't his first. He sat out for about two months when he had his first stroke in 2014.

Letang, 35, returns after 2nd stroke as Pens win

 

I wish I could say this wasn’t true but I just saw this promo on Fox:

“Is the woke NHL alienating its fans? Tucker faces off against the NHL’s power play tonight.”

 

Is he going to have Theo Fleury on?

It’s interesting how crazy Theo is, and it’s completely ignored by the hockey media in Canada. Out of kindness, I suppose.

 

Something near and dear to my heart. The Hurricanes will wear replica Raleigh IceCaps jerseys for their warmups on Jan. 10 for Carolina Appreciation Night.

I was the IceCaps' first PA announcer for the 1991-92 and 92-93 seasons -- mainly because the team had no one else who had seen a live hockey game, let alone knew anything about the rules. They played in a converted horse judging barn on the N.C. State Fairgrounds property, the only arena available that had permanent seats and a concrete floor that could contain a rink. (I think I got paid $30 a night.)

It was considered a novelty the first year, especially with all of 5,670 chairback seats available, but as people came to watch, they kept coming back and bringing their friends. By the end of the first season, they were scalping tickets outside!

I wish I could say I had much to do with it, but the accoustics at Dorton Arena were atrocious. It was a round concrete structure with glass windows, which meant everything echoed like crazy. And warm, humid nights meant a 50-50 chance of continued on-ice fog. So I just sounded excited a lot and hoped that might encourage the crowd.

The hockey wasn't great, but coach Kurt Kleinendorst kept adding better players and they went pretty far in the ECHL playoffs by Season 3. Plus, they had built in rivalries with the Greensboro Monarchs, Winston-Salem Thunderbirds and Hampton Road Admirals. Sometimes there were more fights than goals but the fans were into it.

Maybe the Canes show up when the ESA was built anyway, but I happen to think Raleigh doesn't even get mentioned as a hockey town without the IceCaps.

 

Are they bringing you back? Oh,and great story.

 

I think the IceCaps had something to do with Raleigh getting an NHL team. The fact that Peter Karmanos didn't want his team playing in a mall anymore had something to do with it, too. Also, the Hartford Whalers had nowhere to spread out being wedged between New York and Boston. Not a problem in Raleigh ... where the NHL's Hurricanes and NFL's Panthers were smart enough to use "Carolina" to embrace the region, not just the city.

Dorton Arena is where I caught my first-ever hockey game. School days. One of the goalies didn't give five-holed ... but paid the sort of price where the groans echoed throughout the awful acoustics of Dorton.

To further highlight maumann's point, Dorton Arena is, in essence, the centerpiece of the N.C. State Fairgrounds. But it's an easy walk to the ESA and Carter-Finley Stadium from Dorton, right down Trinity Road.

The area has warmed quite a bit to hockey, but to be blunt, not as much as I think is warranted. I have a couple of sports fans in the family. One officiated soccer for a number of years, and she knows there's plenty of connective tissue between the sports. She fully understands some of the basics, but the nuance is still missing. The problem is the Triangle is still a D-I fishbowl with three ACC schools within 3o miles of one another. The marketing department of the Carolina Hurricanes has done yeoman's work building the fan base and showing people that it can get behind one professional team (they have had numerous promos involving colleges and have sold team caps with various colors of the Triangle schools and East Carolina University as well). They've had to work infinitely harder than anyone at the Carolina Panthers to spread the word. Nothing but kudos to them ... we can only hope that Tom Dundon - who is cheap everywhere except actually paying the players - realizes that going too lean there is going to cost him more money than it would to continue staffing the cause.

Thanks for sharing, maumann. Quite the trip down memory lane.