“How much pain do you need to feel?
How much shame do you have to conceal?
There is no sunshine, just endless nights
Nobody’s there, nobody cares when you cry”
“Poisonous Shadows” – Megadeth
There comes a time for most Hockey fans where just watching their team at the local rink isn’t enough, so steps are made to watch the game on a more global and higher level. This usually involves adopting an NHL team, where along with getting a weekly live Hockey fix, number of happy (and in most cases, countless unhappy) hours can be spent watching games broadcast from the other side of the pond.
To some, a choice of team is easy. As mentioned in a previous post, those that already follow the North American game have a multitude of reasons for nailing their colours to a particular mast, be it family connections, an ex-player playing for a particular club, playing as the team in a video game, etc. For those that fancy taking their fandom into the post-Elite season (and in some lucky cases, into the months of May and beyond), here’s some suggestions and ideas behind picking a team (for those that just don’t have enough disappointment in their lives already…)
“Keep it in the Family”
Pretty straight forward, but if you’ve a better-half or family member that already follows a team, that can be a pretty good option (and could potentially save arguments in the long run).
On the flip side: ‘er indoors son had the misfortune of inheriting my fandom of the Toronto Maple Leafs, around about the time that he started to really get into the sport and had the double misfortune of this being the mid-00’s, just after the season-losing lock out when their fortunes went into freefall (at least I’d seen such things of myth and folklore such as long Playoff runs, being a contender, etc, so it wasn’t so bad for me). However, there was the occasional (albeit brief) highlight such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdkJs_bOqXU ), that we still talk about to this day. Yep, when it comes to bonding either with your partner, friends or even potential step-children, Hockey can sometimes be a great asset…
“When East Meets West”
Insomnia sufferers can feel free to skip this part. One of the advantages of following an East Coast team is that face off is usually around about midnight UK time (and non-Toronto fans sometimes have the added bonus of matinee games played at even more reasonable hours – something I’ve only known happen a handful of times to the Leafs in all my years of following them, one of them being last season when they celebrated their centenary and I managed to watch a game at 7pm (something that would be very easy to get used to). Word is that schools in the area watched the game as part of their day. I admit that it is a little sad to say that I was impressed. Almost as impressed as the story I once heard that an episode of “Coronation Street” was delayed one particular evening (although I believe that it’s not uncommon) as a particular NHL game went to overtime
On the flip side: With West Coast games starting at about 3am, I guess you can plan on having an early night, getting up in the early hours and simply going to work when the game ends. The only downside of that I can see is that I’m usually in a bad enough mood when I arrive in the office in the morning, but on the back of watching my team lose? Can’t see that working too well…
“Location, Location, Location”
If you’re intending to take in a home game at any point in the future, I guess the ideal thing to do is plan a holiday around it. With that in mind, certain cities certainly lend themselves to tourists more than others. This can come in handy when trying to convince prospective non-Hockey following better-halves into spending a few days in a particular city, entirely coincidentally when your team has a home game, obviously. I mean, what are the chances?
On the flip side: Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that for example Pittsburgh is a wonderful place to visit but can’t really see it being on Judith Chalmers (ask your parents) list of favourite places to take a holiday…
Favourite Player
I held (a now pretty much disproven) theory for a long time that a large number of Storm supporters were also Penguins fans due to the Frank Pietrangelo connection. As much as we aren’t really seeing as many ex-NHL players in the Elite League as we did in the old ISL days, the occasional name does still come through (I have memories of seeing Jay Rosehill playing in a Leafs shirt for example), so here’s another option.
On the flip side: Once again, as mentioned in the post “Leaving Here”, this can back-fire if said player then leaves to join a rival team (as mentioned in said post, I sulked for about a week when Curtis Joseph left the Leafs to join the Red Wings)
For more inspiration, “Ice Hockey Nights in Europe” by Jonathan Northall is well worth a read. A book compiled from the stories of NHL fans from this side of the pond, it offers an interesting look into the experiences of fans of “the show” and how we suffer to follow our respective teams (including a number of entries from yours truly)
Hopefully that’s of some help. Unlike die-hard followers of “Game of Thrones” , us UK based NHL fans know only too well the feeling of crushing disappointment in the early hours of the morning….
Drumming Up A Storm 