Red Hot Hockey: The Fan Experience

[nr53]

I had a few idiots come over to my group and start calling out "Sucks to CU" at us and just countered with the obvious "Sucks to BU". Fisticuffs were avoided by finding common ground that harvard does indeed suck :-}

[RazzBaronZ]

I'm really glad I sat in the student section (320-330s).  The band was easily heard and the fans were into it; we're the ones who started the sieve...vacuum... cheer.

I think that anyone who wasn't happy with the crowd would have loved it had we not been taken out of the game so early on.  The place would have been as loud as anything.

[evilnaturedrobot]

[quote ugarte]You can tell how much someone really cares about the hockey by how much they notice the facetimers. As far as I'm concerned, an obsession with the so-called undesirables and one's Faithful cred is a different form of facetiming. Just watch the goddamn game and stop worrying about who else is there with you. If you want more noise, make more noise.
[/quote]

Oh come now.  So the countless posters that have complained about the subject have all secretly been pretending to care about hockey just so they can come on this website and prove to other hockey geeks how hardcore they are?  Please.  I came to Cornell a hockey fan, I play in my spare time, I go to games to watch hockey, but that doesn't mean I'm completely oblivious to the atmosphere around me.  

There is something very special about the atmosphere that a good crowd generates, particularly at Lynah.  What's wrong with wanting to preserve that?

And I'm not looking to call out individual fans based on their 'faithfulness', honestly I'm happy as long as you're there on time and interested in the game.

[evilnaturedrobot]

[quote RichH][quote evilnaturedrobot] At no point on Saturday night did I feel that anyone else around me was living and dying with the team.  There's a fundamental camaraderie to the Lynah experience, and that's lost when those standing around you don't seem to care.

And call this silly, but I've always felt that we, as a fan base, have a reputation to live up too.  It bothers me when we fall short.[/quote]

I get that, really I do, because I was there once.  At some point I just stopped caring what other people thought of me or my fanbase.  I go to hockey games to have fun, not to perform...I'm not going to be someone's dancing monkey.  We're not paid at games to put on a show.  I'll call a fellow Cornell fan an asshole if they're being an asshole, and I'll laugh when others do something funny.  And I'll scream my head off at the on-ice action because I get very involved in the game.  Chants and cheers are part of the fun in-between play.  If others want to blog that what we collectively do is great or lame or overhyped, so be it.  I just don't care.[/quote]

I think the reason that I hold the 'Lynah Expiriance' so dear is because it's what sets college hockey and cornell hockey apart from the pro game that I've always followed.  It's a fundamentally different experience because of the crowd, the camaraderie and the enthusiasm.  Now what's happening on the ice always comes first, but the crowd is important to me.

In contrast, I was at the Stars/Ranger's game on sunday afternoon and the fact that the crowd was somewhat dead didn't bother me, because I've never considered that to be a major component of non-playoff pro hockey (Rangers/Devils, Rangers/Islanders being a notable exception.)

[quote RichH]
No doubt, I think my enjoyment of the MSG game was because I happened to be surrounded by a lot of other fun fans...we stood, we cheered (and groaned) together.  Nothing we did really could be heard halfway across the arena.  If people want the full "Lynah Faithful" experience, they're going to have to go to Lynah.  The road fans this year haven't been as large-in-number or as loud as usual, but I'm not going to change how I enjoy a game based on any kind of reputation.

There's a reason there were so many +15 (and up) ticket groups in the MSG roll-call...and it's the camaraderie that you speak of.  It's too bad you weren't near one of those.[/quote]

Most of the people I stand with at Lynah don't live in the New York area and couldn't make it, that certainly made a diferance.

And please understand that I had a lot of fun on Saturday night.  But I did have criticisms.

[Josh '99]

[quote krose]And it isn't.  But there were a few things that really stood out as in need of serious updating: (snip) tiny bathrooms with *huge* lines between periods (snip)[/quote]On the bright side, at a typical Rangers game, the lines are almost exclusively at the men's rooms; on Saturday at least they were a bit more dispersed.

[Josh '99]

[quote RichH]Beer.[/quote]Wait...  there was beer?  Why didn't anyone tell me?

::drunk::

[Dpperk29]

[quote Josh '99][quote krose]And it isn't.  But there were a few things that really stood out as in need of serious updating: (snip) tiny bathrooms with *huge* lines between periods (snip)[/quote]On the bright side, at a typical Rangers game, the lines are almost exclusively at the men's rooms; on Saturday at least they were a bit more dispersed.[/quote]

I thought [Insert engineering school here (Clarkson is my case)] was the only place on earth that had lines for the mens room...

[Jordan 04]

[quote Dpperk29][quote Josh '99][quote krose]And it isn't.  But there were a few things that really stood out as in need of serious updating: (snip) tiny bathrooms with *huge* lines between periods (snip)[/quote]On the bright side, at a typical Rangers game, the lines are almost exclusively at the men's rooms; on Saturday at least they were a bit more dispersed.[/quote]

I thought [Insert engineering school here (Clarkson is my case)] was the only place on earth that had lines for the mens room...[/quote]

In my experience, it's a fairly common occurrence in sold out sporting events, particularly in New Yorks many 40+ year-old crap box facilities -- Giants, Shea, & Yankee Stadiums, MSG, etc.

[redice]

[quote Josh '99][quote krose]And it isn't.  But there were a few things that really stood out as in need of serious updating: (snip) tiny bathrooms with *huge* lines between periods (snip)[/quote]On the bright side, at a typical Rangers game, the lines are almost exclusively at the men's rooms; on Saturday at least they were a bit more dispersed.[/quote]

And, speaking of bathrooms, they could use more bathrooms.   Sitting in the 300 level, the men's room was not exactly what I call nearby.   In fact, on one of my "trips" I decided to go off in the opposite direction looking for a possibly closer men's room.   I walked a very long way and saw no indication of any other men's rooms.   In the one men's room that I found, the number of "facilities" was amazing small in number.   What's with that?   Don't Rangers/Knicks fans ever have to pee?   I suppose that's a topic for another thread.    :-)

[dbilmes]

I'm glad someone started this thread. I thought it was a great atmosphere for college hockey and enjoyed everything about the experience except for the game itself! I was standing all game in Section 330, where the fans were constantly chanting and cheering. I didn't splurge for the $7 program, but I thought the montage on the scoreboard between the first two periods of Cornell hockey greats and the timeline of Cornell hockey was wonderfully done (much better than BU's boring tribute to Jack Parker between the second and third periods). The size of the Cornell contingent was impressive. I don't think I've ever been at a hockey game with such a large number of Cornell fans. It was more Cornell fans than we even get in Albany when we make the ECAC finals. Who cares if not all of them were diehard fans? They were wearing red and cheering for the Big Red! I agree with Bill Howard that doing this every year won't work, but I'd love to see it every 3-5 years. And I appreciate the fact that the Garden stopped the canned music once the game began so we could hear the pep bands during play stoppages.
The last time Cornell played at the Garden was for the ECAC Holiday Festival during the mid-70s, and those games had a morgue-like atmosphere with about 6,000 fans in the Garden. This was much better.
Given a choice between sitting with a few hundred diehard Cornell fans at the Florida tournament or having an atmosphere like we had Saturday night, I'll take the Red Hot Hockey any time!

[ugarte]

[quote evilnaturedrobot]
Oh come now.  So the countless posters that have complained about the subject have all secretly been pretending to care about hockey just so they can come on this website and prove to other hockey geeks how hardcore they are?[/quote]
Not "pretending" and not "just" but ... kinda. Trust me that the number is well below "countless."

[Killer]

[quote ugarte]You can tell how much someone really cares about the hockey by how much they notice the facetimers. As far as I'm concerned, an obsession with the so-called undesirables and one's Faithful cred is a different form of facetiming. Just watch the goddamn game and stop worrying about who else is there with you. If you want more noise, make more noise.

[/quote]

Unfortunately, sometimes you can't help but notice facetimers.  I had an extra ticket to the Harvard game, so I invited a friend who I knew hadn't seen a game in person in who-knows-how-many years.  We had seats on the glass and he had a great time, got into the whole spirit of Lynah East.  But as we were leaving he told me that the one thing he couldn't stand was the guy in the row behind him who spent the entire game talking to 2 friends about real estate, mutual funds, vacations...pretty much anything but hockey.  Being a couple seats away, I was spared, but this particular friend, and another sitting between us, said it was one of the most annoying experiences they'd ever had a game.

25 minutes after the game ended, after we'd hit the restrooms, talked to people about plans for the BU game, said our good-byes to friends among the Faithful, and finally made our way to the exit, I look back and the guy is still sitting there yakking at his two companions.  I was tempted to back and tell they guy that there had been a hockey in front of him and that it ended long ago.  But you know, he just wasn't worth it.

[evilnaturedrobot]

[quote ugarte][quote evilnaturedrobot]
Oh come now.  So the countless posters that have complained about the subject have all secretly been pretending to care about hockey just so they can come on this website and prove to other hockey geeks how hardcore they are?[/quote]
Not "pretending" and not "just" but ... kinda. Trust me that the number is well below "countless."[/quote]

Well countless is an exaggeration (to be fair, the community on this board is too small for any group to be countless) but the point is that this is not something that just a few of us have brought up.

As for 'kinda', I don't buy it.  There's certainly a sense of superiority displayed in many of those conversations, but I just don't think that anyone who takes the time to actually post on a board like this would care more about what's going on in the stands than on the ice.  It is quite possible to be concerned with both.

[ftyuv]

[quote ugarte][quote evilnaturedrobot]
Oh come now.  So the countless posters that have complained about the subject have all secretly been pretending to care about hockey just so they can come on this website and prove to other hockey geeks how hardcore they are?[/quote]
Not "pretending" and not "just" but ... kinda. Trust me that the number is well below "countless."[/quote]

I didn't want to be the first to say it, and I'm certainly not going to get dragged into a discussion on quantifying ratios of caring-about-the-game to caring-about-seeing-people-who-just-care-about-being-seen... but for the record, I agree with ugarte.  Some people are there to watch hockey, some people are there to look cool, some people are there to look down on people who are there to look cool, and the fact that the former is a superset of the latter doesn't make the latter less lame.

This message brought to you by the association of obfuscation.  And now I'm going to go back into lurking.  PM me for details or bonepicking.

[Damn, one leftover contraction from a revision in sentence structure, and my post is forever blemished with an "edited" mark.]

[billhoward]

[quote Josh '99][quote RichH]Beer.[/quote]Wait...  there was beer?  Why didn't anyone tell me?

::drunk::[/quote]

Anyone sitting under the BU parts of the balcony would have been quickly aware. Thank goodness the spillage hadn't yet been consumed.