About Crows

The History of Hockey in My Town

17 T h e Hi s to ry o f H o ck e y i n My Tow n I don’t know how fast he was driving that Friday night; and, no, I don’t know the year. It was after “Old-Time Hockey” Eddie Shore reacquired the franchise, renamed it the Indians, and dropped the first puck wearing a flowing feathered headdress. After a one-year stint by the New England Whalers, captained by a gray-haired Gordie “Mr. Hockey” Howe, who briefly brought to town the Howe Hat Trick: awarded to any player who could boast a goal, an assist, and a fight in a single night. It was years after the Indians moved to their own new home: another staid civic center meant to revive a downtown in a depression men on ice couldn’t rescue it from. Like any local historian, I can tell you what the event followed, and I know what it preceded. I can plot the car ride on a timeline and fix it between all we agree on as “certain.” It was before the PVC piping below the ice surface clogged with the residue of cold ammonia for the last time, and no one had the funding (or cared enough) to replace it. Before games gave way to trade shows, county fairs, and the annual Shriner’s circus. Before the Hartford Whalers took the name of a natural disaster and relocated to North Carolina, to capture the Stanley Cup that had eluded them up north. When high school hockey games were the only ones played at the Eastern States Coliseum and draft beers were fifty cents a cup. And a few men who still remembered nights of standing-room-only, when coaches played, came to sway in the wooden bleachers and spiral into the deep spell of melancholy some mistake for wisdom, repeating to themselves all night, something like: We built the walls because we loved the space inside. When one of those men stood you heard peanut shells no longer swept after each game crack beneath their boots, and when one of them put his hand on the shoulder . . . No, one knew better than to put his hand on the shoulder of the man staggering forward and back, trying to bundle three boys in winter coats before stumbling toward the station wagon in the parking lot. One knew better than to look at him too long in the face, or to say anything besides See ya. 18 Like any local historian, I’ve deduced the points in both time and space. Between the coliseum and our home on Hungry Hill, that night my father took the merge sign on the I-291 on-ramp too literally and drove onto the median to bend it—suddenly—off our front windshield: a single moment in the history of hockey in my town. Eddie Shore, Marcel Paille, Brian Kilrea. Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty. Eddie Shore again. The Indians, Kings, Whalers, Indians again, and finally, a cartoon Falcon. A secret pact among men in a dark driveway: some nigger must have smashed it in with a baseball bat while we were inside cheering for overtime. ...