(Anthony J. Causi)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — My favorite line about hockey fans and hockey playoffs comes from John Madden, the ex-Devil who always kept enough of the fan he used to be growing up in the Parma Court housing projects in Toronto to understand what he saw and what he heard every April.
“It isn’t just that hockey fans are nuts,” he told me once, “it’s that we’re proud to be nuts. It’s that if you looked at us and told us we weren’t nuts, we’d get in your face and scream, ‘What the hell do you mean I’m not nuts?’”
Yes. Only in hockey can calling someone three bricks shy of a load be considered a term of endearment, but for those of you who will spend the next few days, weeks or — with luck — months living and dying with the Rangers or the Devils or with whomever your hockey team of choice is, you understand. You get it.
I sent an email to an old college friend whom I know to be a fanatical Sabres fan the other day, after Buffalo’s manic rush for the eighth seed came up short with a gut-slashing loss to the Flyers. I received an automated response, the kind you usually get when someone’s on vacation. All it said was this:
“Not talking today.
“Not e-mailing today.
“Not eating today.
“Not sleeping tonight.”
And the next day, I got the same reply. But you know that. The hockey playoffs are the most intense time of the year to be a fan who cares about a team. Yes, baseball and basketball and football inspire their own intense devotions, and nobody will accuse you of being a slacker fan in any of those games. But hockey is different. For one thing, the games themselves are different starting now, a different level of caring and intensity and passion.
For another, hockey itself is just different. On so many levels, almost all of them charming. What other sport gives you the three-star system every game, the kind of thing that seems like it was dreamt up by kids playing street hockey? What other sport gives you the playoff beard, which turns the on-ice team photo for the eventual Stanley Cup champion into a ZZ Top convention? What other sport has something as quirky as the Cup itself as its ultimate prize, with the promise of every team member taking it on a tour for a day through a hometown’s restaurants, saloons and God only knows where else?
Seriously: Can you imagine Derek Jeter tossing the Commissioner’s Trophy into a pool somewhere? Can you imagine Eli Manning dining with the Lombardi Trophy at the empty seat to his left? Can you imagine Carmelo Anthony with the Lawrence O’Brien trophy … well, at all?
What other sport has a jingle as cool as “The Good Old Hockey Game”?
Oh, the good old hockey game
It’s the best game you can name
And the best game you can name
Is the good old hockey game …
So this is what we’ve got ahead of us as a hockey community the next few days, weeks, and months. This is what the Rangers will begin to chase this week at the Garden, what the Devils will chase starting on the road in a few days. If we’re lucky, maybe they will even run into each other along the way, which would be delightful since it’s been too long since we had a good, old-fashioned hockey holy war in our midst.
Those who remember Islanders-Rangers from the ’70s and ’80s, and who especially remember Devils-Rangers from 1994, understand: In terms of sheer numbers, it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, what the 2000 World Series was, or what we imagine a Jets-Giants Super Bowl would be. But for those who really care — and among hockey fans, that includes just about everyone — it would be the most spectacular gift we could receive this spring.
From the good old hockey game.
Whack Back at Vac
Chris Freeman: This is what Carmelo Anthony said to Dwight Howard at the end of the Knicks/Magic “game” on Thursday: “Look, you’re doing great, you’re doing great. One or two more like this, trust me … he … will … be … gone. Trust me on this.”
Vac: Is there a secret handshake for the He-Man Coach Killer’s Club?
@NJDevils26: Can you talk to someone at the NCAA about perhaps starting the championship game later next year so halftime is at midnight?
@MikeVacc: It would be nice to be able to watch the “One Shining Moment” bit in a place other than Joe Franklin’s old timeslot.
Mark Peters: The Rangers are the best team in the East for the first time since 1994. Walking the streets of Manhattan, I rarely see anyone wearing any Knicks clothing. Is it me or are the people who work for the New York daily papers the only people that really care about the Knicks?
Vac: The Rangers will get their due, and soon. But when Knicks-Celtics went head-to-head with Rangers-Bruins on free TV a few weeks ago, the basketball drew five times the audience as the hockey in New York. Someone cares.
Brad Rosenberg: Thank you for your column today about the Mets. I have definitely lost my way as a Mets fan during the offseason. I was thinking of making my 4-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son Red Sox fans. This snapped me back into place and now I remember what it is all about.
Vac: I just hope you aren’t spitting at the column come July. Or May.
Vac’s Whacks
I must say I am shocked — shocked! — to discover that Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino is something less than a paragon of virtue. I’m sure this would be equally surprising to Falcons owner Arthur Blank, though he probably hasn’t stopped laughing the last three days long enough for someone to ask.
* So Nick Saban is the coach of your reigning college football champions, and John Calipari is the coach of your reigning college basketball champions, so I have to believe that whichever college baseball team that Lord Voldemort is managing has to be the consensus favorite to take the crown in Omaha this June, right?
* I simply don’t think it’s possible to create a better 30 minutes of network television than what we got from “Community” a couple of nights ago with their “Pillows and Blankets” episode.
* I understand that nobody likes what Dwight Howard has done in Orlando, and he has behaved badly. But if you or I had done what Stan Van Gundy did Thursday — selling out a superior, boldly, brazenly and unabashedly — would we have made it as far as that night before being pink-slipped?