Four things I know about hockey:
One, you can be penalized for boarding, charging, elbowing, holding, hooking, high-sticking, roughing, slashing, spearing, tripping, cross-checking and butt-ending, whatever that is.
Every play looks like all of the above.
Two, the puck is made of vulcanized rubber. That’s somewhere between a golf ball and a baseball. Don’t try to catch one with your teeth.
Three, after 71 games, the 2017-18 Tucson Roadrunners should still be in the introductory process. Their coach, Mike Van Ryn, is in his first season. So is general manager Steve Sullivan. Fifteen of the 20 players active Wednesday night were not in Tucson a year ago.
But the Roadrunners have been so good, so soon, they have made their presence known like a puck to the teeth.
Four, if you wore skates Wednesday night and are from Ontario, Canada — 12 Roadrunners were born there — about 4,500 fans at the Tucson Arena cheered for you the way Tucsonans used to cheer for bull riding Hall of Famer Jim Shoulders at La Viesta de los Vaqueros.
Dainty, it ain’t.
Everybody loves a winner, even if they don’t have the slightest idea what “icing” means.
The Roadrunners iced the San Jose Barracuda 6-0 in Game 3 of the Calder Cup playoffs Wednesday, everybody wore white and it was fun from start to finish.
Everybody but Wayne Gretzky seemed to score.
“I hope people see how fun it is and what it can be like in this building,” said Van Ryn. “It was fun. I’m glad we were able to put on a show like that for the fans.”
When the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes moved their Springfield, Massachusetts, American Hockey League affiliate to the Tucson Arena two years ago, my concern was that the novelty of pro hockey in Tucson would soon melt.
One variable I did not consider was that the Roadrunners would barely need a warm-up lap before they started winning big. They won the AHL’s Western Conference regular season championship, drew 150,000 fans, sold a ton of beer at Tucson Arena, and everything changed.
Now it’s on Tucsonans to get educated.
The Roadrunners own a 2-1 series edge over the Barracuda and need to win either Friday or Saturday to advance to the Pacific Division finals against the Texas Stars. After that — if there is an “after that” — the Roadrunners could play the wonderfully-named Manitoba Moose, or maybe the Rockford IceHogs.
Doesn’t that sound fun? What were we going to do in May anyway?
If we’re fortunate, if the Roadrunners can sustain their winning hockey, Tucson could be engulfed by Calder Cup fever the way hockey fans of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and Grand Rapids Griffins are — fans who have followed hockey for so long that they were probably on a first-name basis with Frank Calder, the first president of the NHL.
This is so unexpected.
On opening night, Oct. 7, the Roadrunners were awful. They gave up four goals to the San Diego Gulls in the second period and lost 7-6. A month later they lost to the Gulls 8-3.
After that, the Roadrunners didn’t crack. It’s telling that their most lopsided win of the year, Wednesday night, came in the season’s most important game.
“There’s a lot of will in that locker room,” said the Roadrunners Lawson Crouse. “It speaks to the character of our guys.”
Tucson’s previous crack at professional hockey was in another life, 1975-76. A rich guy from Pennsylvania established the Tucson Mavericks, got them a spot in the reputable Central Hockey League and worked out a lease with the still-new Tucson Convention Center.
The Mavericks were awful. They went 14-53-9 and averaged 2,187 fans per game, about half of who got in free.
Of course, Tucson was about a third of today’s population, but pro hockey didn’t stand a chance no matter what the population was in 1975. The Mavericks general manager quit mid-season to take a position with the National Baseball Congress in Wichita, Kansas.
Really.
The Mavericks head coach was fired before Christmas and was replaced by a guy who, at year’s end, said he did not get all of the paychecks due to him. The Mavericks folded in June and stuck the TCC with $40,000 of unpaid rental fees.
It took about 40 years for the debris of pro hockey to be cleared from Tucson’s consciousness.
In record time, the Roadrunners have restored our faith.
