from Mark Lazerus of The Athletic,
It’s all funny now, now that there’s a five-story photo of Sebastian Aho on a North Hills office building, now that the parking lots — $40 a car, thank you — are filling up two hours before the game with tailgaters, now that the very foundation of PNC Arena shakes as 18,680 towel-waving fans scream deliriously before puck drop, now that the Carolina Hurricanes are in the Eastern Conference final for the second time in five years.
It was slightly less funny at the time.
Like when Paul Maurice looked out the window and realized the Hurricanes were landing in Greensboro instead of Raleigh, because the pilot thought the team still played there. When, in Maurice’s words, “We just about killed the pig mascot,” as Stormy’s performer had a seizure as he waited to burst out of the Zamboni. When the Hurricanes had a practice rink that didn’t have showers. When a freak snowstorm in the team’s first season left the Greensboro Coliseum empty. Well, almost empty.
“The ref comes over, says, ‘Paul, you can’t talk like that because everybody can hear you,’” Maurice recalled with a laugh.
That was the Carolina Hurricanes in the late 1990s, when Maurice was coaching the relocated Hartford Whalers instead of his current team, the Florida Panthers. Those Canes were garage-league. Rinky-dink. Mickey Mouse. A gong show. Choose your favorite derisive hockey term, and it probably fits. And yes, they were more than a little embarrassing — all the things that the hockey bluebloods in Canada, the American northeast and the upper Midwest sniff through clenched jaws when talking about “small markets” and “non-traditional markets” and “sunbelt teams” during their evening brandies.
So amid all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth following Toronto’s loss to Florida, and Edmonton’s loss to Vegas, and New Jersey’s loss to Carolina in this year’s playoffs, there was a clear strain of hockey classism. A down-the-nose condescension in the guise of performative concern for the league, that having four southern cities comprise the NHL’s final four was bad for the league, bad for hockey-related revenue, bad for television.
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Having been to a game there (albeit 2008 when Hossa was on the team) the tailgating is what stuck out in my mind. Its like a college football game is around here.
The arena was nicer too (but 15 years could have aged it) with open concourses to the ice. That is something I hadnt seen before then.
The trafficwell lets just say if there is a 3 lane expressway and a minor fender bender on the right shoulder. The fire trucks come out and block 2 additional lanes of traffic in that area. And that expressway doesnt exact move by the airport there anyways.
but you never have to worry about parking with that arena which is setup as the overflow lots of the college football stadium next door and vice-versa.
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