Thrashers 5, Maple Leafs 0, My Heart Won

“It’s really cold in the arena,” my best friend warned me.

“Like hoodie weather?” I asked. It was November in Georgia, and mostly we didn’t need to cover up beyond that.

“Colder,” she said.

I probably made a face, but I gave her $10 anyway to pay for my seat in the 400 section.

(I’d later find out this price was a steal: seats in the back row of a Canadian hockey arena cost $90 apiece. But this was the American South, where hockey is a curiosity, not a way of life.)

We took the train to Philips Arena and spent an hour before the game chugging 32oz beers. They cost $4 each. We got nicely buzzed, and then we tottered up — way, way up — to our seats.

The nosebleed section, it turns out, is a great place to watch a hockey game. Gameplay is fast, faster than I’d anticipated. The puck skitters and bounces from one end of the ice to the other. Players dash and slide around it, accelerating at breakneck paces, slamming into one another and darting away almost too fast to keep track of. Sitting perched at the tiptop of the arena with a bird’s eye view actually helps you keep your eye on the game’s relentless movement.

That night, the Atlanta Thrashers were facing off against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The arena was packed with people, and it was still cold as hell. I huddled down in my jacket and watched the puck fly back and forth.

It was a good game, but at first nothing special. Marian Hossa scored for Atlanta in the first period. A celebratory horn sounded; giant metal bird heads shot flames way above the ice. We could feel the heat radiate.

Nobody scored in the second period. This isn’t that unusual — hockey is a low-scoring game. That’s part of the thrill. I watched the puck, and I tried to figure out penalties and the rhythm of the game.

My buzz wore off by the second intermission, but the excitement that replaced it was better.

Marian Hossa scored again less than two minutes into the third period, driving hard to the right side of the net, then crossing in front and hopping over the goalie. We cheered from the tip-top of the arena as he slammed into the glass in celebration. His teammates swarmed around him, hugging him and bumping their gloves affectionately against his helmet.

The Thrashers weren’t a very good or consistent team, I’d been told. But when they were on, they were on. That goal sparked something. The bird heads shot their flames and the team caught on totally metaphoric fire.

I couldn’t yet identify offsides but I winced gleefully every time a player took a big hit, held my breath every time goalie Kari Lehtonen denied the Leafs a scoring chance. I watched as Scott Mellanby and then Brad Larsen scored goals within seconds of each other.

It was 4–0. We were definitely going to win. We were already a “we” in my mind, less than an hour of regulation play into my first game.

Two minutes later, Lehtonen plucked a puck out of midair while looking in the opposite direction.

“That was fucking incredible,” I breathed to my best friend.

“Right?” she said back.

And then we saw something rare and wonderful: on a power play, with three minutes left in the game, Marian Hossa maneuvered the puck around all four Leafs players to score his third goal of the night.

They call that a hat-trick, and it made the arena erupt with wild abandon. Fans threw their hats onto the ice, hundreds of hats, flying over the glass. It took forever for the ice girls to scoop them all up with giant shovels so the game could resume. We yelled our joy for those last three minutes, until the clock ran down, and it was official. We’d beaten Toronto in 5–0 shutout.

The Thrashers had clinched the win and my heart. I was in love, and there was no going back.

—

Why do sports make spectators into an “us”? I’ve put ice skates on my feet like twice in my life. I’ve never held a hockey stick. I have literally no desire to do so. I don’t even like being cold, for god’s sake. But I love screaming at and cheering for players I’ll never meet, on rinks I’ll never step onto. I love the smell of the air, the sounds of skates cutting up the ice, the crash of players checking each other into the boards. I love the fights and the chirps and the way P.K. Subban cellies.

I don’t love the Thrashers anymore. I can’t, since they were relocated and renamed in 2011. (It turns out that $10 for a ticket isn’t just a steal — it’s an unsustainable business model.) The Winnipeg Jets still have a lot of the players I got to know in Atlanta, but they just aren’t the same team to me. It took me years to get over my heartbreak at losing my hometown boys — most of whom came from Eastern Europe — but this year I decided to give hockey another go.

I root for the Dallas Stars now. I’ve been to Dallas once, completely on accident, and I never left the 3-mile area surrounding the airport. But they’ve become my “us”. I’ve been writing this article while watching an early season game against the Vancouver Canucks. We won on the strength of Kari Lehtonen’s goaltending — the same skillful midair snags that I saw in action that night in Atlanta, eight years ago.

Lehtonen’s career has been plagued by groin injuries and other setbacks. The Dallas sports media actually began this season wondering if we should worry about him being our weakest link. But he was indomitable tonight, stopping 43 out of 46 shots on goal, proving all of his detractors wrong.

No.

That’s the kind of story I can get behind, and Dallas has more like it. They’ve got them in spades.

They’ve got a wild tale in Tyler Seguin, the party boy who was traded away by Boston after one too many unflattering appearances on Deadspin. He spent last season in Dallas becoming besties with serious and soft-spoken Jamie Benn, the 129th draft pick of 2007 who’s diligently worked his way up to team captain and “face of the franchise.” Tyler and Jamie really do bring out the best in each other — an adorable case of “opposites attract” that even makes sportswriters gush romantically about their “chemistry.” Together they were among the top ten point scorers in the NHL last year.

Reformed party boy makes good? Reserved leader figure learns to love loosen up? I’m here for it. I’m so here for it.

—

And it turns out I’m not the only one. From my college BFF to the women I tweet about games with to the incredible Chanelle Berlin, whose blog Help a Retta Out finally taught me what the hell icing is, I’m surrounded by smart, passionate, and witty female hockey fans.

Being a lady who loves the NHL isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson might be a delight on Tumblr, but the Los Angeles Kings’ Slava Voynov was arrested this week on domestic violence charges. The league has the same problems you can expect to find anywhere lots of mostly white guys make millions of dollars doing a thing.

But there’s a lot more hockey than just the NHL. It’s all around me these days, and it’s more diverse than the North American major league would make you think. Most weekends I can watch my university’s club team throw down on a rink built in the middle of a convention center ballroom. My favorite defenseman is a sophomore named Shelby. She hits just like the guys. She’s fierce.

If that’s not enough, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League streams games online, meaning I no longer have to wait for the Winter Olympics to watch badass women skate, shoot, and score.

And then there’s my concurrent obsession, a webcomic called Check Please! that follows the college hockey career of Eric Bittle, former figure skating champion, stress baker, and openly gay, openly adorable member of the fictional Samwell hockey team. It’s written and drawn by Ngozi Ukazu, yet another whipsmart woman bringing diversity and a fresh perspective to the sport and its stories.

I love hockey. I couldn’t tell you why. It makes me feel like I’m part of a community — an “us.” But that “us” doesn’t just include giggly top line partners-in-crime and talented goalies.

Mostly, when I say “us,” I mean all these women cheering along beside me.