Every year, still early in the football season, it surprises me to open my newspaper sports section and begin to see that, at least on the exhibition game level, the National Hockey League has begun another season. This year I got a "heads-up" of sorts when I looked at the cover of this week's ESPN magazine: a complete preview for the upcoming NHL season.
I don't live that far from Tampa, home of the 2004 NHL champions Lightning (another of those stupid conceptual team nicknames like "Heat", "Storm", and "Magic"). Having recently forced myself to sit through some World Cup soccer games on TV, I think I now have a greater tolerance for sports that have low scoring, albeit with continuous and fast-paced action. So maybe now is the time to see if I wouldn't enjoy watching some ice hockey.
The Versus channel has been carrying NHL games on TV, but I was wondering how cheap the ticket prices go for individual Lightning games. After all, I could take my family down there on a day off and combine a hockey experience with a Busch Gardens visit, reacquainting myself with all of my old roller coaster friends there (especially Montu, Kumba, and Gwazi)!
The Tampa Bay Lightning surprised everyone when they won that championship a few years ago. I like to joke that the league was so traumatized by it that they cancelled the following season (actually they did, but because of irreconcilable management-labor issues). But since then the Lightning have settled back into their old mediocre pattern of play. Which for me doesn't really matter: I just want to see the puck zipping back and forth, the players crashing into each other and swishing around on the ice, and the general feel of the event. We'll see; the hockey season is long and there should be opportunities to go down there to see a game.
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«Tampa, home of the 2004 NHL champions Lightning (another of those stupid conceptual team nicknames like "Heat", "Storm", and "Magic").»
ReplyDeleteInteresting: I've always thought those kinds of names were better than "Savage Aboriginal Warrior Tribes", and such.
Now that you mentioned it, I do tend to wince every time I see that toothy, grinning caricature adorning everything having to do with the Cleveland Indians. Maybe this franchise would do better with one of those "concept" names. How about the Cleveland Futility?
ReplyDeleteI don't know why sports teams keep names that clearly offend a lot of people. Atlanta's Braves and Washington's Redskins lost their meaningful reference to the disguised Boston Tea Party protesters after their franchises moved away from that city decades ago. So why not change to something actually relevant to their current cities? Just plain stubbornness may be much of the reason they haven't, I suppose.