There is nothing quite like the camaraderie of hockey fans. Understand, I’m not insisting it’s superior to the camaraderie of Cubs fans in the Wrigley Field bleachers, or Bears fans tailgating outside Soldier Field, or White Sox fans watching a road game from Puffer’s in Bridgeport. But it’s extraordinary and unique, especially in Chicago, where hockey fans are so mistreated by the Blackhawks ownership. The people who continue to come out to the United Center to see the Hawks–drinking in the stadium bars beforehand, smoking in the corner enclaves between periods, bringing their kids along to instruct them in the ways of the hockey aficionado–are among my favorite fans in the city. But they suffer from an inferiority complex, and they’ve been given yet another bad team to root for this season. It’s raw and young, as owner Bill Wirtz hunkers down for next year’s labor war with a roster that’s short on big-name free agents and has been decimated by injuries to boot.
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So if I wanted to wait for a halfway decent crowd to be in the stands before I went out to a game, I was forced to take drastic measures–that is, go to a game when the UC would be halfway filled with fans rooting for the opponents, namely the Detroit Red Wings, who draw as many people to Chicago as the Cleveland Indians used to when they were selling out Jacobs Field by the season. In fact I went to last Thursday’s game with a Detroit fan, my friend Weeza, a dedicated Wings backer who landed in Chicago several years ago. She’s now a regular Section 8 rooter at Fire soccer games, and she suffered as much as anyone over the Cubs, but she can still gush about the beer-and-vomit ambience of Joe Louis Arena. (Not coincidentally, Weeza is a computer maven who passed me the name of one Steven Bartman, through one of those six-degrees-of-separation connections so common to the Internet, before even the Sun-Times had posted the name on its Web site.)
“He’s five-eight,” Weeza said. “She’s definitely five-ten in heels.”
Josh and his dad turned out to be good company. Right before game time, the dad slung the boy smoothly over the back rail, then stepped down a row to meet him at the aisle so that no one would have to get up to let them pass to go to the bathroom.
“He’s disgracing the Stephen King nickname,” I said.
“That’s no excuse,” Weeza said. She was barely mollified when Detroit fans began the chant “Let’s go Red Wings,” although as an opera buff as well as a sports fan she appreciated the way the two chants locked in a nice counterpoint.
“Well, why didn’t you?” Weeza replied.
