The parking lot in front of the arena was full 90 minutes before game time. In the lot, tailgaters wearing the home team jerseys were enjoying one of the few nice spring evenings the town had experienced. Across the street, at the Penalty Box Bar & Grill, a fan also wearing a jersey was talking to a compadre. “Did we win that first series too quickly?” he asked. “I have always wondered if there is a thing as being too rested.”
Inside the building, the home team general manager looked anxious. “They sure haven’t played us this year like they were a fourth place team,” he said, referring to that night’s opponent. “Every game we played them was a battle until the end.”
Do you know where this scene occurred? Was it in the parking lot outside Joe Louis Arena in Detroit? Or perhaps Bell Centre in Montreal?
Nope. Waterloo.
By Dave Wright
The parking lot in front of the arena was full 90 minutes before game time. In the lot, tailgaters wearing the home team jerseys were enjoying one of the few nice spring evenings the town had experienced. Across the street, at the Penalty Box Bar & Grill, a fan also wearing a jersey was talking to a compadre. “Did we win that first series too quickly?” he asked. “I have always wondered if there is a thing as being too rested.”
Inside the building, the home team general manager looked anxious. “They sure haven’t played us this year like they were a fourth place team,” he said, referring to that night’s opponent. “Every game we played them was a battle until the end.”
Do you know where this scene occurred? Was it in the parking lot outside Joe Louis Arena in Detroit? Or perhaps Bell Centre in Montreal?
Guess again.
No, this was Waterloo last Wednesday when the local team – the Black Hawks of the amateur United States Hockey League – was preparing to open a best-of-five series against the hated Chicago Steel. (The USHL is a junior league whose players are aged 16-20. Many of the players participate with the hope of getting a scholarship to play college hockey. In this game, 32 players from the two teams had college commitments.)
Of all the cities that are still playing hockey this April, few can top the intensity of those who showed up for Waterloo’s 4-1 win in Game 1. Granted, the attendance number at Young Arena of 2,003 may not impress you when compared to the final figures for, say, Detroit or Montreal but take my word for it: these folks care passionately about their team. In fact, Iowa – not normally considered a hot bed for the sport – has truly taken to the ice game.
“I’ve been a season ticket holder since the last year they played at McElroy Auditorium,” said Cindy as she watched warm-ups. One night, Cindy asked her mom to a game. Next thing you knew, mom was hooked and she bought season tickets, too.
Doug Miller smiled when he heard this tale. “I hear that kind of story a lot,” said the general manager. “Our attendance has improved six years in a row. As far as I know, nobody in hockey has ever done that before. The Boston Bruins went up five years in a row in the late 1960s and 70s (thanks in part to a fellow named Orr, who joined the team in that era.) But nobody had ever done six. We’re very proud of that.”
Before the game, Miller was fretting about the attendance. “I know we’ll sell out Friday (when Game 2 of the series is to be played) but I don’t know about this one,” he said. “It was the diehards tonight. The one good thing about it is those are the people who make the most noise.”
Young Arena is a smallish building (there are 2,929 seats with room for about 600 more to stand) with low hanging ceilings. As a result, it doesn’t take a lot to make the place noisy. Although fan output alone could probably turn the trick, the Black Hawks couldn’t resist following the lead of many other teams. In addition to piping in loud music, they sold small cowbells as well. The resulting mayhem was so loud that a Chicago assistant coach sitting in the small press box wore ear plugs all night as he made notes.
Noting that fact might lead you to think Black Hawk games are mainly attended by the young crowd. (University of Northern Iowa is located next door in Cedar Falls.)
Guess again.
“We have some season ticket holders who go back to 1962 (when Waterloo had a semi-pro team. That league, too, was known as the United States Hockey League),” Miller said. “They all show up for games like this.”
Indeed, a check of the crowd revealed many of them to be AARPers. They were among the loudest folks of the night. (The young crowd gets their due as well. In one end of the rink, a young man kept holding up a sign at every faceoff that read “Chicago sucks.” The game was not on local TV and the sign never appeared on the video screen. But it’s the thought that counts, right?)
When Miller arrived in Waterloo seven years ago, he found a franchise that had a loyal, but small contingent of followers. He set about the task of getting the team’s name known in the surrounding communities. “There is not a lot of high school hockey played in the state,” he said. (Waterloo has one school that plays in a far-ranging league that includes teams in the Kansas City area.) “So we didn’t have a hockey base to work with.” Like minor league baseball does, Miller set about attracting groups and sponsors from nearby towns where nobody had asked them to games. Soon, groups were coming from towns like New Hampton, Parkersburg and Gilbertville. The combination of old-fashioned networking plus the fact that most games were on weekend nights produced several sellouts.
The USHL noticed. This year, they gave Miller the additional duty of being league director of Corporate Sales and Sponsorships. Judging by the inside décor of Young Arena, they picked the right guy. The boards at Waterloo looked like a race car with advertisers ranging from tuxedos to internet sites. (My count was 60 separate ones on the boards and another two dozen around various parts of the building.)
In a past life, Miller had worked in Topeka and Billings. As a result, he learned that, while the game is supposed to be the thing, a little variety doesn’t hurt. There is the obligatory beer garden in one corner of the building and video games in another.
Hockey’s stoppages are shorter than in, say, baseball. Instead of trying to shoehorn in a quick promotion, the Black Hawks settled for loud music and a second p.a. announcer exhorting the crowd to buy tickets for the next game or taking a bus ride to Chicago to watch Game 3 of the series on Sunday. Just like the big leagues.
Since the nature of the league is to get young players on their way up, most of the names are unknown when a season begins. Waterloo has had a few well-known names get their start here. (Jason Blake and Joe Pavelski come quickly to mind.) The team is a combination of guys who are ready to move up (like defensemen Blake Kessel, a Buffalo draft pick who is headed to New Hampshire next year and John Lee, a Florida pick who is going to U of Denver) and guys looking to make a good impression like Nick Larson, a 18-year old forward who is not committed to a college and is also NHL draft eligible for the first time. Larson was all over the place Wednesday night, scoring the game’s first goal and ending up with three penalties. Depending on which college or NHL team was taking notes, either stat is noteworthy.
One very familiar name stood out – 18-year old Eddie Olczyk, whose father played and coached in the NHL and is now the lead color commentator for NBC’s NHL telecasts. The old man was in the stands Wednesday night watching his son, who joined the team in mid-March after being traded from Sioux City. The younger Olczyk seemed to struggle with the quick pace at times and has not shown the offensive touch of his father, having recorded just 14 goals in 99 career games in the USHL. With no college deal in place, he will probably be back for another season in 2008-09. “Ed is here a lot – pretty much any time he is not working a game – and is a very supportive dad,” Miller said. “He is exactly what you hope parents would be.”
That sounded a lot like hockey life in Waterloo in general. Who could have guessed?
Dave Wright is a senior editor at August Publications.
