Surprising as It May Sound, This Is a Good Hockey Town

My roots, as I understand it, are in hockey.

I have never played the game. In fact, I once attempted to learn to skate, but gave it up because my style of skating seemed to be adapted from platform diving--except those folks don’t hit frozen water.

My roots are in hockey because my father took my mother to a Detroit Red Wing game for their first date. Fitzgerald would not write such a script, nor would Bogart and Bacall play the parts, but romance is obviously in the ice of the beholder.

I don’t know if they remember who won the hockey game, but one winner came out of the deal.

Me.

Naturally, I was to have some affinity for hockey in my boyhood. I couldn’t play the game, as I said, but the Red Wings and Gordie Howe were quite good. I remember one occasion when my mother was having a tea party, or something of the sort, and my father and I were exiled to my room to watch a Stanley Cup playoff game on what seemed like about a 10-inch black-and-white set.

Exciting times.

I have paid little attention to the National Hockey League in recent years. I know that Edmonton, which did not have a team in my boyhood, has this great player named Gretzky and I presume Gordie Howe is still playing for someone. I know Montreal won the Stanley Cup, because I read about the city being leveled by the celebration.

I am a Fallen Away Hockey Fan, I guess.

There must be a lot of us hereabouts. There just might be so many of us, in fact, that an NHL team in San Diego would be greeted with enough warmth to melt the ice.

Indeed, the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues are visiting San Diego for an exhibition encounter at the Sports Arena tonight at 7:30. Neither existed in my boyhood either, unless the St. Louis Browns were somehow precursors to the Blues.

Vince Ciruzzi, the Sports Arena operator, arranged this engagement last year with the idea of giving San Diego a taste of hockey. He knew it would be an hors d’oeuvre without a main course, but it turned out to be a rather tasty hors d’oeuvre.

These teams met in the Stanley Cup semifinals last year, Calgary ousting Edmonton en route. Calgary won four games to three over St. Louis and then lost to Montreal in the finals.

“It turned out we were pretty lucky,” Ciruzzi said. “We have two of the top four teams and one of the top two.”

Obviously, this cannot be considered a playoff-style rematch. Bragging rights to the beach are not quite the same as the frenzy of springtime and the playoffs in Calgary or St. Louis.

Ciruzzi knows that.

“This game is simply our response to people saying they would like to see ice hockey with top-notch teams,” he said. “People here miss hockey, and this is simply our way of giving them something they miss.”

It might come as a surprise to folks from real hockey country, but hockey has always done quite well in San Diego. This is likely the case because so many citizens hereabouts moved here from real hockey country.

These are people like me with their roots in ice.

San Diego has always supported what hockey it has gotten, readily embracing the Gulls of the Western Hockey League, the Mariners of the World Hockey Assn. and Hawks of the Pacific Hockey League. Gordie Howe never played for these teams, nor anyone like him.

However, San Diego supported these teams with average attendance ranging from 5,500 to 8,000. This town would support a hockey match between the casts of Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice.

What failed here were leagues, not franchises. As a Times headline said in 1979: “San Diego Still Has Pro Hockey but It’s a Team Sans a League.”

This not being a very interesting game when played solitaire, that team--the Hawks--was doomed.

And so it has gone. The NHL has expanded to 21 teams from the six I remembered, but none of that expansion has reached San Diego.

Ciruzzi is too realistic to suggest that tonight’s game will be a barometer by which the NHL will determine San Diego’s chances for future expansion.

“I’m sure the level of support will be observed,” he said carefully. “It might attract some attention if we get tremendous turnout for a preseason game, but there are so many issues the NHL has to consider in terms of expansion. When the time comes, we’d sure like to be considered, but right now we’re just trying to offer a broad range of entertainment for the community.”

And so it comes to pass that the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues arrive for a brief visit.

For them, it is a routine exhibition scrimmage. They will be trying to get in shape and sharpen their skills without getting hurt. The exhibition season is the same regardless of the sport.

However, for those whose roots go back to Gordie Howe or Bobby Hull or Rocket Richard, this is a little exercise in nostalgia.

After all, it is hockey.