‘Cane Unity Takes Hold of Tobacco Road

It is so cool to be a Carolina Hurricane fan. It doesn’t matter if a Carolina Hurricane fan knows what a blue line is or the rules of icing or that the Toronto Maple Leafs have won 13 Stanley Cups. What matters is that the Hurricanes are hot. The Hurricanes are winners, are in the NHL conference finals, are selling standing-room-only tickets for today’s Game 2 against the Maple Leafs for $110.

“This is so neat,” Tad Speitzer said Saturday. Speitzer stood outside the Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena waiting to buy his ticket. “I never stand for anything,” said the 28-year-old sales representative and lifelong Duke fan. “I wouldn’t pay to stand in Cameron Indoor, but there’s something about this hockey stuff. It’s gotten in my blood.”

It is so not cool to be a Charlotte Hornet fan.

Dial up the number for the Hornets and a recording says: “Thank you for calling the Charlotte Sting.” The Sting is a WNBA team. The Hornets are all gone, packing up and moving to New Orleans.

The good news: There is a hot and happening pro sports team in the state. The bad news: It’s a hockey team. The good news: There is still a professional basketball team in the state. The bad news: It’s a women’s team.

Whether Hurricane fever is a trend or a fad in North Carolina, it is too soon to tell.

There was a time when the Hornets were all the rage. A famous fashion designer created a look that soon became the hottest-selling gear in the NBA. The Hornets had a big, new building. The fan base was supposed to be savvy, consumed with following only the very best of college basketball--North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, North Carolina State. For a period of nine years the Hornets had 364 consecutive sellouts. From 1990-91 through 1996-97, they led the NBA in attendance.

There should have been this wonderful synergy. These people who loved basketball so much would be able to follow favorite players from high school through college and into the NBA. The fans would come not only from Charlotte but from Tobacco Road and South Carolina too. It would be a regional team and the region was passionate about two things--basketball and auto racing.

Now it’s auto racing and hockey. When NBA Commissioner David Stern announced the official demise of the Hornets he said, “This is an extraordinary disappointment.”

Some Charlotte fans say the NBA should pay attention. “What happened to the Hornets is something to be careful about,” said Audie Blakely.

Blakely said he attended 10 to 15 Hornet games a year, driving three hours each way from Raleigh because he loves basketball.

“I was all into the Hornets for a while but I got sick of all the bad stuff,” Blakely said. “Who wants to root for a team where the owner is a jerk and the players were in trouble all the time? That’s what I like about the Hurricanes. I don’t claim I’m some hockey expert. But I like how hard the guys play and how they mostly just seem like nice guys.”

Blakely said he knows lots of Hornet fans who grew disgusted with too many scandalous stories. A popular player, Bobby Phills, was killed in an auto accident that police said happened during a drag race with teammate David Wesley.

Wealthy owner George Shinn, a self-proclaimed Christian who demanded his employees wear white shirts and ties and who was shrill in his demands that the city buy him a newer, better arena, found himself accused of sexually assaulting a female staff member whose husband eventually committed suicide.

“Who wants to root for guys like that?” Blakely asked.

If it seems the ascendance of the Hurricanes and the descent of the Hornets were both sudden and in synchronicity, it hasn’t exactly been that way.

The Hurricanes came to Carolina five years ago, a team rejected by Hartford, where they had been called the Whalers and had been pretty anonymous. Upon arrival, the new Hurricanes found out life could be worse than being in Hartford. They were homeless, playing games for two years in Greensboro while a new arena was built. For the players who chose to live in what would be their eventual city, it was a 160-mile round-trip commute to home games.

Attendance was dismal in Greensboro. “And let’s face it,” Hurricane captain Ron Francis said, “why would you buy tickets to see a team that wasn’t yours in a sport you didn’t know much about?”

But if paying fans in Greensboro were scarce, the eventual home team fans were watching cautiously but with growing interest.

The Hurricanes weren’t awful. Last year, when they took New Jersey, the defending Stanley Cup champion, to six games in the playoffs, the way the team played with heart and with total effort won the affections of these Tobacco Road residents.

“You know what’s cool?” Speitzer said. “You have all these people divided between rooting for Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State in this little area and we can all get together on this thing. Everybody is rooting for the Hurricanes.”

Hurricane Coach Paul Maurice says it has been fun watching the locals warm to the ice team. “They may not know all the rules and nuances,” Maurice said, “but they seem to understand how hard this team plays and how much fun the game can be.”

After the Hurricanes eliminated Montreal in the second round of the playoffs, the team arrived home in the middle of the night and found 500 rooters waiting for the plane. “That was kind of beyond the call of duty,” Francis said, “but it meant something.”

As good as things seem now, it is worth noting that the Hurricanes have sold out only 23 regular-season games here. There were some empty seats in Thursday’s Game 1 loss to Toronto. Those 18,853 seats will all be filled today.

But next year or the next or the year after that?

“Nothing lasts forever,” Blakely said. “I’d tell the Hurricanes not to get greedy and don’t take this all for granted. Because the fans can turn on you. Just ask the Hornets.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.