I went to a hockey game and a knitting circle broke out. The roar had been replaced by the snore.
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Hawks fans used to erupt at the outset, screaming, whistling, and clapping through the national anthem. But throughout the first period the UC was so quiet that even in its upper reaches one could clearly hear the tap of sticks on ice as players called for passes or shouted to teammates. The small group of wandering drummers that used to rouse the fans by pounding out tribal rhythms was nowhere to be seen, and the beer vendors seemed abashed by the sound of their own voices. Though the Hawks have moved up their Sunday-night starting time to six–the better to entice families, I suppose–the charitable attendance count was 12,498, and most of those seemed to be suffering the effects of the tryptophan in the Sunday supper.
The one consolation was that for a $10 ticket, the cheapest seat in the house, one could sit almost anywhere in the third tier. I settled into the second row in the corner behind the Hawks’ net, right in front of a couple in matching Hawks jerseys. They knew their hockey, and they weren’t afraid to say when it was bad. The loss of the Europeans, combined with injuries to holdovers like Eric Daze, had already pressed the Hawks into using six players who’d never played in the NHL before this season. “I’ve never been to an Admirals game until now,” said the guy, meaning the Norfolk Admirals, the Hawks’ minor-league affiliate.
Yet the slight improvement seemed paltry to anyone who remembers the roaring crowd’s intensity back in the glory days of Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, Denis Savard and Al Secord. If hockey had awakened from a coma, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still on its deathbed.
