Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

There are a handful of players in a given sport that people will go out of their way to see play.  These are the true superstars of their respectives games.  In the National Hockey League, the pantheon of current hockey gods is a short list.  It usually starts with Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, followed by Evgeni Malkin, and could also include Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk, among others, depending on your preferences.

One of those hockey gods passed through Toronto on Tuesday evening, March 24th.  Ovechkin and his merry men of Capitals took on the Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.  The Capitals are among the elite teams in the league, with serious Stanley Cup aspirations, though there are continuing questions about their goaltending.  The Maple Leafs have been out of the playoff race for a couple of months, though their recent strong play has put them back in sight of eighth place in the East.

Regardless, no-one seriously expects Toronto to make a run for that last spot, though no-one in Hogtown have thrown in the towel as-of-yet.

With all this in mind, one might have expected a Caps-Leafs game this late in the season to end up something like 7-6 Caps, which might not be textbook hockey from a coaches perspective, but it would be something the fans would appreciate.

I made my way to the A.C.C. early tonight, fearful that all the seats up in the pressbox would be occupied.  After all, the Capitals are one of the league’s most exciting teams to watch, and it’s Ovechkin’s first game in Toronto since his mini-feud with Don Cherry over the extent of AO’s goal celebrations.  There should have been a palpable buzz around the arena.

There wasn’t, or at least there wasn’t one I could detect.  Maybe Leafs’ fans are resigned to missing the playoffs once again.  Still, Ovechkin is in town.  That should be enough.

6:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time – made my way through the corridors up to press row.  The Capitals were just outside their dressing room, preparing to take the ice for the pre-game warm-up.  Jose Theodore and Ovechkin were closest to the door.  All of the Caps rocked back-and-forth on their skates, anticipating getting onto the fresh sheet of ice.  They looked like the kids at my local Scarborough arena every Sunday afternoon during public skating hour; they couldn’t wait to get out there.  Anyone who thinks these guys only play for the money are completely off-the-mark.  These guys got this far not only because they have talent, and worked to develop that talent, but because they all share a deep-seeded passion for the game.

I once read that John Lennon used to look forward to getting on-stage during the early years of Beatlemania, as it was one of the few places where he, and his bandmates, felt they were safe, where they were in control, and could be themselves.  Looking at Ovechkin, this thought crossed my mind. Waiting to hit the ice, he looked like he was in his element.  Nothing could touch him here.

6:40 pm - during the warmup, one of the cameras centres in on Ovechkin as he scoops up the puck, shakes-and-bakes his way towards the net, and unloads a rocket.  The camera proceeds to follow him for the majority of the warmup, as this is broadcast onto the giant screen perched atop the scoreboard suspended at centre ice.  Even in the warmup, Ovechkin is the show.

6:45 pm – Ovechkin is the second-last Cap to leave the ice at the conclusion of the warmup; Michael Nylander is the last.

7:06 pm – the teams emerge from their respective dressing rooms and charge onto the ice in preparation for the game.  Ovechkin hits the ice, and the camera centres in on him again.

7:10 pm – puck is dropped to begin the first period.  The crowd is strangely quiet tonight, as though they were attending a night school seminar.  The early play in the game mirrors this.

7:11 pm – Alexander Ovechkin takes SHIFT #1.  There is a fair amount of cheering as Number Eight heads over the boards.  After about a minute of skating around, he heads back to the bench.

7:15 pm – SHIFT #2.  This is a quick shift, 30 seconds at most, as a faceoff is required.

7:17 pm – SHIFT #3. The Caps employ their chief offensive weapon high in the opposing team’s zone.  He’s like a Russian bomber, flirting with Canadian airspace, but never actually dipping a toe over the line.  Ovechkin curls behind the Leafs’ defensive pair, who have to be mindful of his position, while at the same time, keeping their eyes on the play unfolding in front of them.  For those who criticize Ovechkin for not having the word backcheck in his vocabulary, he’s gone one better.  Any time he’s on the ice, he’s a threat to score.  The other team has no choice but to be constantly cognizant of this factor.  That, in turn, directly affects how they play.  How’s that for backchecking?  Ovechin knows what he’s doing.

On this shift, Ovechkin is hit with a long pass, but he’s offside.  The moribund crowd stirs to life at the possibility of magic, but slumps back into their seats with the whistle.

7:21 pm – the scoreboard shows a brief yet tasteful tribute to former NHL’er and one-time Maple Leaf sniper Walt Poddubbny, who passed away earlier this week.

7:25 pm – SHIFT #4.  On this tour-of-duty, Ovechkin throws his body around, first with a hit on Leafs’ defenceman Luke Schenn, and then with a very slight crosscheck to the chest of Matt Stajan.  One of Ovechkin’s longer shifts, or so it seems.

7:32 pm – SHIFT #5.  Once again, Ovechkin silently patrols the Leafs’ blueline, waiting for a pass to spring him free.  It reminds me of watching a game at the War Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo back in January 1990.  The Sabres were hosting the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Mario Lemieux was in the midst of a lengthy point-scoring streak, before injuries forced him to pull up short of Wayne Gretzky’s record.  Lemieux would be employed in exactly the same manner as Ovechkin, but remember, back then the centre-ice two-line pass was still forbidden.

7:30 pm – Peter Ing, former Maple Leafs’ netminder, is introduced to the crowd as that night’s Alumni member.  He’s in attendence with his young daughter.  A hearty round of applause for the mostly forgotten Ing, who looked like the Next Big Thing for the Leafs when he debuted in the 1989-90 season.  It wasn’t to be, and Ing only played 74 games in the NHL, also suiting up for the Oilers and Red Wings.

7:39 pm – SHIFT #6.  The Caps keep trying to hit Ovechkin with the long bomb, but to no avail.  You can sense even the pro-Leafs crowd would perfer to see one of these passes connect, if only to inject some life into this stale game.  During this shift, Ovechkin has to take a faceoff, the only one all night he’ll take, and he loses it.  Okay, so he’s not Bobby Clarke or Stan Mikita.  Also during this shift, Washington manages to sustain some pressure deep in the Leafs’ zone.  One gets the feeling the Capitals have the ability to ratchet up their game when they wish.  Tonight, we are wishing.

7:44 pm – first period over.  No score.  10-6 shot advantage for Washington.  No penalties called.  No real flow to this game yet.  Ovechkin had six shifts, and was on the ice for 7 minutes and 1 second, third-most ice-time for the Caps, but the longest average shift time.  Luke Schenn of the Maple Leafs was on the ice for 8 minutes and 18 seconds.

8:02 pm – second period begins.

8:03 pm – SHIFT #7.  Ovechkin get physical with Leafs’ centre John Mitchell during this shift.  Also notice TSN’s Pierre McGuire wildly gesticulating between the benches.  He’s planted there during the TV broadcast to offer a different perspective on the proceedings.  He sticks out like a sore thumb.  One cannot be the shy type to have that job.

8:06 pm – SHIFT #8.  During this shift, the first penalty of the game is called.  Milan Jurcina goes off for two minutes for tripping.  Ovechkin does not play on the PK.  The crowd perks up with their Leafs on the powerplay, and the home team applies some pressure in the Capitals zone, but fails to capitalize.

This game needs a goal.

8:11 pm – SHIFT #9.  Ovechkin can’t beat the defenceman one-on-one.  It only takes once.

8:17 pm – TORONTO SCORES.  The shot from the point snakes its way through the crowd and eludes Jose Theodore in the Washington net.  1-0 Toronto.  The A.C.C. erupts, proving that everyone hadn’t nodded off.  It’s the first NHL goal for Maple Leafs’ defenceman Phil Oreskovic.

8:18 pm – SHIFT #10.  Nothing to note.

8:21 pm – Washington picks up another penalty.  Shaone Morrisonn is nabbed for hooking.  Jose Theodore makes about five very nice saves in-a-row during this penalty kill.

8:23 pm – SHIFT #11.  Ovechkin makes a nice deke behind the Toronto net, but ends up losing the puck.  It appears to be only a matter-of-time before he finds the back-of-the-net.

Attendance tonight is announced as 19,362.  That’s 19,362 people who’ll have a problem falling asleep later tonight, as they’re catching a few winks at the arena, and will be well rested when they get home.

8:30 pm – SHIFT #12.  Ovechkin shoots the puck into the Leafs zone, just off-side.  After a faceoff, he’s part of the cycle the Capitals utilize in front of Martin Gerber.  No quality scoring chance is created as a result, but once again, the Caps hint that they could take this to another gear, if they so choose to.

With exactly a minute left to play in the second period, the Maple Leafs pick up their first penalty of the game; Jamal Mayers gets two for interference.

SHIFT #13.  Apparently I’m so excited at the prospect of watching the Capitals on the powerplay, I neglect to write down the time on my Coleman wristwatch.  Suffice to say, Ovechkin comes over the boards and takes his place on the point for the beginning of the PP.

One thing leads to another, and AO finds himself cutting towards the net, to the left of Gerber, who he dekes with a nifty little move that pulls the Leafs’ goaltender out just enough so that Ovechkin can go to the backhand and deposit the puck in the net.

1-1 tie. Ovechkin’s powerplay marker is his 51st goal of the season.

The question-of-the-day, though, in this hockey mad city, is in which manner will he celebrate said goal?

The answer is…in a subdued manner.  A brief kiss of his finger, and then a raised hand.  Then again, what did anyone expect?  Ovechkin tearing off his uniform, to reveal a Coaches Corner t-shirt underneath?

When the goal is announced by the booming voice of Andy Frost, there is a fair amount of applause from the crowd.  There weren’t that many people pulling for Washington this evening.  The hockey fans in Toronto know the game as well as anyone else on the planet.  They may be rather staid during most of the game, but they know a good goal when they see one.

The second period ends with the score knotted up at 1 goal apiece.  Ovechkin finally had the opportunity to come alive in this frame, registering a number of shots, and, of course, the powerplay goal.  He’s averaging a minute and 3 seconds per shift.

8:55 pm – third period is underway.

8:57 pm – SHIFT #14.  Ovechkin just missed connecting on a one-timer to the right of Martin Gerber.

It’s around this point that Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau calls a thirty-second time-out.  Not sure why, but I am curious how his team will respond afterwards.

9:03 pm – SHIFT #15.  Ovechkin lands his third hit of the game on Matt Stajan.  Why’s he ragin’ at The Stajan?  Actually, all the hits have been minor, just part of the flow of the game.  Ovechkin is known for enjoying that aspect of hockey as well as collecting the goals, a big reason why fans have taken to him.

9:06 pm – SHIFT #16.  Ovechkin takes one of his shorter shifts of the game, as the puck goes over the boards, and he changes up before the resulting faceoff.

9:07 pm – The “Go Leafs Go” chant starts up for the first time this evening in the A.C.C.

9:14 pm – SHIFT #17.  Wow, it’s been almost 8 minutes since Ovechkin was on the ice.  Can’t remember now, but there had to have been a TV timeout factored in there somewhere.  On this shift, he moves into the slot area with his stick coiled, but Gerber freezes the puck before it can get to Number 8.

It appears to these eyes as Ovechkin’s (and most everyone, with the notable expection of Mike Green) shifts are getting shorter as the third period progresses.

As for Washington defenceman Mike Green, I’ve heard and read the hype for the entire season, so it was also a delight to finally see Number 52 in action.  He’s everywhere, and he’s fast.  Green is a rover, and against a team like the Maple Leafs, he’s able to rocket safely back into position after one of his many forays’s deep into enemy territory.  No doubt other games he occasionally gets caught out of position, but the rewards far outweigh the risks.  Thank goodness he plays for a team, and a coach, that permits him to fully utilize his formidable skill set.  Green is a delight to watch.

9:17 pm – SHIFT #18.  Ovechkin chops at (on?) defenceman Jeff Finger in the Leafs’ zone.  Nothing to see here, move along.

9:21 pm – SHIFT #19.  Ovechkin takes a feed and gets off a nice shot that’s either just wide of the top left post behind Gerber, or hits a piece of the goaltender, and goes wide.  It happens so fast, I don’t know, and I don’t have the benefit to replay where I’m sitting.  Ovechkin has a lightning-fast shot.  During the same shift, he falls down deep in the Toronto zone, but still manages to pass the puck towards the slot.

WIth less than three minutes left, the Capitals come as close as a team can to scoring without actually lighting the lamp.  Somehow, Gerber keeps the puck out of his net.

And, as we all know, for TV hockey commentators will remind us each and every time, when that happens…

…the other team comes back and scores.

Well, first, John Erskine gets nabbed for hooking with 2:26 left in the third.

Toronto goes on the powerplay, and wIth 2:36 left to play, Pavel Kubina’s slapshot from the point finds its way into the back of the net.  The puck goes through the legs of Theodore, who had some traffic in front of him.  Typical NHL goal.  2-1 Maple Leafs.  The crowd finally appears to be fully awake.

We all had no idea what was in store for us mere moments away.

9:25 pm – SHIFT #20.  OVechkin sets up behind the Leafs’ goal, not in a Gretzky Office sort of way, but just because that’s where the puck is for the longest time.

With just over a minute left to play, Boudreau elects to pull Theodore.  It leads to almost immediate dividends, as the Caps push the equalizer past Gerber.  2-2 tie with 57 seconds left on the clock. Brooks Laich, who I understand is the extra attacker, gets the goal.  Ovechkin picks up an assist.

A hotly debated goal, at least by Leafs’ netminder Martin Gerber, who in his Curtis Joseph-like zeal to get to the offending referee and make his objections known, gets a little too physically friendly with ref Mike Leggo, and then proceeds to shoot the puck in the direction of the officials, though I have to admit, I didn’t see that infraction occur.

Doesn’t matter.  The officials did, and after assuring all that the goal stands, they hand Gerber a ten-minute misconduct, and he is asked to retire to the splendour of the dressing room for the remainer of the game.

Which means a cold Curtis Joseph, with a big grin on his face, is pressed into action.  After sitting at the end of the Maple Leafs’ bench for the past 59 minutes and three seconds of the game.  Scarfing down hotdogs.

Okay, maybe not, but Cujo couldn’t be any colder than when Toronto head coach Ron Wilson elected to use him in the shootout earlier this season instead of Vesa Toskala, and that turned out very badly for the Leafs.  No doubt the Capitals were licking their chops.

When the Washington goal is announced, the A.C.C. crowd boos very loudly.  They are finally into this game, though to be fair, there wasn’t much of a game to be into for most of the night.

SHIFT #21.  Curtis Joseph stones Ovechkin on a one-timer with 10 seconds left on the clock. The place erupts.  Ovechkin makes a face like he thought he should have had that one.   Probably everyone else in the joint thought he was going to connect, as well.  We head to overtime.

9:31 pm – SHIFT #22.  Ovechkin wasn’t on the ice to start the first, second or third period, but he’s out there to start the extra frame.  4-on-4.  Plenty of room for the Capitals’ predators.  He makes a nice rush up the ice, and sets up Mike Green in the slot, but Joseph is square to the puck, and stops it.

9:34 pm – SHIFT #23.  Ovechkin gets in a few rather light slashes at Alexei Ponikarovsky.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

9:36 pm – SHIFT #24. First off, the official NHL game sheet has Ovechkin having only 23 shifts, so somehow I’ve got him taking an extra shift.  The NHL stats guys know what they’re doing, but since this is how I tracked the game, I’m going with this phantom Shift 24, just to I don’t have to go back and figure out how I screwed up the math.

Regardless, Ovechkin helps draw a Pavel Kubina hooking penalty with 52. 3 seconds left in overtime.  During the 4-on-3, Ovechkin can’t keep the puck in the zone, but the Caps regroup quickly and regain the zone.  Once again, Joseph stones Ovechkin in the slot, and the A.C.C. crowd parties like it’s 1999.  We head to the shootout.

I’ve only seen one previous NHL shootout live, and it was that game where coach Wilson had Joseph come out of the bullpen for Toskala.  Doubt there will be the same result tonight, as Cujo has been at the top of his game in his less than six minutes of service.

Toronto elects to shoot first, which I think is almost always the best move for the home team.  Noted sniper Jeff Hamilton starts things, and damn if he doesn’t bury it.

That would be the only goal of the skills competition, as Theodore shuts the door on Blake and Mitchell.

As for Joseph, he stops Backstrom and Semin shoots wide, which sets up Alexander Ovechkin against Curtis Joseph.  Either Ovechin ties the game, or Joseph is elected mayor of Toronto.

The crowd is completely into the affair by now, whipped into a frenzy by their distate for the tying goal, and by the huge saves by Joseph.  The boos cascade around the building as Ovechkin sets himself at centre ice.  It’s a delicious piece of theatre, the game distilled down into this solitary encounter.  It’s the shootout as its best.

Ovechkin gets the signal, and moves in on Joseph.  Cujo goes down a bit early, and maybe guesses on the shot, but Ovechkin can’t find the handle, and as he moves to his right with the puck, rapidly running out of room, the crowd roars as it anticipates that this game is over.

Which it is.  3-2 Toronto.  58 minutes of mostly subpar hockey, with a few exceptions.  It’s the last two minutes, and all the extra activities, that have people talking.

The three stars reflect the peculiar nature of this game.  Oreskovic gets the third star, a homer call, thanks to his first NHL goal.

Mike Green gets the second star, and for good reason.  He was everywhere, registering 10 shots and was on the ice for 30 shifts, totalling 29 minutes and 7 seconds.  This man earns his pay.

Curtis Joseph is awarded the gold star, and even though he was only out there for the last chapter of the game, he earned it.  Former NHL goaltender and current broadcaster Greg Millen was sitting about three seats to my left, and I heard him loudly proclaim as he left the press box, that he’d never seen anything like it in all his years in hockey, a goaltender getting the first star for what was basically a one-inning relief appearance.

As for Alexander Ovechkin, the superstar ended the evening with a goal and an assist.  The goal was a powerplay marker, and the assist picked him up a plus one rating for the night.  He was on the ice for 23 shifts, for an average of a minute and one second per shift.  Ovechkin totalled 23:27 in ice time overall, and took 7 shots.

He was pretty much everything he’s advertised to be.  All eyes were on him whenever he took to the ice.  The game overall, save the last six minutes, was a dud, but one always had the feeling that at any time, given just an inch, Ovechkin would explode and fill the net with pucks.

23 shifts.

A player worth paying to watch.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

What makes an arena or a stadium special?  Why do we attach any emotion to them?

They are, after all, just buildings.  A collection of bricks-and-mortar, or more likely these days, reinforced steel and other space-age materials.

They are the places where we congregate for a variety of social activities, be it your workplace, your place-of-worship or the place you go to escape the daily grind.  When it comes to sports arenas, stadiums and ballparks, we ask that they cover all the bases.

First-and-foremost, they must be functional.  The game must be able to be played within its confines.

Second, sports is entertainment, regardless of the best efforts of many of us to turn it into a secular religion, though the worship of a Supreme Being and the worship of a Supreme Team often share many of the same rituals, prejudices and passions.  As sport is yet one choice on the vast palette of entertainment choices, a sports arena/stadium must be able to offer the latest creature comforts, in an effort to lure the family to the ballpark, and then to separate them from their cash.

Third, and in the end most importantly, we ask that this temple of sport transcend the everyday, that it become the vessel into which we pour our hopes and dreams.  We ask that this collection of bricks-and-mortar become the physical embodiment of that we cannot easily define, that we cannot so readily grasp, that fleeting feeling of magic, the shared ethereal experience.

Of these three qualities, the third is the most difficult to capture, and impossible to manufacture, despite the dogged efforts of the in-house entertainment crew to burst your eardrums by piping in loud, unimaginative music choices during every break in play.

There have been a long line of sports stadiums since professional sports took ahold of North American sports fans during the late 1800′s.  Yet only a handful have transcended their sports.

Any die-hard college football fan can rhyme off the names of the temples of football, there are zealots who speak in reverential tones of certain minor league baseball ballparks, many long since gone, and the same thing applies to minor league hockey over the last century.

With all due respect, it is the stadia of the major league teams that have etched their way into the consciousness of a sporting-mad continent.  It’s an economy-of-scale thing; the bigger the canvas, the bigger the bang.

Even the most casual sports fan knows about Wrigley Field or Lambeau Field.  Even the non-sports fan is familiar with Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden.

These structures stand head-and-shoulders over their more mundane cousins, the aptly-named “cookie cutter” stadiums.  These buildings of lore may not all be aesthetically wonderful, but they’ve all hosted an impressive resume of big time games and once-in-a-lifetime events.

But that in itself does not mean the humbler arenas/stadiums are shut out of the sepia-tinged memory department.  First-and-foremost is the first category of why we continue to flock to these places.  The action on-the-ice, or on-the-field.  This is truly where magical memories are created.  And that can happen anywhere.  But it helps when the building itself is special.

An arena such as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto was a wonder when it was very quickly built during the early days of the Great Depression, and the Stanley Cup winning teams that called that barn home added to its legend.  The advent of Canada-wide radio broadcasts, with Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play, cemented the Gardens special place in hockey lore.

Even when the Toronto Maple Leafs stumbled through some dry years during the 1980′s, there was still an electricity in the air when one took their grey-and-white ticket stub, and pushed their way past the turnstiles.  The aging lady was always kept in great shape, and while the action on the ice didn’t always live up to one’s expectations, the ghosts of the past hung heavy in the air.

Which only underscores the sad condition the Gardens is in today.  The likes of Eugene Melnick wanted to purchase the arena and install his OHL St. Michael’s Majors as the main hockey tenant, which would have worked nicely with the junior hockey tradition that runs through the veins of the place.  The Maple Leafs ownership balked at that idea, no doubt worried that a refurbished MLG would compete with their fancy new Air Canada Centre for lucrative concert dates.

Canadian supermarket giant Loblaws came along next, and planned to turn the building into a combination Superstore and hockey museum, but as of this moment, none of that has come-to-pass.

Many were upset at that prospect, arguing such a fate was worse than death for the hockey shrine.  Many pointed out what became of the Montreal Forum, now a glitzy entertainment/movie complex.   At least they thought to keep a bit of the old Forum around; a statue of the Rocket and supposedly the spot where centre ice was.

Still, many would rather these places just be bulldozed, instead of reduced to mere shadows of their once glory.  But would having a parking lot or some faceless office building built on the grave of our memories be a better shrine?  Should we just pack up the ghosts and get out of Dodge?

At least there’s a nod to the past, a place where fathers can take their sons (or mothers and daughters), and point out where Johnny Superstar scored that big goal or hit that big homerun, and made the world safe for democracy.

With few exceptions, almost every place we inhabit is built upon the past.  This past summer, after a particularily nasty last June rainstorm, there was a mini Lake Ontario between my house and the neighbours.  There’s not much worse than a flooded basement, so with bucket-in-hand, we bailed out what we could before the neighborhood cavalry arrived, all clutching shovels and pitchforks, like some Gothic lynch mob.

As we dug a makeshift drainage ditch, I struck an area next to a basement window that held the remnants of a coal dump.  The house was built circa 1946, one of the new suburbs of Toronto, as servicemen returned from Europe, looking for their piece of post-war prosperity.

Before there was central heating, the house was heated with coal.  I have no idea when that conversion would have taken place, but the modest house I inhabit holds its own ghosts, the majority of which I am unaware of.  This long-abandoned coal dump was a reminder of that past.

As we dug further, someone mentioned that the entire area was once a flood plane for the nearby (now pretty much buried) river, which explains the heavy clay around the house, and the manner in which the entire area is sloped.

As I struggled to dislodge the stubborn clay, it made me think of places such as Nashville.  During the 1971 excavation of the area where their arena now stands, the workers came across a long-lost cave.  There they found a foreleg bone and nine-inch fang of a sabre-toothed tiger, which had been extinct for thousands of years.

It was only natural that when Nashville joined the National Hockey League in the late 1990′s, they took the inspiration for their name from that find, a great example of acknowledging your past.

I once read that each of us walk with seven ghosts at our heels; for every person alive on Earth today, there are seven souls from the past.  I’ve never had those numbers verified, but the point is haunting nonetheless.  The past matters.

In sports, the past throws a huge shadow over everything.  It’s unimaginable for any sports fans not to become immersed in the history of whatever game they follow.  The past informs the present, which directs the future.

The constant dance of different corporate names for arenas strikes me as short-sighted.  Yes, a number of teams need that sizeable cash infusion, but they’ve mortgaged off some of their days of future passed for mere cash.  Filthy lucre that won’t last.

Do the Buffalo Bisons play at Pilot Field, or at NorthAmerica Park, or at Dunn Tire Park?  The Montreal Canadiens skate at the Molson Centre.  That I’m sure of.   Though I think they changed the name.  Yeah, that rings a Bell.

So what exactly makes an arena/stadium special?  In the end, it’s your personal memories.

Maybe your father took you there for your first game.  Maybe it’s when the Curse of (insert Curse here) whatever was lifted, when your team finally vanquished the enemy.  Maybe it’s all the championship banners hanging from the rafters, or all the near misses that made you love your team even more.  Maybe it’s the way the building feels before a game, as you feed off the electricity of the crowd, or maybe it’s the way the building sounds after a game, as the echoes of the just-completed game continue to bounce around the place.

I’ve always thought the New Year should begin the day after Labour Day.  It’s when we put aside the illusion that life is leisurely, and we return to school or work..and the weather begins its slow, inevitable march towards winter, at least in this part of the continent.

Each autumn I can feel the clock tick a little louder; another step towards the grave.  The closing of Yankee Stadium is yet another small step in that direction.  Just another part of my past that now is gone.

Add it to the roll call of other great buildings.  Maple Leaf Gardens, the Detroit Olympia, Chicago Stadium, Boston Garden, the Montreal Forum.  And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  No doubt you have your own arenas/stadiums to add to that list.

For me, it’s Clarke Stadium in Edmonton, the Montreal Expos, the Calgary Cannons, the St. Catharines Stompers, and Ottawa Rough Riders.  The Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets, and Quebec Nordiques.  The Atlanta Flames at the Omni.  The Winnipeg Arena, though I never saw a game there, but once peered in through the windows and caught a glimpse of the seats.  10 cent chocolate bars at the corner store, milk in glass bottles, Saturday morning cartoons, and playing outside without sunscreen.

The past is a great place to visit, but a lousy place to live.  For someone, the Air Canada Centre, or the new Yankee Stadium will be their shrine, their holy place.  And that’s how it should be.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s