Father And Son Blues

Cub Scouts taught me I wasn't an outdoor person, even though my father and I took several canoe trips together. We paddled down the Niangua River of southwestern Missouri. He had his camera equipment in a waterproof bag, and I had a life vest that could've slipped over my head. One year I accidentally left my shoes on the rocky bank where we shoved off, and I was amazed they were still sitting where I left them when we went to fetch them some eight hours later. A rainstorm hit us one year, filling up the boat with water and clobbering the bag of Chips Ahoy, among other unpleasantness. The camera equipment survived.

So much for that Hallmark card picture of father-son bonding. What really excited us was hockey. I never paid attention to the NHL until I moved with my family to St. Louis in 1989 and saw the Blues play on television. Back then, the Gateway City had only two sports going for it: hockey and baseball. Bill Bidwell had moved the football Cardinals to Arizona, forever engraving his reputation as one of the NFL's biggest knuckleheads. So during the winter, local sports fans crowded into the old St. Louis Arena to see Brett Hull score hat tricks.

Hockey delivered intensity other sports couldn't match. Football? Too long. Baseball? Too long and not enough hits. Hockey, paraphrasing the late George Carlin, is not a sport but three activities in one: skating, slapping a puck around on the ice, and beating the heck out of somebody. Television doesn't do it justice. Somebody can be slapping the puck on one side of the ice, while somebody's handing out a whupping in the opposite corner. And when you get that puck, you skate like a madman.

Dad got tickets through his job for at least half a dozen games every season for the next few years, taking my brother and I alternately to see Hull and his soulmate Adam Oates. These were the days of Glen Featherstone, Rod Brind'Amour, and Harold "The Enforcer" Snepts -- easy to spot from the nosebleed seats because he was the only guy who didn't wear those Tron-like head protectors. Vincent Riendeau could stop anything shot his way. Same for Curtis "Cujo" Joseph, and his backup Guy Hebert. The team called Hebert up from the minors, and some weird instinct told me this guy could deflect a lot of pucks. Sure enough, he quickly built up a record comparable to Joseph, so much so he started one night.

But let's get to why people really love hockey or hate it: the fights. St. Louis loved the Blues, and they loved the rivalry with Chicago. Blues-Blackhawks matchups guaranteed a full house, hard checking and fisticuffs. Most hockey fights are more like wrestling, since the ice makes it hard for you to get your footing to throw a punch. Most of the time getting the other guy's jersey off is enough for a decision, if you can't get your licks in. I remember one St. Louis Blue -- Featherstone, perhaps -- getting pummeled only to throw a roundhouse right and deck his opponent. "You could see the knees buckle from here!" the TV commentator shouted.

"The Barn" as people called it rocked with the stomping and volume of 20,000 fans. Dad and I had seats in a corner of the upper deck, which was just the right spot to see everything without twisting your neck. We wore our team jerseys and watched Hull make those deadly wrist shots. If St. Louis drubbed Chicago, we could expect a brawl sometime in the third period with at least half a dozen penalties. Every time the Blues scored, a bell would toll the number of St. Louis goals so far, and the crowd would then count off their own toll: "One!" "Two!" "Three!" "Four!"

Fights almost broke out in the stands among punks who'd chugged five cups of Bud. My father never drank beer at the game, and we both passed on soda a lot of times given the outrageous cost of concessions. I bet we could've sneaked in half a case of Dr. Pepper under our jerseys and worked out some sort of a tube system to get it into our mouths. One night Dad and I drove all the way to the game before he discovered one of our tickets was actually for a future game in the set. He graciously let me go in alone, missing the first period while he raced back to Fenton -- some 20 miles down the road -- to fetch the right stub. Dad made it back before the halfway point. I can't remember how much money Dad shelled out for all those tickets or whether they came as a work perk, but I loved each and every game, finally finding a sport I could enjoy like a normal kid.

In 1994, I landed my first TV job and moved to Texas, far away from any trace of professional hockey. A business group paid to renovate the Kiel Auditorium into a new home for the Blues, provided the old Barn didn't compete with it. So the St. Louis Arena sat empty for years until one man offered to buy it. That same business group then leaned on St. Louis officials to tear the place down for an office park, ignoring the large number of people who wanted it saved. Give St. Louis points for at least getting something built there, unlike our current bunch in Tucson.

I went to a University of Arizona Icecats game some time ago, without my father and without the excitement of the NHL. Fans occupied less than half the seats. College hockey has a few fights, but nothing to make referees escort half the team off the ice. I don't expect to see anything like those nights with Dad ever again. Anything worth remembering has that kind of value.