“Next stop: The Rose Garden. Exit to your right,” the computerized voice instructs over the speaker system to a train full of skaters, hipsters and jersey-wearers.
Just like so many times before, we hop off the Max and make our way to the ticket line. After the friendly gal scans our print-at-home tickets, we stop off at the Pyramid kiosk for a couple of IPAs and find our way to our seats.
It’s old hat navigating the Rose Garden.
But this time, the centerpiece is completely changed. Its bright white surface glows as spotlights shimmy their way through introductions.
Blaze the Trailcat is nowhere to be found.
Instead, Tom-a-Hawk stands at the blue line alongside six Winterhawks and one junior hawk.
It’s game four of the Western Hockey League playoffs. The Portland Winterhawks are looking for a sweep over the Tri-City Americans. And for the four of us, it’s the first hockey game we’ve seen live in at least a decade.
You see, in Portland as in every other city across America, we love winners. The Trail Blazers aren’t winners. The Winterhawks, on the other hand, certainly are.
That has inspired an outbreak of hockey fever of sorts across not just Portland, but elsewhere in the Northwest.
Last week, The Ref in Spokane was packed full of Spokane Chiefs fans as the Chiefs faced the Americans in game seven of the quarterfinals. The Ref’s 32-ounce Coors Light cups started selling more rapidly after the Americans ended the Chiefs’ season and advanced to challenge the Winterhawks.
Hockey, it seems, is finding its grip in the Northwest. Even though we have no NHL franchises, fans are finding a way to go nuts watching these 16-19 year old kids playing their hearts out.
And that is evident Thursday night at the Rose Garden.
As we make our way to our seats, we find ourselves among 11,000 other fans cheering on these teenagers – holding our breath as slap shots ricochet off the goalie’s pads, cheering as an American gets checked into the boards, and beginning to accept a game five is imminent as we enter the third period.
The Americans – that group full of bleached-blond heads to demonstrate their camaraderie – score first. They take a 1-0 lead and hold it through the end of the second period.
Then the majestic Zambonis return to the ice and erase any sign a game has gone on. While they are sweeping away the physical evidence of the Americans’ 1-0 lead, the speech in the Winterhawks’ locker room is doing the same in a figurative sense.
A re-energized team takes the ice in the final period. In section 119, we sense the Winterhawks have their brooms ready for the sweep.
Sure enough, in a matter of minutes they’re ahead 2-1 and we’re rocking to AC/DC in our seats.
After the third goal, I have to wonder to myself “Is it even worth getting up to cheer this one?”
But when the lamp is lit for a fourth time in that final 20 minutes, I understand that “Yes, yes it is worth getting up.”
Over the last two hours, I have watched these high school age athletes conduct hand-to-stick combat with one another while skating on ice. They’ve made no-look passes. Goalkeepers have snatched whizzing pucks out of mid-air with a first baseman’s glove.
These athletes are the real deal.
Which is why this team and this game – not sanctioned by the OSAA and not common in Oregon youth circuits – is giving Portland chills as the Winterhawks move on to their next stop: The WHL Finals
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
