Last night, I made the trip to the ancient Playland park complex in Rye, N.Y. (opened 1928), and the "ice casino" located right near the (currently closed) park (opened 1930, so not much longer after Princeton's rink, which opened back in 1922) - it's the N.Y.C. area's second (major) amusement park complex, after (the original) Dreamland/Luna Park/Steeplechase Park in the Coney Island neighborhood way down at the bottom of the boro of Brooklyn, just to give you an idea of what preceded Disney's parks; the rinks are so old, in fact, that the N.Y. Rangers once practiced there almost full-time; meanwhile, the game taking place on the "main" rink of three (all of which apparently got renovated back in the '70s, along with the "main" rink apparently getting further upgrades just a few years ago) in the "ice casino", or "game room" building, was Stevenson University (Owings Mills/Stevenson, MD, which just so happens to have had a mall prior to 2015) against Manhattanville College (Purchase, N.Y., but Playland appears to have the closest ice rink to the campus location there)...
The game itself was the exact opposite of Cornell @ Princeton last Saturday night, including the fans, who seemingly did more "trash talking" than actually supporting their team, and the game itself was quite "scrappy", also, with, surprisingly, quite a few Canadians and Swedes on Manhattanville's roster, and Stevenson taking quite a few shots on net on a trio of Manhattanville penalties in the opening period, yet emerging from that scoreless, only to face a few penalties of its own in the middle frame, killing off those penalties successfully, leading to what would be the only goal of the game late in the period on a bit of a "broken" play, when a breakaway for Stevenson turned into a pair of shots, the second of which got left "hanging" by the Manhattanville goaltender that got put home, and the third period was when things truly got ugly, as the teams took matching minor roughing penalties, then one of Stevenson's men hit an opponent way up high, earning a major penalty, along with a game misconduct, for that mega hit, although Manhattanville seemingly forgot how to shoot during the following five minutes, leading to a few penalties at the end that turned the "empty net/extra man" advantage the team would have had into a disadvantage, yet enough for Stevenson to hang on in what was a decided defensive struggle!
The arena itself, though, was honestly only missing a video screen of some sort somewhere above the rink, since the sound was honestly better than some newer rinks (like Barclays Center in particular, but that's what they get for rejecting the original development plans there); the playlist was quite varied, from the usual "stereotypical" rock tunes generally associated with hockey, like hip-hop/rap generally being associated with basketball/football recently, and even (recordings of) an organ's sound effects during some stoppages, although none of that makes up for the facilities themselves, with people having to enter through this lobby, head up a few stairs to this area with restrooms, and go either down another small set of stairs to the cold metal bleachers located down there, and carts/vending machines with more restrooms right behind them, which themselves were just ugly (although the upstairs ones weren't much better); honestly, between Princeton and Rye, I would make the trip to Princeton, as the phrase goes, every day, and twice on Sundays!
the only goal of the game (taken from the URL of the full game)
At this point, I'm still wavering somewhat about next weekend (Army, which just split a pair of games in Niagara Falls this weekend, hosting Holy Cross twice; Princeton, which lost to Union College in OT before rolling over RPI this weekend, hosting Yale, followed by Brown); I'll definitely be back inside MSG the following weekend, though, specifically that Saturday night!
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