My most recent game, despite me telling you that I would stick to either N.Y.C. or Philadelphia this weekend, in order to be able to check out all the usual "holiday lights" in Manhattan, instead came in downtown Springfield, MA, at the former Springfield Civic Center turned MassMutual Center, which is just old enough (opened 1972) to have hosted the then-New England Whalers, before the team moved to the NHL in 1979, as part of the NHL/WHA merger, and Hartford, CT, in 1981, respectively, when the NHL basically "decreed", under pressure from the Boston Bruins, that the team change its name to reference its specific location...
Springfield, in general, reminds me of Bridgeport, CT, except with more "colonial" buildings, owing to the city's role in this country's earliest era aft
Also, I (sort of) made up for not making it to the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame (located just about five minutes from the arena location), by checking out, as you'll see in the most recent additions to my little "virtual photo gallery", the Springfield Hockey Hall of Fame, which honors just about every professional hockey coach/official/player to have passed through the city, specifically with the: (Springfield Indians; Springfield Falcons; New England Whalers; Springfield Thunderbirds; AIC Yellow Jackets)
This game pit Mercyhurst University (Erie, PA) against American International College, which itself moved into the MassMutual Center in 2015, after outgrowing the "community" ice rink it had previously called home! Even weirder than that was the timing of this game: part of a back-to-back pair of 2 P.M. opening faceoffs, which you would expect to "stunt" the attendance figures, but not nearly to the extent it did this weekend!
The game itself almost seemed more like a boxing or wrestling match, instead of a hockey game, with tons of hits throughout the game, mostly from AIC, which opened the scoring before anybody had even entered the building (insert "attendance" joke here), and, indeed, all the hitting helped AIC "open up" Mercyhurst's defense to the point where AIC got another "point-blank" goal later in the opening period, including one during a Mercyhurst penalty slightly more than halfway through the period; Mercyhurst also had a goal denied due to the controversial "intent to whistle" rule, which happened after AIC had already opened up its 2-0 advantage...
The middle period saw no goals, and also saw Mercyhurst's defense "stiffen", forcing AIC to the outside, along with getting a few shots of its own on AIC's defense, most of which got held on to by the goaltender, along with drawing a few penalties of its own then, which largely contributed to the smaller disparity in shot totals then...
Lastly, the final period mostly served as a continuation of the preceding one, as Mercyhurst finally got on the scoreboard slightly more than halfway through the period, only to not have too many more shots the rest of the way, except for the last two minutes of the game, when Mercyhurst pushed AIC almost to the "breaking point" with an extra attacker on for the goaltender, although AIC "sealed the deal" with an empty-net goal with only about a pair of seconds remaining, taking what was essentially a 2-1 win, given the timing of that goal, out of what was probably the least-attended college hockey game anywhere in many years!
If you'll allow me to comment on the attendance now, yes, it was an afternoon game, but so was the start of the 2016 NJSIAA state high school ice hockey championship day at the Prudential Center, which was on a Monday afternoon, and, as such, in the middle of the school day for every school not on spring break that week (which I'm sure some of those schools weren't), so, if the NJSIAA and Prudential Center could get quite a few just students, much less other "regular" fans of the competing schools, or hockey in general, then, surely, AIC and the MassMutual Center, and even the Atlantic Hockey conference in general, which stretches out to Colorado Springs, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy, could, especially in this "social media age", which allows anybody to access anything, anytime, anyw
"I don't know what the paid attendance is today, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game." - (Red Barber, New York Yankees' play-by-play announcer for channel 11 in N.Y.C., 9/22/66 - the Yanks lost to the Chicago White Sox that afternoon, 4-1; Barber would get fired a week later by CBS VP of diversification/Yankees' CEO/President, Edmund Michael Burke, whose first game in charge of the team was that one, largely due to that statement)
In other news now, the entire state of California practically looks like "**** on earth" right now, with wildfires raging north, south, and central, potentially threatening both L.A.-based NFL teams' games, since the Chargers were in the "soccer stadium" otherwise known as the StubHub Center, while the Rams were in the old L.A. Coliseum Sunday afternoon, and, surely, the Arizona Cardinals/Denver Broncos, being the closest "other" teams to L.A., would have objected to games (potentially) being moved closer to their respective stadiums!
In (more) retail news, Toys' "R" Us has apparently been victimized by the same things that Kmart/Sears have both been hit by - the rise of "e-commerce" sites like Amazon and eBay, yet left itself in a much better position to actually restructure its debts (with the exception of the company's Times Square "megastore", which I was actually inside of during the very last week of 2015/that store's existence, which, surprisingly, didn't have any of the usual "banners"/"signs" associated with such sales, but, unfortunately, didn't have too many "deals", either), instead of going through this painfully slow "winding-down" process, like Kmart and Sears this decade!
In (more) retail news, Toys' "R" Us has apparently been victimized by the same things that Kmart/Sears have both been hit by - the rise of "e-commerce" sites like Amazon and eBay, yet left itself in a much better position to actually restructure its debts (with the exception of the company's Times Square "megastore", which I was actually inside of during the very last week of 2015/that store's existence, which, surprisingly, didn't have any of the usual "banners"/"signs" associated with such sales, but, unfortunately, didn't have too many "deals", either), instead of going through this painfully slow "winding-down" process, like Kmart and Sears this decade!
If you'll allow me to recap this past Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend now, again, it was mostly a "boring/low-key" Thanksgiving Day itself here, and taking the day after as a bit of a "lazy day", instead of trying to "brave the crowds" out hunting for so-called "deals", when, in reality, as sad as it might be, physical retail is fast getting replaced by online ret
(A) haven't we, as a society, always complained about being "bamboozled", yet letting things like that commercial, which you'd think would promoting either jewelry, and all the "romance" that has been associated with that historically, or something in the "performing arts", definitely not some little technological devices (Apple "AirPods" wireless earbuds, specifically) slip by most viewers;
(B) with all the "headlines" about celebrities/politicians being caught "behaving inappropriately", to say the very least there, you'd think a company as "image-conscious" as Apple wouldn't put forth something that might "trigger" (I honestly couldn't think of any other words there...) some people into seeing such "intimacy" as being "off-limits" for them, personally, given past events;
(C) the just plain "surrealism" on display there - I dare not just you, but anybody, to tell me, after seeing it, that that commercial was actually filmed outdoors, given all the "fancy" sound/visual/etc. effects on display there, along with its very "melancholic" tune;
(D) Apple's calling that its "holiday" ad for this year (2017), when, again, see point (A) - at least the company's "holiday" ads in previous years actually mentioned/referenced
Well, this appears to be it for me for now, since college sports usually take the Christmas/New Year's Eve/Day part of the year off (except for the New Year's Day college football "bowl" games, including the "playoff" games this New Year's Day), so, now, I'll just tell you to finish this year off on a "high" note, along with passing along some holiday season greetings, at least on a "just-in-case" basis, and tell you to "stay tuned" for my next report, which will come no later than the 1/6-1/7/18 weekend, when Army (or the U.S. Military Academy, to use its "official" name here) will face off against Sacred Heart inside the "new" (as in, "renovated") Nassau Coliseum out on Long Island! (other potential games within that timeframe: Maine @ RPI twice right before New Year's Eve (12/29-30, both @ 4 P.M.); St. Cloud State @ Princeton twice those same evenings (both 7 P.M. starts); UConn @ Boston College the afternoon of 12/30)
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