Mo Goes, plus RiverDogging It

As the only known Carolina Hurricanes fan in this sector of blogspace, I’m a bit tardy in commenting on the Canes axing Paul Maurice and hiring former Islanders boss Peter Laviolette. Never fear, though — Eric McErlain and Vancouver Canucks Op Ed have been exchanging fire over this all week, completely embarassing me in terms of thoroughness and depth of coverage of a team neither of them appear to care much about.

Eric pretty much nailed it in his last article, that this was as much a business decision as a hockey one. During the Cup run two seasons ago, several local writers commented that the Canes were doing something once thought impossible: the Canes were managing to unify the sports fans of the Triangle behind one banner, as opposed to the often-bitter divisions between Duke, UNC, and N.C. State fans that the region’s other major-league sport, ACC basketball, illuminated. Drawing those fans is necessary to the Canes’ long-term survival; problem is, those programs’ fans are used to winning — or at least competitiveness. Canes fans didn’t see that last year, when for the last two months 2/3 of the players on the ice belonged in the AHL. To get those fans back, the team needed to start off quickly this year, and it just didn’t happen. Even the diehards were getting upset, and an incipient fan rebellion absolutely demanded a response.

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BTN Review: The Diamond

I realized this April, while watching my first game of the year, that I’ve been going to games at this stadium for fifteen years. So perhaps it’s best to open up this new category with the stadium I know the best: The Diamond in Richmond, Virginia, home of the AAA International League’s Richmond Braves.

In late June 1988, as eight-year-old Josh watched the Braves of Lonnie Smith, David Justice, Jeff Blauser and Tom Glavine take on the Maine Phillies, The Diamond was the class of the minor leagues. Built on the site of old Parker Field and opened three years before I visited, it was a modern park with all the amenities one might expect — multiple concession stands on both decks, a back for every seat, and even a new invention called the “Superbox” (which we now know as the luxury box, an absolute minimum requirement for any stadium of 10,000 seats or more these days). The one curiosity was that the ballpark only had two pay phones on the premises (back when cell phones stayed in cars and cost a few thousand dollars each) — this was apparently a long-term Richmond ballpark tradition, although it seemed a rather silly one to me.

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What's a RiverDog?

I’d like to welcome readers finding their way over from Tim Harvey’s Rink Blog. Tim is a fellow Hokie who graduated in an era one might call the “darkness before the dawn” of VT football. Now he’s bringing readers a wide range of hockey news and opinion — very good stuff.

I mentioned back in April that the Richmond Renegades were folding, bringing the longest-running chapter (13 years) in Richmond’s hockey history to a close. At the time, it was unknown whether Richmond would have a replacement team.

Now we do: the Richmond RiverDogs of the United Hockey League. The team’s founding was actually announced not long after the Renegades formally folded, but the team was not given a name until a couple of weeks ago.

The RiverDogs are owned by Dr. Eric Margenau, a minor league sports entrepreneur from Long Island who is, let’s just say, not a hockey purist. When the expansion franchise was announced, he gave an interview to the Richmond Times-Dispatch in which he mentioned that he wasn’t at all averse to walking into the locker room pre-game, throwing a fifty-dollar bill on the training table, and announcing that the first player to start a fight gets the fifty. So we definitely have some Slap Shot potential here.

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Goodbye, 'Gades

Tuesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch brought the sad news that the Renegades hockey team would be suspending operations, most likely to result in the team permanently closing up shop. The Renegades played here for 13 years, starting when I was in sixth grade. I learned to love hockey from going to these games as a kid, watching players like Kirby Lindal, Scott Gruhl, and Jamie McLennan.

On Wednesday, the RT-D’s Paul Woody piled on with a column doubting the potential success of any future minor-league sports endeavor in Richmond. The column isn’t worthy of a point-by-point fisking, but even though I’m not extremely fond of Richmond myself, I feel like I should step in and defend my hometown against some pretty cheap shots and incorrect conclusions.

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