Isles vs. Kings Review

The game: There was intensity to the action that rarely let up. The game was played as if it mattered; of course, for guys trying to make the team or make an impression, preseason games do matter. I could do without the many fights (though of course the crowd in general loved them), but the plethora of solid body checks was a thrill. Several of the goals were a result of pretty passing plays. The fans that bothered to show up where treated to what I love so much about hockey: the combination of skill and finesse with grit and physicality.

The Kings didn’t entirely dominate, but they certainly had the upper hand. LA sent a fairly strong group of players to the game, while the Islanders sent the B-squad. The most glaring difference was on special teams. The Kings took control of their power plays. When the Islanders went up a man, they could do little more than jump off-side, give up a shorty, or take a penalty themselves to put an end to their advantage. Wayne Simmonds, Teddy Purcell and Drew Doughty all stood out for the Kings, and not just because they were the goal scorers. It wasn’t as close as the 4-2 score indicates.

Kings netminder Jonathan Quick was good, but rarely tested. In net for the Isles was Nathan Lawson, after Dwayne Roloson took a shot in the neck during warmups. Lawson performed admirably considering he was left out to dry by his teammates for much of the night. He stood on his head during the 3^rd period (plus got a little help from the crossbar), keeping the Isles in a game they otherwise didn’t deserve to be in.

My experience: Once again, the Sprint Center sparkled, and screamed out to host hockey much more often than once a year. I arrived just in time to catch warmups, and moved down to the glass behind the end the Islanders were skating on to take some pictures and be reminded how huge NHL players are when you’re right next to them. I somehow completely missed Roloson getting hit in the neck. A puck flew up and landed in the netting just behind the glass in the corner to my left, where there are no stands. I saw a guy knock it down with a shovel and quickly asked him to toss it to me—he did! I was psyched to get a small piece of the NHL in Kansas City. My night was already made before the game even began. Did you know there’s an official “practice puck” that is apparently used for warmups? I didn’t.

The attendance: 9,972 is the official number. Three quarters of the upper deck were curtained off. The lower bowl had empty spots. I don’t think attendance numbers at preseason games between teams KC has no rooting interest in should be a major factor in gauging us as an NHL market, but there just aren’t many other ways to judge it, so it takes on a falsely inflated importance. And a crowd that didn’t hit five figures was a disappointment. It’s amusing how you can spin the number any way you want; the AP recap says “9,972 showed up Tuesday night, so Kansas City seems to be ready (for a team).” Long Island’s Newsday meanwhile reported that KC reacted to the game with “one huge, collective yawn.”

I think what we saw last night was the small core of hockey die-hards in KC. Unfortunately, I don’t know that a secondary, more casual group of fans exist to augment the die-hards. I would love for KC to get a chance to find out if a large enough group of new fans could be created and sustained if we had a home team. At the same time, I can’t help but point out that a moderately sized base of passionate hockey fans would be a great start for an AHL team.

But the question for now is, do we deserve the chance to find out if we could grow those fans with an NHL team of our own? I’m blinded by my desire to have a team, and probably can’t answer objectively. But if I were fabulously wealthy, I’m not sure I’d be willing to take that chance. KC hockey fans are left to hope someone who is fabulously wealthy feels differently.

Linkage:

Kansas City Star report

PucKChaser recap

Lighthouse Hockey recap

From Newsday:
Fans In Kansas City Show Little Interest In Isles
With Isles In KC, Big Game Is Lighthouse Hearing

Newsday reporter Jim Baumbach had some interesting Tweets from KC

Score sheet

Mayor's Manor draws some connections between LA & KC hockey

Islanders vs. Kings Game Preview

New York Islanders vs. Los Angeles Kings

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 • 7:00
Sprint Center • Kansas City, Missouri

I can’t speak for the rest of the city, but I’m excited for what I believe will be the 87th NHL game played in Kansas City. The first 86 were made up of two Scouts preseason games, 80 Scouts regular season games, and four preseason games between 1998—2008. The Blues played in all four of the recent preseason games, which means Tuesday’s game will be the first played in Kansas City to not feature a team from Missouri. To make up for the lack of a regional team, I think AEG was banking on the Islanders appearance generating a buzz in KC. As far as I can tell, that hasn't happened. I think KC fans understand the Islanders are not on the brink of moving here, and that we’re being used as a bargaining ploy again. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

In spite of all the nonsense surrounding the game, I’ll just be soaking up the game itself, enjoying the unbeatable atmosphere of a live NHL game taking place in my home town.

The Sprint Center has cooked up this ad for the game. The Kings have posted an interview with assistant coach Jamie Kompon about the two Kings games in Kansas City. It sounds almost like an AEG promo for the Sprint Center:

John Tavares Watch: The much heralded Islanders rookie made his NHL debut on September 16th in Edmonton, but has sat out three of the Islanders’ first four preseason games. That means we’ll be seeing either his second or third game. He didn’t get a point in his first game, so perhaps KC fans will be treated to his first NHL point.

That’s all assuming he’ll play Tuesday night - something I fully expect, but I’ll breathe easier once he’s officially announced.

Here’s some video of Tavares in Islanders training camp:

Looking Back at the Sprint Center's First Hockey Game

A week from the moment I’m writing this, I’ll be sitting in the Sprint Center taking in an NHL hockey game. I’m starting to get excited. Seems like a good time to take a look back at last year’s preseason game between the Blues and Kings.

Fair or not, the game was viewed by many as an “audition” or test of Kansas City’s potential to be a successful NHL market. If it was a test, the venue passed with flying colors. It was clear that watching hockey was in mind during the design of the building. There seems to be no debate that it would be a first-class NHL rink. That much was pretty well known, but it was still a thrill to see that promise fulfilled, if only for one brief night.

More scrutinized was the attendance figure. The crowd was strongly pro-Blues; I don’t know if that was a reflection of a decent Blues fanbase in Kansas City, or if a lot of fans made the trip from St. Louis. Probably a little of both. The announced attendance was 11,603. I’m still not sure if that’s a good number or a bad one - it all depends on how you want to spin it. The Associated Press recap unequivocally stated it was “good numbers for a preseason game.” I dug into attendance numbers from last year’s preseason, and the average attendance in 95 games not played in Kansas City was 14,517. In that regard, 11,603 is clearly not a good number. A factor that was pointed to as hurting attendance was the game being played on a Monday. In Puck Daddy’s comment on the game, Paul McGannon was quoted as saying, “If we have that game on a Friday or Saturday or even a Sunday afternoon, it’d be sold out.” Saying attendance was hurt by virtue of the game falling on a Monday seemed reasonable to me - at least until I noticed that there were seven other games played on the very same night that drew an average of 14,527.

But if you want to spin it in KC’s favor, here is some ammunition for you: the Kings played two games that night, with a split squad in Kansas City and another in Los Angeles. In LA, only 8,221 showed up. The Kings played a total of four preseason games at home, and averaged 10,255. The Blues played three at home, and averaged 11,986. So KC was right on par with the performance of the hometown fans. You could also point out that the Islanders drew under 4,000 for a couple of their preseason games.

Sitting in the rink that night, I remember wishing there was a lot more people. Looking back with some perspective, the attendance was...fine. I’m certainly not convinced that preseason games between out-of-town teams are worth much as a measuring stick of KC’s viability as a market, but there are few if any concrete ways to measure such a thing, so attendance takes on an inflated importance.

As for the game itself, I wasn’t sure what to expect - I'd never seen an NHL preseason game. I wasn’t sure if guys would be phoning it in or if there would be a bunch of young guys killing it trying to make an impression with their team’s suits. As I recall, the game started off at a torrid pace, and I was thrilled. But 8:20 into the game, the first penalty was called, and there were regular whistles the rest of the night as the teams piled up 20 combined penalties, and the game never could settle into a good flow or pace again.

Davis Drewiske earned the distinction of scoring the first goal in arena history soon after the second period was underway. Drewiske, on the penalty kill, got the puck high in the St. Louis zone, and flipped a quick shot/dump-in towards the net. Blues goalie Chris Mason seemed utterly surprised that Drewiske had taken the shot, and the puck fluttered past him. Mason definitely should have stopped it. Besides that one lapse, all four goaltenders were stellar. Jonathan Quick of the Kings foreshadowed the solid rookie year he was about to have (21-18, .914, 2.48), stopping all 19 shots he faced.

According to the Star, “Kings president Tim Leiweke was emphatic that one of the club’s phenoms, 19-year-old defenseman Drew Doughty...(would) make his pro debut in the Sprint Center.” I kept an eye on Doughty throughout the night, and came away impressed. He didn’t do anything especially eye-popping that I recall, but he seemed calm and in control for a kid playing his first NHL game. He carried the puck through the neutral zone and gained the blue line confidently several times. Another guy that I was happy to see was Ted Purcell of the Kings - I lived near Cedar Rapids, Iowa during the time Purcell played in the USHL for the Cedar Rapids Rough Riders and had seen him play many times there.

The Kings seemed to have the game in hand with a 2-0 lead late in the third period when Paul Kariya banged in a gift-wrapped rebound on the power play. (Appropriately, all three goals came on special teams.) This fired up the crowd, and the final minutes had a buzz as the Blues attempted to tie it up. I had no rooting interest in either team, but at this point I was rooting for overtime so that the game could be stretched out a bit more. The Kings held on.

After the game, I marvelled that my drive home would take all of 15 minutes. Every NHL game I’d gone to before was hundreds or thousands of miles away, and so involved a long and expensive trip there and back. I turned to my wife: “I could get used to this.”

Related reading:

Puck Daddy: The NHL’s Exhibition in Kansas City: Pass or Fail?
Puck Daddy: Scouting the NHL’s Chances For a Return To Kansas City
St. Louis Game Time: Blues Open At Kansas City
Associated Press: recap
Canadian Press: Kings Beat Blues In Kansas City (slightly lengthened version of AP story)
NHL.com: scroll down to Making a Statement
ESPN: box score

“The Empty Arena” by Bruce Schoenfeld in The Atlantic magazine

Here’s a link to the above article about Kansas City’s failure to secure an NHL or NBA team for the Sprint Center. There isn’t anything new to those of us that have been following the story, but is a good read nonetheless.

Bonus linkage: “Dying In The Desert” by James Mirtle on From The Rink examines the dire situation of the Phoenix Coyotes, and Kansas City gets a mention. (This article from Toronto-based The Globe & Mail goes into detail about the Coyotes’ woes.)