On Frozen Blog

My Friday evening of hockey with its full commute didn’t end til near 1:00 a.m. as I pulled in to the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, Maine. Early Saturday morning I discovered that I had a walk of all of 500 feet from the hotel to the Cumberland County Civic Center, home of the Pirates. Hockey, I realize, is in all of my sightlines on this trip, which I adore.
Whereas the architect of the Manchester Verizon Wireless Arena is apt to have an elementary school in the community named after him, the culprit who’d claim the Civic Center as his concoction would defend it today by alleging “Hundreds of thousands of New England hockey fans over the decades have been able to gather safely here to support their teams.” Cumberland is a cross-shaped creature of unrelenting concrete. You need a ski-lift to survive its Spring Street, expert-slope-pitched entrance steps. There is only one thing remotely modern in the entire facility: a moderately sized center ice scoreboard, which appears portable while hinged on a track that snakes along the Center’s ceiling and delivers much needed color and technology to its prehistoric surroundings.
The Cumberland County Civic Center is forty years old if it’s a day.
Back in the Holiday Inn lobby before 9:00 Saturday morning dozens of traveling Bears’ supporters are roused and already armored in Bears’ garb, milling about the complimentary coffee stand. The team is staying here as well, and as individual players arrive in the lobby from their rooms they warmly meet and mingle with the busloads. Coach Boudreau and his assistant, Bob Woods, arrive, then they are joined by general manager Doug Yingst. They, too, are at ease among the Hershey hordes.
Mike Vogel impressed upon me the imperative of breakfasting at Becky’s, on Hobson’s Wharf, which is a 5-minute walk directly down High Street toward the Bay, but this is my second visit to Portland, so I know all about Becky’s. Bears’ management concludes its lobby visit with the fans with Coach Boudreau announcing “Well, we skate at 11:15, so we gotta get to Becky’s.”
With coffee and a belly-and-a-half of Becky’s conquered, I settle in to a center ice seat halfway up the Civic Center. The Pirates are on the ice now. Coach Boudreau is seated to my left, perhaps 10 rows further up, far enough away from the rink to allow for a quiet recorded exchange with the voice of the Bears, John Walton. Because of Vogel’s intermediary efforts on my behalf I expect to be able to chat up some members of the Hershey organization.

As the coach concludes with Walton I stand up and move toward him as he descends, introduce myself, and plead for a few minutes of his time. He graciously agrees. We walk back up another 10 rows and sit down.
I chiefly want to ask him about Dave Steckel’s big season, but I find the coach’s replies elaborate and illuminating and inviting of follow-up and unplanned queries embarking in unplanned directions. We discuss Chris Bourque, Jacub Klepis, and the remarkably cohesive play by the Bears with so patchwork a lineup. I feel honor-bound to adhere to the time constraints of my interview request, so I cut off our productive dialogue, and as we walk down the stairs together I relate to him my exchange with the beer maiden in Manchester’s rink a night earlier. He appreciates the warm sentiment and tells me “They’re not getting me back.” I decide to treat the material from our recorded exchange as its own blog file.
When the Bears take the ice at 11:15 one can clearly detect the effects of a victorious Friday. There is lots of chatter and chuckling — especially when Assistant Coach Bob Woods completes an odd-man drill rush by snapping a wrist shot past no. 1 netminder Maxime Daigneault. The Pirates won in Springfield Friday night, but their session this morning at 10:15 seemed more sterile and scripted. It was also conspicuously quiet.
Pirates Head Coach Kevin Dineen sits down right next to me midway through the Bears’ session. His assistant is with him. Though the Bears are engaged in traditional morning skate drills, Dineen is watching the ice hawk-eyed, occasionally referencing a tip-sheet in hand. I cannot read the coach’s mind of course, but I have a sense that the visit by the reigning Calder Cup Champions is special for him, and he’s taking full advantage of it.
If there are 250 Bears’ fans here in Portland this weekend — and based on this morning’s lobby congestion, that figure seems conservative — nearly half of them are in the Civic Center stands taking in the morning skate. Portland has no shortage of shopping, arts, and comfy New England tavern and tasting spots, but it now dawns on me that these Bears’ fans are super serious about their hockey and especially their team. They are on a hockey road trip, which will continue Sunday in Bridgeport, and most of them want to take in as much hockey as possible. They are pleasant and endearing to be around, but I find myself hoping that few of them know about my favorite tavern in town, Bull Feeneys. I am greatly looking forward to my first pint of Maine’s famous Shipyard poured there for me in about an hour.
Coach Boudreau has difficulty getting his players off the ice — they’re enjoying themselves too much. A second and a third time he barks at them from the rink’s entrance gate. After the session I make my way down to the hallway leading to the Bears’ locker room, but en route I see Daigneault stopped to pose for numerous photos with fans. One supporter produces an 8×10 color glossy of Max from his recent brawl with an opposing netminder. This catches the goalie off guard, but pleasantly so. “Nice,” he says in an elevated tone as he first admires and then signs the photo.
I’m close to a number of Bears players in the hallway, and I overhear one prominent one guarantee a victory tonight to a fan he’s chatting with. He doesn’t seem to say it in passing or, it seems, out of a sense that this is what the fan wants to hear; rather, it’s related with an air that it’s premised on some recent bit of intelligence the coaching staff has passed on, combined with, perhaps, a sense that the team has gelled of late. It’s a bit of bravado that certainly accounts for the team’s looseness and laughter out on the ice.

Out into the crisp Maine air I go, making a left on Spring Street with designs on organizing my morning skate notes perched on a Bull Feeneys’ stool, suddenly excited by the prospect of Hershey making quite a road impression this weekend in New England.