Let’s just put it out there. I’m not a hockey fan.
Here’s how little I pay attention. Thursday, after covering the Gilroy/San Benito baseball game, I asked Gilroy head coach Clint Wheeler for the book so I could check out my stats.
“(Assistant coach) Rich (Furtado) has it,” he said. “But he left already. He’s going to the Sharks game.”
Oh, right, I remembered. The Sharks. The NHL playoffs. Road to the Stanley Cup. Of course, how could I forget?
There are several reasons, including the aforementioned one. Also, I’m a Midwesterner living in the Golden State. I’m trying to be more Californian and make up for years of enduring biting winters by cutting as much cold weather activity out of my schedule as possible. That means no ice hockey. Secondly, had I wanted to get into hockey growing up, I would have had to cheer for the Blackhawks. Enough said.
Nevertheless, as Thursday night’s game played itself out on the office television while I was at work, I couldn’t help but pay attention – even cheer a little as the Sharks scored three-straight unanswered goals to come back for the win.
You can go ahead and call that the beginning of playoff bandwagon-ism. I’m not offended, it’s the truth. But it makes me wonder – are people hockey fans just because the Sharks is the only major sport pro team in San Jose? I mean, I’ve always thought California and ice hockey will just never mix.
This is both true and not true, depending on which South Valley Sharks fans you talk to.
“I guess for the West Coast, hockey games are kind of a novelty. Something outside of the normal repertoire of sports we’re used to participating in,” said Gavilan athletic director Ron Hannon, a Sharks fan.
Hannon was a casual fan of hockey before the Sharks came to San Jose, but what really made him want to attend a game instead of just catch one on television was the first time Wayne Gretzky visited San Jose with the L.A. Kings.
The A.D. goes to a handful of games a year and though he hasn’t attended either of this year’s playoff games, he has been to previous ones.
Even he will admit, the success of a franchise can make up for the lagging popularity of that team’s sport.
“I think it’s one of those things where it’s a new sport for us and we’ve had relatively good success,” Hannon said. “To have success early on in the franchise history, you’ve gotta jump on it.”
When he’s not on the bench in San Martin, Santa Clara Superior Court judge Kenneth Shapiro is a Sharks fan who attends about 15 games a season. He’s been in the towel-waving, 17-000-strong crowd at the Tank for both of San Jose’s home playoff wins over the Predators.
Shapiro, a lifelong hockey fan who grew up watching minor league hockey in San Francisco, believes many Sharks fans are true hockey fans.
“My guess would be that there’s a very hardcore group of Sharks hockey fans,” Shapiro said. “Many people you find are transplanted here from the Midwest, East Coast or Canada and are into hockey and turn into fans of the Sharks. They were probably hockey fans already. Although you still see a lot of people wearing other team’s jerseys.”
Honestly, it doesn’t matter who is filling the seats – as long as they’re into the game. The Sharks crowd is and appears to generate enough energy to blow the roof off HP Pavilion.
And let’s see. What other local pro teams have been creating as much of a winning vibe as the Sharks lately? The A’s? Giants? Niners? Raiders? Warriors?
Hmmm. You might this non-hockey fan catching a game at the Tank soon enough.
