Life in the Neutral Zone
In the five years Oklahoma City has had an American Hockey League team, I have spent a lot of time at the convention center.
If you’re not all that into hockey, and based on the Barons’ average attendance this season you probably aren’t, the AHL is hockey’s equivalent of AAA baseball, the top level of the minor leagues, a skate-blade-width away from The Show. The Barons are owned by the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, who had a five-year deal with Bob Funk Jr.’s Prodigal LLC to play in Oklahoma City. The hockey arrangement is that players and coaches work for the Oilers, and Prodigal pays an affiliation fee for the right to sell tickets and sponsorships and jerseys and all that goes with all that.
That arrangement is coming to an end in part because big-H Hockey wants an AHL division on the West Coast so minor league players are closer to their parent clubs. It also lightens the travel load for the AHL teams and sets up local rivalries, which help sales. The Barons will go to Bakersfield, Calif., which has been home to an ECHL (AA level) Oilers affiliate. That coupled with Prodigal’s inability to come to terms with the Oilers on a contract extension leaves OKC a hockey-free zone.
I started going to Barons games because of a conversation my sister in law had with one of her KU accounting students. She wondered what sort of job he had that required him to travel so often and he explained that he was a hockey referee.
“Oh!,” she probably said. “My brother in law used to referee a lot of hockey. I bet you know a lot of the same people.”
She gave him my email address and he offered to leave tickets at Will Call when he was assigned games in Oklahoma City.
That’s how Raymond, then barely 5, ended up at his first hockey game. The next time Zac was in town he told me to take Raymond down by the glass so he could toss him a puck. Raymond thought that was really cool. For game two, Zac delivered a Texas Stars game puck from Austin. Then Zac brought pucks from San Antonio, Houston, Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland. Most fans boo when the officials come onto the ice. Raymond and I stand and cheer.
The first time Raymond stayed for a public skate with some players, he chatted up Mark Arcobello, who posed for a photo with his newest fan. Arcobello went on to the NHL and Raymond now wears No. 26 on all his jerseys. He also wants to go to Yale, Arcobello’s alma mater.
Barons games became our thing. Raymond shot pucks and played knee hockey in the kids’ area during the first intermission and we bought food during the second break. We had a routine and we knew a lot of people at the games.
When I set out to produce a charity 5K with the Barons, Matt Ford’s wife, Cassie, offered to volunteer and bring some of the other players’ wives to help out too. That made Ford Raymond’s second-favorite player, and he was pretty excited this year when he got to play pick-up hockey with him on the outdoor rink.
Zac worked the Barons’ final regular season home game. Raymond was out of town, but I went anyway. Despite the 4-2 win over the Iowa Wild, it was a sad night. It turns out that losing a team isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the loss of everything that went with it that makes you cry.
EPILOGUE
About two weeks after this was published I received an email from Mark Arcobello. A friend had seen this piece and forwarded it to him, and he wrote to ask me to tell Raymond that he should keep playing and enjoying the game even without the Barons, and that he hoped Raymond found as much joy in hockey as he had. Later, he also sent Raymond a birthday card with a warm note and a signed rookie card. All that contributed to Raymond's love of hockey, but, more importantly, it demonstrated that hockey people really are a different breed, that it is all one big family, and that while Raymond aspires to be a hockey player he also aspires to be a hockey person.