411 Love of the Game Special: Yayo on Hockey
Posted by J. Yayo Hernandez on 04.24.2006
The Beezer, rats, and one magical season...
LOVE OF THE GAME: HOCKEY
J. "Yayo" Hernandez
- Why do you love the game of Hockey?
I have to admit that hockey is a game that I didn't start to truly appreciate until the Florida Panthers came into existence. With the gracefulness of ballet and the violent collisions found on highways it's hard for me to imagine my life without it now. I think my main reason for loving hockey is because of it's inherent juxtaposition of these skills necessary to play.
- Who's your favorite Hockey team, current and all time, and why?
Florida Panthers. And the reason why is easy… it's because of the year of the rat. With an hour to go before face-off on in the home opener of the 1995-96 NHL season against the Calgary Flames, a live rat dashed about the Panthers' locker room. Scott Mellanby, the future captain, remembers, "Guys were jumping out of the way and screaming. It made a beeline right towards me." So, Mellanby, armed with his stick let his fine-tuned instincts take over. He one-timed the rat with a slap of his stick against the locker room wall. "I one-timed it," said Scott, "and it was dead."
Soon, a tradition would be born. That night Mellanby scored two goals in a 4-3 win. Goalie John Vanbiesbrouck called it a "rat trick." Later that night in the locker room, an unidentified team member marked the spot on the wall with a circle and inscription "R.I.P. Rat 1." Two games later, on 13 October 1995, the team's third home game which was a 6-2 win against Ottawa, two rubber rats hit the ice after a Panther goal. This was the first recorded rat throwing. The next game the total was 16 and the game after that it was 50. The more rats that were thrown it seemed the more the Panthers won. They won enough to make the playoffs by which point the per-game rat count exceeded 2,000.
- Who is your favorite Hockey player, current and all time, and why?
John Vanbiesbrouck – The goalie on that amazing 1995 team. For many years the Beezer was the face of the Panthers franchise and was a beloved member of the South Florida sports landscape. It was his amazing play that keyed their run to the Stanley Cup and made an entire state fall in love with a sport they didn't understand the rules too.
- What is your favorite Hockey moment of all time?
Upsetting the heavily favored Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1996 Conference Finals. They had already shocked the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers (the latter series in which they made a comeback) and still everyone doubted the team from Florida. Many thought the writing was on the wall when Pittsburgh with superstars Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr took the series lead, but behind the strong play of John Vanbiesbrouck the Panthers made another comeback to play in the Stanley Cup finals.
- What are your thoughts on the last decade (1995 – 2005) of Hockey?
Boy do these hockey folks have a lot of work ahead of them. Since 1995 when hockey was respectable if not to distant fourth sport behind NFL, NBA, and MLB in the U.S. they have managed to fall behind even further, with Nascar becoming far more popular. The NHL has had a hard time of making stars during this period of time, and the methodical trap hockey that had taken hold was certain to keep new fans away. The issue of popularity came to a head during the lockout when literally no-one cared if they ever came back. But as with MLB after their work stoppage it looks like the NHL may be going in the right direction. By opening up the game and starting to enforce obstruction rules the games are more high scoring and in turn more exciting. It's this excitement (if it can be kept up) that will allow hockey to re-launch itself in America's mindstream (we know it never left in Canada) and allow for it to become better then it once was.
