We went to see the Islanders play the Penguins over Thanksgiving break.  Hockey is a big deal for me; it used to be bigger back when the NHL actually meant something, but I still enjoy making the pilgrimage out to Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum every Thanksgiving and Winter break.

It’s no secret that the NHL is a shell of its former self today.  You could say that the NHL is the Detroit Lions of professional sports leagues – formerly rich with history and cherished by loyal fans, currently horribly mismanaging its players and coming up with one hair-brained quick fix solution after another (the latest being Daunte Culpepper for the Lions, and I guess the new-and-improved jerseys system in the NHL), and stuck with a guy in charge who easily should have been fired half a decade ago.

The Islanders have a quagmire of problems themselves.  Games never sell out (yeah, even when it’s Thanksgiving break and the kids are home, and a ton of people are off from work the next day, and the most exciting club in the league is coming to play that night).  It’s next-to-impossible to get excited about the team because we’re never really that good, and we’re also never really bad enough to land a string of super picks to propel us back to the top.  The Penguins were miserable for two years, and now they’ve ended up with two of the best three players in the NHL.  Granted, a Sidney Crosby won’t fall into your lap just any given off-season.

Well, there’s no changing the past.  What excited me most about the Isles epic 5-3 loss/collapse to the Penguins was all of the changes I got to look at around the stadium.  At least the Islanders have realized that business as usual won’t work anymore.  Here are some of the things that have changed recently, and my thoughts on them (you’re here to read my thoughts on things, aren’t you?):

Girls: The Islanders now have Ice Girls – a team of buxom, scantily-clad vixens who come on the ice during TV timeouts to scoop up the ice flakes kicked up from the players’ skates.  This wasn’t a bad idea.  NFL and NBA teams have cheerleaders; a little sex couldn’t hurt fans’ general enjoyment of games.  To a point.  Plus, they’re keeping the ice cleaner, which makes for faster skating and a better game.

New this season, the Isles have also added the Ice Breakers – a team of buxom, scantily-clad vixens who walk around and dance and stuff.  I don’t really remember what their excuse was for being there (maybe I was just distracted?).  It seemed excessive, and seemed like they watered down a good thing.

In fact, I’d say it seemed like something the XFL might do.  99 times out of 100, that’s not a good thing – the one exception being the XFL allowing players to put whatever name they wanted on their jerseys.  I’m still upset that Chad Ocho Cinco never saw the light of day, even after he legally had his name changed.

T-Shirts: Like any other sporting event you’ve been to in the past 10 years, the Isles launched t-shirts into the crowds during breaks.  But now, they occasionally do it via a rapid-fire Tommy Gun.  The gun was awesome.  The shirts, in sum total, excessive.

By the end of the game, the fans sitting in just our seating section must have gone home with 5-7 tee’s.  One nearly fell into my dad’s lap.  My brother caught one while standing up to go to the concession stand – it nearly hit him on the side of the head.

This might not be a decision the Isles are making directly – I imagine some sponsors are paying them handsomely for the right to launch the shirts – but how excited could you get when the the staff rolls out the t-shirt launchers for the fifth time in one game?  I could explain how diminishing marginal returns works, but for simplicity’s sake: the launchers are boring me.

Polite Ushers: As per usual operating procedure, the three of us ended up sitting in entirely the wrong section, because we always end up with two sets of two tickets in different areas and want to sit together.  We ended up getting caught by an usher who was taking some other fans to their seats.  Now, at a normal sports venue, the usher might amicably suggest “GET THE !@#* OUT OF MY SECTION AND GO BACK TO YOUR SEATS.”  Instead, he just politely said “you guys can go where you like, I just need these two seats.”  This was revolutionary – the guy knows that we can sit pretty much anywhere we damn well please, so instead of being obnoxious about it, he smiled and let us go for it.  It wouldn’t work in any other context where fans might actually pay to fill a stadium.

On the one hand, I was personally pleasantly surprised.  But on the other, this is a definite white flag – the Isles don’t fill the stadium anyway, and everyone from the guys in the office to the ushers knows it.  So they’re not even fighting it anymore.  Of course, this is only going to make matters worse for them in the long run – why should I pay for $120 seats on top of the ice when I can just grab a $20 nosebleeder and sit wherever I find a space?

New “Goal!” Cheer: For years, when the Isles would score a goal (rare), they’d blast Rock and Roll, pt. 2 over the loudspeaker, and everyone would get up, cheer, and “Hey!” along with the song.  They changed it this year, to some song I don’t know the name to, the lyrics to, or the chorus to.  All I know is that every now and again, you’re supposed to cheer “Hey!  You suck!”  Seriously.  Not “go our team!”, not “hooray we’re the best!,” but “you suck!”  This is easily the most Long Island cheer I could imagine.  And it’s precisely the reason why I went to a university in St. Louis.

Furthermore, how exactly does “you suck!” fit under the NHL’s goals of becoming more family-friendly?  I think the NHL sucks.

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The Islanders don’t need to continually distract me from the game by throwing breasts and t-shirts at my face.  The game itself should be enough.  Hockey is an incredibly fast game, with constant action and lots of physical play, and if you’re quick enough, you can even follow strategy and watch different plays develop – try observing any of that at a baseball game.  What the Islanders need to do is revitalize the event, make it more engaging, and make it something I’m more emotionally connected to.

Fortunately for the integrity of the team’s marketing staff, the Isles have already taken a few baby steps in the right direction.  They’ve introduced Loudville, one section in the stadium where they’ve wardened off all of the college students under the premise that if you want to sit there, you’ve got to be yelling a LOT.  Which is a fantastic idea – college students love yelling at things, and other fans who saw them yelling on the Jumbotron were inclined to get excited, too.  It was the only remotely close to capacity section in the Coliseum.

The Islanders can also thank Wendy’s for another great idea.  I found out after the Isles went up 3-1 that any time the Islanders score 3 goals in a home game, you can go to any Wendy’s on Long Island, tell the clerk “I want my free chili, Let’s go Islanders!”, and you get a free chili.  On the other hand, every time an Islander scores a goal in general, the Jumbotron says that the person sitting in Section X, Seat Y just won an autographed puck.  Which excites me more: that some theoretical random set of numbers just won a puck, or that I get to swing through a Wendy’s on the drive home and enjoy a chili?  Am I going to stand up and cheer harder for the 1/3000 chance that I win a puck, or the 1/1 chance that I get a delicious chili later?  Hell yeah I want my free food.  If they Isles do a good job hyping up the promotion, I’m a lot more emotionally invested in the success of the team.

Even better – the Islanders introduced a “Victory Plan,” for select games this year, where if the team wins, you win seats to see another game – no questions, no catch.  NOW how hard am I going to cheer when the game is tied late in the 3rd period? (Incidentally, I wrote a longer article this summer about the Victory Plan here, if this is something that really gets you all hot and bothered.)

What it breaks down to is this:

1. The Islanders incentivize me to cheer, yell, hoot, holler, and go nuts.  In return, I have more fun at the game, I buy more stuff, and I come back more frequently.
2. I cheer, incentivizing the team to play better (in theory).
3. The team plays better, fans buy more stuff and come back more frequently.
4. Upwards spiral, ad infinitum.  Everybody wins (except, hopefully, not the Rangers).

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[The Most Important Section!!] Here are a few other ideas I’ve got to push the emotional investment idea:

1. Give free parking to every car that shows up 2 hours before the game (maybe, eventually, this won’t even be necessary).  Let them borrow a mini grill for free (leave your keys at the window & get them back when you bring back the grill, or something).  Sell uncooked hot dogs, buns, burgers, sausages, etc., and let everyone go back to their cars and tailgate up until game time.  Fans win because they have a great time, hang out with other die-hards, the event becomes bigger and more valuable than the game itself, and they get to park for free.  The Islanders win because their fans are winning, and they’ll probably even cover parking costs ($7 / car) with the additional concession sales.
2. Every time an Islanders player wins a fight, let him take off his gloves and throw them into the stands.  How cool would that be – you just won some game-used memorabilia that was mauling some guy’s face a second ago.  If the fight was any good, it might even still have some of his blood on it!  And instead of “Section X, Seat Y,” put whoever catches the gloves on the Jumbotron – this attaches a human face to the winner.  Now, instead of looking down at my ticket stub and shrugging, I’m thinking “man, I wish I was that guy.  That was awesome!”  Maybe I’ll even try to buy closer seats next time.
3. Every time Sidney Crosby (or whoever the opposing team’s best player is) comes on the ice for a shift, and goes off without scoring a goal or an assist, put a guy in a Penguins jersey on the Jumbotron and give him a free Let’s Go Islanders t-shirt.  Maybe it’s just my perverse sense of humor, but I’d be on my feet jeering every time Crosby came on the ice, and on the floor laughing every time he got off.  I know we’ve got the supply reserves on the tee’s.  I’m already giggling hysterically as I type this.  I think the dude sitting at the computer next to me in the lab is furious.  But this idea needs to happen, NOW.

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In the end, give us fans a reason to love the game, and we’ll love the game.  Keep distracting us and looking for quick-fix solutions, and we’ll be sure to find something that can hold our attention.

Any other ideas you guys want to share?