Hartford

Running With The Wolf Pack

by Jamil Ragland | Feb 22, 2024 4:53 pm

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Hartford Wolf Pack vs. Bridgeport Islanders
XL Center
Hartford
Feb. 21, 2024

My last hockey game was back in the 1990s. Obsessed with the movie The Mighty Ducks 2, I begged my parents to take me to the game when the Anaheim Mighty Ducks came to town to play against the hometown heroes, the Hartford Whalers. I had to be reminded by my parents several times that if I wasn’t going to cheer for them, at least don’t boo the home team. 

The Whalers left in 1997, but the tradition of hockey in the Capitol has continued with the minor-leaguel Hartford Wolf Pack. I met up with a couple friends and went to the XL center, where I was looking forward to being reintroduced to the game..

The game was a rivalry game on two fronts. First, there’s the intrastate rivalry between Bridgeport and Hartford (Hartford is better, by the way), but also the intrastate Battle of New York: The Wolf Pack are an affiliate of the New York Rangers, and the Bridgeport Islanders are affiliated with the New York Islanders. 

As a result, the game was chippy from the start. I was brought back into the excitement of hockey quite suddenly when one of the Wolf Pack players slammed an Islander into the plexiglass right in front of me. I was ready for a bruising battle on the ice.

Of course, one of the main reasons that I went to the game was for the fights. And the game did not disappoint on that front.

I found the game surprisingly beautiful. The brutality of hockey is carefully orchestrated and regulated. Where football plays always end with teeth-rattling tackles, hockey players crashed into each other sparingly. A shoulder check was a strategic maneuver to spring a teammate towards the goal. Each crash, thud and slam was an explosion on the ice made all the more entertaining because I never knew when or where it was going to happen.

The most impressive and gorgeous part of the game is that it takes place on ice. Every person on the ice, from the goalie to the referees, is a world-class ice skater on top of being extraordinarily skilled at their position on the team. I was a high school athlete who couldn’t make the basketball team and who didn’t have a single hit in my one season of baseball. I finally found some moderate success when I realized that I couldn’t do two things at once, so I dropped the ball altogether and ran track. Here these players were, ice skating while simultaneously maneuvering a puck that’s only three inches wide and one-inch thick. They weren’t just slapping it mindlessly at the goal. The puck glided across the ice gracefully, from teammate to teammate, skirting around the circular ends of the arena, and striking the back of the net with the force of a fastball.

The players skated fast, the action was fast and constant, and before I knew it three periods had blown by. In the end, the Wolf Pack triumphed, defeating the Islanders 2 – 1. And I knew to cheer for the home team this time. 

NEXT

The Wolf Pack play the CHarlotte Checkers at the XL Center on February 28.

Jamil goes to check out fashion at Real Art Ways.