Pro hockey comes back to one of my old homes

Looks good, doesn't it? Wish I could be there.

I saw this from my friend KB the other day.

Night Ranger, Gordie Howe and the Hansons? #diedandgonetoheaven #uticacomets Fan Fest for Utica Comets announced http://t.co/V5o4IB1AuH
— Kris (@Dranks71) September 16, 2013

Her excitement was over the announcement from the Utica Comets, the new American Hockey League affiliate of the Vancouver Canucks, about their upcoming Fan Fest. I'd be excited about Howe and the Hansons, and I'll give KB a pass on Night Ranger, since we're both about that age where that sort of thing might be exciting.

I went to college in Utica, which is where I met KB, and went to several events in the Utica Memorial Auditorium, including our graduation. There was the night when a friend and I went to one of the interminable three-hour "Monday Night Raw" tapings that WWE used to have in those days, and my time in college coincided with the last few years of the Utica Devils AHL team before they left to become the Albany River Rats.

Anyone who ever saw an event in the Aud can pick the "Slapshot" scene filmed there right away. (By the way, Roger Kahn's excellent "Good Enough to Dream" was set in Utica, and read a whole lot differently after I went there than it did beforehand.)



After the Devils left, a few pro hockey teams tried to give it ago, the first of which was the Utica Bulldogs of the United Hockey League ... where at one of their games I would have tripped over Gordie Howe if I had gotten any closer to him, but didn't know until it was too late.

Howe was on a tour of minor league cities, I believe to mark some kind of anniversary, and his son Marty was the coach of the Bulldogs, so Utica was one of his stops. My roommate and I went to the game, and between periods, he signed autographs in a corner of the arena, but as you might imagine, the line was quite long, so we skipped it.

At some point later on, we were walking through the concourse when a group of about four or five guys in suits breezed past us. No big deal, except that we didn't realize until they were past us that the guy in the middle of the suits was ... Gordie Howe himself.

To be honest, I don't know what we would have done if we figured it out beforehand, and I'd say the odds were good that the other guys in the suits would have kept us from doing too much, but it's still a fun story about being a goof.

The Bulldogs begat the Blizzard, who begat the Mohawk Valley Prowlers, but none of them lasted, and the Utica College hockey team has been left to satisfy the local hockey fans ever since, and given that they have led Division III teams in attendance the last seven years, the community has taken to the Pioneers.

Given the way it ended for pro hockey in Utica, I was stunned to read that Vancouver was putting its AHL team there. I'm not sure why they would want to put their top affiliate nearly all the way across the continent, but I'm just happy they did, if only so I can be perhaps the only person in the world to say that two of my favorite places, Vancouver and Utica, have joined forces.

I hope it works out for both the Comets and the Pioneers.