The Market Basket in Manchester, N.H. was a short walk to the rink, but the signs said, “No SNHU Parking.” They were big white signs with black letters, and nowhere did they say, “Except for you.”
Inside the store I plunked a case of water, a sleeve of soda and a box of K-cups into my shopping cart and found the manager. He was between aisles helping a worker stock the shelves. “Excuse me,” I said. “If I leave my receipt on the dashboard would it be okay if I parked here and walked over to the hockey game?”
“I don’t tow,” he said.
“I’ll park in the corner,” I said.
“No worries,” he said. “Thanks for asking.”
Thank you, Market Basket, no wonder Consumer Reports ranks you second (to Wegman’s) among national supermarkets.
The SHNU Arena is located near the city’s Gaslight district and close to I-293 that loops around the city. The box office was already open and I paid $35 for a ticket and headed to the Red Arrow Diner for an early dinner.
It was damp and misty and the street was lined with tenement houses and package stores. Tough town, I thought, watching a woman ask for a light outside Murphy’s Bare Knuckle Boxing. The state’s largest city isn’t shabby or littered, it just has a blue collar attitude, and it sure beat Boston’s $50 parking rates. At a crosswalk, two men and a woman in their late 20s were bundled up in sweats and had backpacks slung over their shoulders. “You wanna go to a wedding tomorrow?” I overheard one of them say. “The wedding’s private but the reception’s free. They’re serving chicken cordon bleu and wedding cake.”
A path cut diagonally through Victory Park past a monument “Dedicated to the memory of the Manchester men who died in the Great War.” The diner was around the corner and a Franklin County crew was seated at the counter, including Montague’s Rick Sawin and Ann Fisk.
Rick’s kids, Josh and Matthew, played hockey with my son Mat, and Ann is the longtime organizer of the Montague Mug Race. I sat beside Rick and asked him, “How many games did you go to this year?”
“Just about all of them,” he said.
On my left, a father and son were having an afternoon breakfast. “These are the best hash browns I’ve had in a while,” said the son. The father said they lived in Manchester and were going to the games to see four of the best college teams in the country, UMass against Harvard, and Notre Dame against Clarkson.
The Red Arrow’s bathroom is the second door on the left through the kitchen; take the first left and you’ll wind up in the cooler. A newspaper clipping over the sink said that during the final week of the New Hampshire primary it serves 1,500 cups of coffee and 500 slices of cream pie.
One-fifth of the state’s population lives in Manchester or nearby Nashua and Concord, making it a magnet for presidential candidates glad-handing for votes in the nation’s first primary.
“A couple have been in you wouldn’t even see on TV,” said Ellen Ryan, who’s waitressed at the Red Arrow for 11 years. “Obama, Hillary, Trump… We get some real characters. I want to tell ’em, ‘Your shirt’s untucked, you’ve got a stain on your jacket, you obviously haven’t shaved in a couple of days, and you’re asking for my vote for president?”
The half-mile walk back helped me digest the turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and cottage cheese on the side. Sadly, I was too full to order the coconut cream pie. Twenty minutes before the puck dropped, the line for tickets was backed up out the door.
A staff employee scanned my ticket and told me to go through the metal detector with my arms raised and my cell phone in one hand and my car keys in the other. I stepped off the escalator and saw “Sam the Minuteman” posing with little kids wearing hockey jerseys that came down to their ankles.
A UMass student named Jake Barnes stood in the crowd handing out “Bunker Banter” leaflets that had disparaging profiles of Harvard players (#26 Jacob Olson Worse-looking than an Olsen twin) and recommended chants (Daddy’s Money, Safety School!) to use during the game.
A sports management and marketing major, Barnes is president of a student organization called “the Militia.”
“Right now, we have 270 members – up from 70 my freshman year. We pay $10 dues that includes a t-shirt and some road trip expenses.”
Barnes jokingly denied knowledge of the Sons of Liberty, a splinter group that wages guerilla fanfare against opponents. “Sons of Liberty are a small group of about 10,” he said. “They take their chirps to a different level that we can’t go to as an official university organization.”
I eschewed the $8 NCAA programs and $30 hats and t-shirts and paid $10 for a Coke and bag of popcorn and took a seat in the second row behind Harvard goaltender Michael Lackey.
Behind me, the Harvard pep band was playing “Build Me Up Buttercup” which seems to be every band director’s favorite tune. The pro scouts sat together and were easy to spot in their long overcoats and legal pads and tablets propped on their knees.
The puck dropped at 3 p.m. and mayhem ensued to the sound of hockey sticks slapping the ice and bodies being crunched into the boards. A UMass player skated into the right face off circle and passed the puck behind Lackey through the goal crease to the other side of the net. The Crimson players regrouped and charged up ice into the UMass zone where Nathan Krusko whacked the puck past netminder Filip Lindberg.
The celebration was short-lived when the referee waved it off for goaltender interference. While the players waited at their respective benches for the play to be reviewed, Lackey and Lindberg stayed in the crease, slightly bent and catatonic and seemingly engaged in a 70-yard staring contest.
The goal was disallowed and the game was scoreless after the first period. Up on the concourse between periods Lou Misiun came over to say hello, and Bill McDonald chatted with Jim and Jean Turati across from the popcorn stand. It was like a Mullins Center reunion.
In the second period, Harvard’s Jack Donato broke in alone and was winding up to shoot when Cale Makar appeared out of nowhere, lifted Donato’s stick and skated away with the puck. The Minutemen hadn’t scored in nearly six periods, but Makar’s effort emboldened them and they began a relentless attack.
The UMass fans began to cheer like a fight crowd does when it sees a boxer start to land punches — bursts of guttural roars until finally fourth line forward Anthony Del Gaizo rammed the puck past Lackey for a 1-0 lead with five minutes left in the period.
The entire lower arena was full, and the partisan crowd cheered UMass coach Greg Carvel and his assistants as they walked along the boards to the bench for the third period. They walked carefully on the slick ice surface, unlike the woman in a black dress and high heels who nonchalantly walked from the announcer’s booth to the Zamboni door with nary a wobble.
I had snuck into the upper arena and had a front row seat at the railing. The only person near me was a photographer in the next section who had his camera lens propped over the rail. Others sat in clusters, players’ family members, healthy scratches and scouts. A few kids ran between the seats playing kick the can.
The Minutemen swirled around the Harvard net like sharks circling for the kill. John Leonard’s shot got behind Lackey for a 2-0 lead and Brett Boeing’s breakaway goal sealed the Crimson’s fate.
In desperation, Harvard coach Ted Donato pulled Lackey with over four minutes to play. UMass used the empty net as a shooting gallery until Boeing skated in alone and slid the puck between the pipes with 24 seconds left.
The next night, UMass dominated Notre Dame by the same 4-0 score. In two games, they’d outshot their opponents, 70-30, and Lindberg had recorded back-to-back shutouts. “Not to take anything away from Filip, but I could’ve strapped on the pads tonight and gotten my first career win,” Carvel said afterward.
UMass had racked up its 30th win and was headed to the Frozen Four.
In the words of the late, great Jack Buck: Go crazy, folks.