MEMORANDUM

TO: Pittsburgh Penguins Fans

FROM: Russell Lucas

RE: 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs Crowd Conduct Issues

It's been six long years since the Penguins darkened the door of the Stanley Cup playoffs. That drought is thankfully going to end within the next half-hour. Tickets for Games Three and Four of the series against the Senators (which the Penguins will win in five games) are already down to standing room-only and single seats. I expect the team will get a boost from the raucous and spirited home crowd, but figure this might be the time to mention a few lingering issues in the hope that we won't be embarrassed fanbasewise.

I. Ice Maiden Etiquette

Yes, I know they're lame. I don't know exactly whose terrible idea it was to add cheerleaders to NHL games or to give sequined and spandexed young women the job of cleaning up the ice instead of the overweight guys who always shuffled out during TV timeouts. I hope the fad fades, too. In the interim, though, don't abuse them. It's such a Ranger move.

II. The Wave

Listen, I can't say whether or not the last few games I attended were aberrations or part of a larger trend. All I know is that I saw The Wave, and there's just no excuse for that. There's really nothing more to say. You paid a lot of money for your tickets, so keep your eyes on the game and don't humiliate the city.

III. Kiss Cam Etiquette

While I am advocating the long-overdue elimination of The Wave, I am simultaneously urging you to continue the practice in place regarding the Kiss Cam. If the Cam should happen to alight upon you and your significant other, please do continue to grind tongue. This significantly enhances the entertainment value of the Kiss Cam. Do not fear that these displays are not classy. If the Arena management insists on subjecting you to the social coercion of training a camera on you in front of 17,000 people who vocally expect you to surrender your physical autonomy, then the least you and your companion can do is add some juice to the whole operation. In addition, soul kissing forces the Jumbotron producer to stay on his or her toes to cut away quickly. I'd like to see the day come when an entire Kiss Cam segment is edited like a Michael Bay movie.

Further, keep this tactic in mind if you should be in the same unfortunate position as this poor bastard. If you have some unresolved business with Johnny Law, there is no quicker way to have the camera leave you alone than to fill your date's mouth with your tongue. Don't forget this.

IV. Jaromir Jagr

Finally, while there is no way to safely predict whether his team will make it to the second round, I need to address an ongoing issue with regard to a former player now employed by the New York Rangers. Jaromir Jagr scored his 600th goal last November. Not many hockey players get there, and fewer still get there at the age of 34. It's typically an achievement reserved to long-time goal scorers scratching around in the last year or two of their careers. A night or so later he scored a couple more times to move into 15th overall and 1st among European goal-scorers. 439 of those goals, along with 640 assists, came while he wore a Penguins uniform. Apparently none of that matters, though. When the Rangers come to Mellon Arena the home crowd shows him the same sort of reception reserved in days gone by for the likes of Eric Lindros, Adam Graves or Ron Hextall.

I really don't get it. And I'm saying this as someone who fell in love with the raw intensity of a hockey crowd when, at eighteen, my dad took me to a Flyers-Penguins playoff game. The noise was so deafening that I was absolutely, positively convinced that our relentless chanting (and not the ten pucks put behind him) was what drove Hextall to his ill-advised decision to chase Rob Brown around the north end of the Civic Arena while wielding his goalie stick. So I know a little something about the upside of the angry crowd dynamic. I should also mention that the first pro football game I attended in person was the infamous 1984 Pittsburgh Maulers-Birmingham Stallions game, in which 65,000 fans used both drunken jeers and the perfect packing snow (which had been miraculously/intentionally left in the aisles at Three Rivers Stadium) to express their displeasure at Cliff Stoudt's incompetence as a pro quarterback and his brazen decision to take his incompetence to a joke league. Another fun story, though perhaps not the finest hour for humanity.

So, my question is this: what could possibly justify treating Jaromir Jagr in the same fashion as Ron Hextall or Cliff Stoudt? How can Jagr get the same sort of reception as Barry Bonds or Kordell Stewart?

Let me refresh your recollection:



Remember that goal? The one that Jagr said he "didn't know enough English to describe" and which Mario called the greatest goal he'd ever seen. That was the goal that buried the Blackhawks. Sure, Mario's actual game-winner came with a handful of seconds left in the third, but Jagr's goal was the psychological back-breaker, the one that announced there was no way that team was hanging with the Penguins over a seven-game series. Yeah, they could win a period or two, as they had in Game 1, but they wouldn't be holding the Cup at the end. They had to know it.

Whenever the Penguins would play the Capitals in Landover in the early- to mid-1990s, some loud protion of the Caps fans in attendance (that it, those who hadn't scalped their tickets to Penguins fans) would always make a whoop-whoop-whooping sound every time Penguin Larry Murphy touched the puck. It sounded weird, but apparently it was intended to show their displeasure following the years he spent with the Caps. It always struck me as a pathetic and self-loathing chant. The fans were taunting a guy who came to the Penguins after stays in Minnesota and Washington who immediately proceeded to win two Stanley Cups while being the most important blueliner on the most exciting NHL team of the early nineties. He fell up the stairs, went from rags to riches. You think he cared about the Washington fans holding a grudge against him? Of course not. Jagr, in contrast, hasn't improved his position since he forced the trade. Still, don't be that guy. Be the guy enjoying his own ridiculously talented team.