Columnist Ron Kantowski: It’s difficult to stay a hockey fan in Las Vegas

Thursday, April 24, 2003 | 10 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

I love Las Vegas more than ... well, more than singer-songwriter Randy Newman loves L.A.

Las Vegas Boulevard. (I love it.) Boulder Highway. (I love it.) Paradise Road. (I love it.) Maryland Parkway. (I love it, I love it.)

My only complaint with our more-than-fair (outside of the casinos, anyway) city is that I am no longer a hockey fan because of it.

I don't care how many sheets of ice there are around town, how many minor-league hockey teams come and go, how many games are televised live and now in high-definition on television or how many bartenders named "Oggie" or "Oglethorpe" I've met since moving here 16 years ago. It's just hard to get excited about hockey when the weather is so darn gorgeous during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Part of the problem is that when I first was introduced to hockey, the Stanley Cup playoffs ended long before the Indy 500. Then again, there were only six teams, which explains why the playoffs didn't last until Memorial Day.

If you were a kid back then, part of the joy of following sports was that they were played in their rightful seasons, and after the championship series, game or final, the weather usually was conducive to going outside and imitating our heroes.

With the hockey season stretching into May, that's not possible anymore -- not even in Chicago, where I grew up. Unless, of course, the wind "was blowing off the lake," which in the Windy City vernacular means "bring a jacket."

It's not that I don't try to rekindle my passion for the game every year at this time. This week, for instance, I colored in one of my two front teeth with a black Sharpee, until I looked like Bobby Clarke. Then I put on my old Blackhawks sweater with the big No. 9 on back (no need to spell out "HULL" above it), thought about growing a playoff beard and picked up a six-pack of Molson's and another of Labatt's. You know, just in case there was overtime.

Sure enough, there was overtime in the game I watched, which Minnesota won. But Bill Goldsworthy didn't score the winning goal, and the Minnesota team that won wasn't called the North Stars, or even the Fighting Saints (Yes, I'm old enough to slightly remember the WHA).

No, the guy who lit the lamp was from Korea. Not named Kariya, as in Paul, but from Korea, as in South.

That was Monday night. Then Tuesday, something called the Minnesota Wild beat Colorado, which has drunk from the Cup twice in the past, even without a goalie named Glenn "Chico" Resch (although they tell me this Patrick Roy fellow is pretty good). That enabled the Wild to come back from a 3-1 series deficit, which in hockey, is more difficult than killing a penalty with Dorothy Hamill.

I was reminded of that by Bernie Lincicome, a former Chicago sports writer now living and working in Denver, which means he has jumped from the refrigerator into cold storage.

In analyzing Colorado's stunning defeat, Lincicome wrote that in hockey, a guy named "Jacques" as in Lemaire, the Wild coach, almost always beats a guy named "Tony" as in Granato, the man in back of the Avalanche bench.

How true. Only back in 1971, it was Tony Esposito -- not Granato -- who Lemaire beat in Game 7, with a long shot from the center ice red line in the Stanley Cup final at Chicago Stadium. Lemaire's amazing shot sparked the dreaded Canadiens' 3-2 victory and broke the heart of at least one Blackhawks fan.

In that 14-year-old kids have a warped perspective, that became a moment frozen in time. I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when Lemaire launched that slap shot -- riding my Schwinn Sting Ray to the local Dairy Queen, my right hand on the handlebar and my left clutching a transistor radio, listening to Lloyd Pettit describe the action.

"There's a shot ... and a goal," Pettit cried, using his trademark catch-phrase. Only there wasn't an exclamation point behind "goal," like when Bobby Hull beat Eddie Giacomin for No. 500.

Come to think of it, forget our beautiful weather. The real reason I'm probably not a hockey fan today is Tony Esposito's lousy eyesight.