Ron Kantowski says high-sticking in June is just weird, but Wranglers will take it

By Ron Kantowski

Thursday, May 22, 2008 | 2 a.m.

It was 108 in the shade Monday — and the Wranglers were getting ready to play another hockey game.

One hundred eight degrees. Hockey.

That had to be the strangest convergence of diametric entities since Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett.

Human Torch, meet Mr. Freeze.

“The Flight of the Phoenix,” meet “Ice Station Zebra.”

Habanero pepper, meet Chunky Monkey.

Las Vegas isn’t the only place where this could happen, but the team in Phoenix stinks and the Timbuktu Travelers folded a couple of years ago.

“Coming from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Las Vegas is quite the transition,” forward Kelly Czuy said as the Wranglers continued preparation for the ECHL’s best-of-seven Kelly Cup finals that begin Saturday in Cincinnati, where the high Wednesday was 63 degrees.

Czuy said he has never shot a puck in triple-digit weather until this week. “But getting out of the hot and coming into the cold, I like it.”

Maybe this is what hell freezing over feels like.

If you’re still playing hockey in June it can mean only one of two things: One, you’ve had a great season. And two, it’s entirely too long.

“This is a lot longer than we’ve been playing the last couple of years,” said Adam Cracknell, who leads the Wranglers with eight goals and 13 assists in 15 playoff games.

Cracknell grew up in Victoria, British Columbia — which is sort of like Seattle Light. It occasionally gets warm where he’s from, but not this warm.

One of Victoria’s tourist attractions is Butchart Gardens, a spectacular 50-acre display of flowers and other earthly delights nestled in the southeast corner of Vancouver Island. This isn’t exactly tiptoe through the tulips weather, Cracknell said.

“They would die,” he said when asked what would happen to all that flora if it were planted here.

The fauna tend to do a little better. “I go lay in the pool. It’s freezing cold weather where I used to play. Down here, I’m on vacation,” Cracknell said.

Not all the Wranglers think it’s hotter than Jessica Simpson in those Daisy Dukes.

Left wing Bruce Mulherin played college hockey at Alabama-Huntsville.

Upon further review, scratch what I said about the Roberts-Lovett union being weird.

Huntsville is renowned for Space Camp and humid, subtropical weather, but not its college hockey team.

“It’s hot — humid hot,” Mulherin said. “Walking to class with a backpack, your shirt would be soaked. Here, it’s a dry heat.

“But no, I never thought I’d be playing hockey in Vegas, let alone playing in June. The leagues I’ve played in, I didn’t even know the championships went to June.”

Neither did Las Vegas hockey fans. This is the first time in the city’s pro hockey history that a team with “Las Vegas” — or, in the defunct Thunder’s case, a Caesars Palace patch — stitched on its sweaters has qualified for the championship finals. The Las Vegas Thunder was one of the top teams in the old International Hockey League but never made it to the Turner Cup finals.

The IHL was considered Triple-A hockey whereas the ECHL has a Double-A reputation. But Wranglers coach Glen Gulutzan said that doesn’t make what his team has accomplished during the past few weeks any less impressive — regardless of the weather.

“Only six teams are still playing hockey right now and that’s a unique feeling to be in,” Gulutzan said in reference to finals in the Stanley Cup (NHL), Calder Cup (American Hockey League) and Kelly Cup (ECHL) playoffs.

Actually, there are eight teams still playing, as Scranton and Portland and Chicago and Toronto — Chicago and Toronto, still playing hockey on Memorial Day? — are still high-sticking one another in the AHL semifinals.

But don’t blame Gulutzan if he’s let his subscription to the “The Hockey News” lapse. He’s still trying to make his Cup runneth over.

Normally at this time of year his daughters would be getting ready to finish school and Gulutzan would be planning a family vacation to Alberta, where his wife’s folks have a cabin. But the cabin still will be there on the Fourth of July or Labor Day or whenever the hockey season finally ends.

On Wednesday, when the Wranglers rolled out of bed, the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and the wind was blowing about 50 mph.

It sort of felt like Saskatchewan in the spring.

Ron Kantowski can be reached at 259-4088 or at [email protected].