Keeping New York cool on the ice

It’s hockey season and the best team to root for in New York is the New York Rangers. I have plenty of Islanders fans friends who disagree, but they can’t hide the fact that the Islanders sold their souls when they agreed to play at the Barclays Center.

But no matter, Rangers games are a great time. Even though tickets are expensive, you can sometimes get good deals. My wife is a superior planner and managed to find a compelling offer for tickets to watch the blue shirts take on the Winnipeg Jets. It involved having to friend someone on Facebook, send money through PayPal and then print out tickets at home, but it was legit and we had real tickets to a nosebleed-level luxury box at Madison Square Garden.

We got to MSG early because the luxury box area was going to have food before the game and we wanted to scarf down as much complimentary food as we could before the first puck dropped. With no mobs of people there, we walked directly one of the metal detectors. I emptied my pockets of all metal objects and walked through but I set off the metal detector anyway. I think it was the metal on my steel-toe boots (Joe Strummer said to always wear shoes you can run in or fight in, and I’m not good at running).  

As the man waved his metal detecting wand over my boots, his colleague manning the metal detector took issue with my house keys.

“You can’t bring this in here,” he said, holding a key tool that lives on my keychain. The tool resembles a key but is a multi-tool that includes a bottle opener, two screwdriver heads, and a small blade. It would take you a week to stab someone to death with this blade. If you are immobile enough to be seriously hurt by the blade on my key tool, you are probably going to die soon anyway. I said if I couldn’t take it inside I wanted to check it and pick it up later.

The security guard called over a supervisor, an older man in a suit with an earpiece in his year. He was friendly and handed my keys over to a young woman who took off the key tool, and gave me back my keys. My wife and I followed her to a small security office with a Dutch door. I handed another security guard my I.D. and he wrote down my name and gave me a receipt written out on a baggage claim check. I saw that my small blade was going to be sharing some space on the top of a filing cabinet with a larger knife and one or two very small knives.

We made our way up to where our seats were and found our area. Half of the section was closed off before the game for Al Trautwig to do his pre-game broadcast. I couldn’t hear anything he was saying above all of the noise, but it was fun to see the behind-the-scenes of what is normally a mundane broadcast. Once he was done, everything was packed up quickly and we got seats on bar stools above the seating section. We had to stand to see one of the corners of the rink but otherwise the view was not bad at all.  

The game was phenomenal as the Rangers beat Winnipeg five goals to two. Hockey moves at a brisk pace and Madison Square Garden erupts into song whenever the Rangers score a goal. We enjoyed the camaraderie of the fans, the inspirational moves of Dancing Larry and the cool taste of blue shirt victory. During the intermission between the first and second period we got to meet Mark Janssens, who was very friendly and gave autographs and posed for photos with fans.

After the game, we made our way back to the security office and stood in line outside. We had to go into the office one at a time to collect our things once a bored security guard said, “next.” While we were waiting in line, who did we run into but my friend Poppy and his son Mike. What makes this even more interesting is that my wife had seen Poppy just the night before as his daughter Danielle hosted an outstanding art party for my wife and her friends. Our Gotham can be a small and amazing place at times.

Go Rangers!