InOctober, after my first time inside the shiny new Everett Events Center, I wrote a review. The Silvertips experience, I said, is not your father’s hockey game.
The column didn’t much mention the tie game between the Silvertips and the Saskatoon Blades that Saturday night. It was all about the show.
I complained a little, about the horn blast when the Silvertips scored, and too much music during the game. Calling it a production in progress, I said, "I’ll be back."
I did go back, at midseason, again for the last regular-season game, and Thursday for a playoff game, the fourth in the Western Hockey League’s Western Conference finals against the Kelowna Rockets.
The home team didn’t win, no doubt a big disappointment for head coach Kevin Constantine and his young Silvertips. For the crowd of 8,099, it hardly seemed to matter.
Something happened down on Hewitt Avenue this season, something far greater than the sum of the parts — a new team, a new building, a new sport for a place in need of something to do.
What happened was, a lot of people simply fell in love.
A year ago, Chris Lamoureux couldn’t have envisioned that his 7-year-old would become a minor celebrity, if only within the confines of the Everett arena. Lamoureux couldn’t have known he’d become such a fan he’d travel to British Columbia to see the Silvertips.
"It was all new to all of us. We just got hooked," the Everett man said.
A year ago, Lamoureux, his wife, Samantha, and their two children had never even seen a Seattle Thunderbirds hockey game. Now they’re Silvertips season-ticket holders.
One member of the Lamoureux family isn’t just a spectator. Alex, 7, has become part of the production.
A student at View Ridge Elementary, he is often pictured on the big screen during the "dance for your dinner" gig, which has fans rocking out as the Zamboni resurfaces the ice during intermission.
"He’s our little resident dancer. We try to capture him on camera every time," said Zoran Rajcic, the Silvertips’ director of sales and marketing.
Alex won the promotion, dinner at La Hacienda Restaurant, twice before folks aiming the camera figured out it was the same kid.
"People were congratulating him in the halls, saying, ‘Hey, you’re that dance for your dinner guy.’ We’ve made him a little T-shirt that says, ‘Will dance for the Tips,’ " Lamoureux said. The twangy "Cotton-Eyed Joe" is Alex’s favorite dancing ditty.
The arena is still incredibly loud. The atmosphere can be wacky, but Rajcic and others have hit on a perfect entertainment mix. And the crowd plays along.
As if the horn and music weren’t loud enough, fans have turned up the volume with cowbells — hundreds of cowbells.
What’s with that?
Keith Gerhart, the hockey club’s broadcaster and director of public relations, said the cowbell fad got a boost when the team watched a Will Ferrell "Best of Saturday Night Live" video over and over on a bus ride from Spokane to Prince George, B.C.
In one skit, the comedian plays a cowbell during a studio recording of Blue Oyster Cult’s "Don’t Fear the Reaper." The band gets testy about Ferrell’s cowbell, but actor Christopher Walken, campy as a music producer, enters the studio and demands, "I gotta have more cowbell, baby."
At a team meeting later, the coach was talking to players "and one of them cracked off about needing more cowbell," Rajcic said.
"That was at the start of our big win streak," which took them to the Western Division championship, Rajcic said. When Rajcic put Blue Oyster Cult into the music mix at games, "fans didn’t understand it, but the players did," he said.
Cowbells became the talk of local sports radio. The community took to them, to the point that cowbells were stocked in the team store, Rajcic said.
Fans also have embraced the "kiss me" stunt, when the camera focuses on pairs believed to be couples. People in the crowd are caught unawares, the words "kiss me" on the screen taunting them into public displays of affection.
Having once been seated next to a Snohomish County Superior Court judge I barely know, I’m plenty grateful that camera never found me. That "kiss me" business is unnerving.
"It’s a little scary to us, too, but that’s part of the fun. It’s our reality TV and somebody’s 15 seconds of fame. About 98 percent of the time, they’re willing participants," Rajcic said.
"There’s been an acceptance of what we’ve tried to do," Rajcic added. "People could have said no. We have a very receptive fan base here."
Gerhart, whose broadcasting takes him to every arena in the league, said Everett is "unbelievable."
"You have 6,000 or 7,000 fans, and it seems like 14,000," he said.
I’m just one of those fans. I’ll bet thousands who’ve watched this inaugural season unfold would agree that something special happened in that shiny new building — not just noise, not just winning.
Like Lamoureux said, we just got hooked.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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