Portland Pirates Games With My Dad

If the reader has never heard of the Portland Pirates, first of all: shame on you. And two, they don’t exist anymore*. The Pirates were the American Hockey League minor league affiliate of the Washington Capitals in the ’90s, before suddenly being turned over to the Anaheim Ducks franchise in the early 2000s, and then to the Florida Panthers. For a few seasons, when I was in elementary school, my dad had half-season tickets. The advantage was, instead of selling tickets to extra games that we couldn’t make it to on the secondary market, my dad and I would pick 20 games we knew we wanted to see.

We loaded up on tilts against the Providence Bruins, Springfield Falcons, Worcester Ice Cats, St. John Flames, and St. John’s Maple Leafs. We didn’t care so much about teams from the Western Conference, but when we did, it was usually the Hershey Bears or Philadelphia Phantoms. We preferred 7 p.m. puck drops. My dad would get home from work around 5:30 p.m., incentivizing me to finish my homework early. If I had, my dad would pick me, turn around, and get us the road towards Portland, Maine’s Cumberland County Civic Center, about 15 minutes from our house.

The Pirates were the best show in town for most of my childhood. For rivalry games--the games we preferred--metered parking could be an issue. But we were pros: there was a lot behind a popular watering hole, Brian Boru, five minutes from the arena that we parked in. It was cheap and convenient, so we typically got to our seats (section G, row 17), in time to see pregame warm-ups and maybe catch a puck. My dad chose that section because it gave us a center ice perspective, slightly tilted towards the end of the ice where the Pirates would be trying to score in the first and third periods.

At capacity, the Civic Center sat close to 8,000 people. A lot of the games we went to were weeknight games, where a solid crowd would approach about 4,500 fans. I rarely ate before the games so I could enjoy the Civic Center fries, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets. Additional perks of showing up early: 1) the line to sign up for Score-O (an intermission contest where fans should shoot through a puck-sized hole from center ice to win a car) was short, and 2) one got to see Pirates' mascots Crackers and the inflating/deflating Megabuck dick around, playing one-on-one after warmups. A third mascot was added in my time: Captain Cannonball. He was a bit of a prick and took the pick-up games with the other mascots a little too seriously, but the trio made it work.

At the time, those games meant everything to me. The Pirates were my hometown team and I didn’t care that my obsession with them wasn’t doing me any favors trying to make friends in school. I was far too young to realize that minor league hockey games were mostly a great opportunity to get drunk and yell at strangers; I assumed the Pirates had one of the more passionate fan bases in the league and I was happy to be part of it. My dad didn’t drink at the games, but walking around with him at intermission was like following a legend. He had a crew of guys--mechanics from the Volvo dealership where he worked--that would post up at a corner table, near the concession stands. Others, he sold cars to. Some of my earliest friends were 40- and 50-year-old men who seemed to share a passion for minor league hockey.

We rarely, if ever, left games early. That went against my dad’s code: until time was up, there was always a chance, and as fans, it was our obligation to sit through even the shittiest of performances. On a few occasions, that loyalty got us better seats than we could afford to miraculous comebacks in the final moments. At the very least, we'd see a late brawl, featuring professional minor league goons. Regardless of the outcome, if there was time, my dad would take us to UNO. We’d sit in a booth in the bar section and recap what we’d seen. It never seemed to cost more than $50 for the entire experience. I was young, chubby, and happy.

*The Pirates are now the Springfield Thunderbirds.