No Bright Lights

To think it all seemed like such a normal night of exhibition hockey.

Tripp Tracy was all over the place in the Harvard goal--as usual--yet nothing got by him. The Crimson offense, slow and mundane in stanza number one, was starting to fire bullets and string crisp passes together.

And, with 10:02 to play in the second, Steve Hermsdorf came on in good-natured relief of Tracy and stopped the first two shots that came his way.

The Harvard lead was 3-0 over the University of New Brunswick, the stands half-filled, the situation fully in control. Yeah, the public address system wasn't working, but there are always a few kinks for everyone to work out in that first preseason run-through in Bright Arena, from the athletic department to the band to the power play.

Not that anyone could have predicted the power outage that was soon to ensue.

Harvard itself was shorthanded after committing a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty, and as the Reds stormed up the ice to prepare another rush on Hermsdorf, well....

As Harvard Coach Ronn Tomassoni put it, "I thought we were in Boston Garden for a moment."

Darkness. Not the kind of terror-inducing pitch-blackness that leads to stampedes and riots--more the comedic "What the hell am I doing here, anyway?" preseason reaction. The emergency lights were still on, and hey--the scoreboard was still working (and stuck on "8:56"), and the press box lights were going strong.

Good to know that Harvard's priorities follow today's NCAA stance: the score and the media come first, the fan always seemingly a distant second.

Tomassoni's allusion to the blackout that annulled Game Four of the 1990 Stanley Cup Finals between the Bruins and the Edmonton Oilers seemed pretty appropriate, outside of considerations that the delay was only about three days shorter and irritated only about 50,000,000 fewer people.

Still, conspiracy theories abounded. Check the grassy knoll behind the picket fence for footprints--or at least sniff for that crucial whiff of ozone in the Book Depository.

Hmmm. Maybe it was a Gary Bettman-Bob Goodenow thing, you know, "If we can't play hockey, nobody will!"

Hmmm. How about the Harry Sinden theory, you know, "Let's see if you let the Bruins players practice down at Bright during an NHLPA strike ever again!"

Hmmm. Mitt Romney? You never know.

The players retreated to their locker rooms for a few laughs: "Some of the guys started asking [Tomassoni] if he forgot to pay our electric bills," Kirk Nielsen said after the game.

And pity poor Hermsdorf, Senior year, first game as the number-two guy on the depth chart, a great chance to test the waters in a comfortable atmosphere...and 66 seconds in, you're not only a man down, you're a couple hundred kilowatts down.

Oh well. In the end, it hardly mattered--the delay functioned as the second intermission, during which Zamboni-operator Jack Kirrane again drove into the hearts of millions by doing his duty with both headlights on.

(Which of course begs the question, Why on earth would a Zamboni need headlights?)

And the Crimson came back out, played hard for 29 minutes, looked good, scored often and never trailed.

Which, in the end, made for a perfectly utilitarian opening exhibition, if not an entirely illuminating one.