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Miami hockey is too good for you student ‘fans’

Photo by Lauren Olson, Photography Editor

Perkins' Problems

By Steven Perkins, For The Miami Student

Miami hockey is going to win the national championship this year. Why? Well, because the RedHawks are the best team in the country. But they might need some help. This is where you come in.

Miami's hockey team returns all but two players from last year's roster. They have the players and now the facilities to compete with any program in the country. The team has a brand new weight room and off-ice shooting area, as well as a media room and player-coach meeting room. I've been inside … and it's sweet.

Throw all of that together with one of the most well-respected coaches in college hockey and you must wonder, why do they need your help? Because you don't go to games. Miami has the potential this year, as it has in years past, to win the national championship. Yes, I know the 'Hawks hit a slump last year, and yes, I know they were ranked No. 1 in the preseason last year, and yes, I know they disappointed you last year. But, you also disappointed them.

Only 2,400 and change showed up to watch Miami play Western Michigan in February. That's contrary to a 3,600-plus showing against Ohio State earlier in the year. In fact, so few of you came to games late in the season and continued to follow the team that I would put money on most of you not realizing Miami finished second in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Tournament. It's the equivalent to losing in the SEC or ACC championship game.

You don't deserve a hockey team like Miami. You don't deserve the Goggin Ice Center and you don't deserve a national championship … as it stands.

You are the boyfriend who gets belligerently drunk on a Monday, forces your girlfriend to come pick you up, clean up your messes, make sure you don't break anything and you probably cheat on her, too. But she stays up with you, and she doesn't get mad. You see; you don't deserve her.

I'll give you credit as fans though; when it's good, it's great. You have some of the most creative and intimidating cheers and the intensity from the glass seats is sometimes greater than we see from the players themselves. When you do make it out of the bars and into the stands, you're dedicated and you want the win as badly as any player or coach ever has. But you have to make that step.

The team needs you. Home ice advantage matters, and it especially matters when you have fans that know, understand and care about the game as much as you do.

It can be hard to play in an empty barn. Just think, the overly aggressive fist pump jump-into the glass celly doesn't really have the same effect if there aren't any students standing on the glass.

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How is the opposing goalie going to know it's all his fault and that he is the walking embodiment of a pasta strainer without 1,000 students yelling it at him? How else will that asshole know how long he has to sit in the sin bin? What other way will the PA announcer feel the appreciation for his one-minute warning?

The hockey team needs you. The school needs you. Come out and bring a friend, because it won't take much from you to put the team over the edge this year and help them bring home the hardware.

Wouldn't you like to say you went to every game the year Miami won its first National Championship?