Going Back to Houston

Iconic Houston Field House, Troy, NY
Photo Credit Ben Vreeland creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/#

It stands atop a hill in Troy like a brightly lit airplane hangar.  If you rolled a rock down from it's front drive it would most likely land on the frozen Hudson River unless it hit a car.  And on this first Friday of February 2014, this 60 year old Houston Field House was a living, vibrant thing, hosting the NCAA Hockey champs, the Yale Bulldogs, who had bused from New Haven to the Capital District for two vital games this weekend.  As an intense fan of college puck, the RPI hockey scene, and hockey road trips of any size, shape or form, I scaled the hill on this Arctic night. A 300 plus mile round trip after work.  A moth to the frozen flame.

Built in 1949 as a naval warehouse, the Houston Field House is the third oldest hockey facility in America.  Despite some serious facelifts over the years, you can still find your view obstructed occasionally by massive steel girders, like you do at Fenway Park or staying with the Capital District, the iconic grandstand of the Saratoga race track 20 minutes up the Northway.  But the Field House is the gritty stepling of the Saratoga set, blue collars and creased ball caps trudge in from the cold to watch Division I hockey in Troy.  The hardened locals line the south side grandstands while students and press line the north. The tight aisles go from 'A' to 'S' with cramped wooden seats a la Fenway, but it creates perfect hockey sightlines, providing you are not near the corner girders. Steven and I were in letter Q. Near the roof, but able to see all four corners and the names on the back of the jerseys. If the fire marshall isn't in a bad mood, the Field House can cram in 5000.

My buddy Steve and I went to check our seat locations, and came upon a scene that looked like an accident.  A large elderly man in a dirty winter parka was prostate on the aisle steps.  Neither of us saw him fall, but he had a companion assisting him as he writhed on the ground.  We leaned in prepared to offer assistance, and then discovered that it was intentional. This was how the man got to his seat. From what I could tell, he was a regular. Without appearing to stare, I observed the process: it took him several minutes of wriggling up the concrete steps, but he eventually crawled to his seat and propped himself up.  He was there in time to see warmups.

It's dark and a little dingy under the HFH grandstands, men can no longer go shoulder to shoulder at the urinals that were built for a slighter human race.  The photographic pantheon of RPI hockey history, an ample trove that includes NCAA titles in 1954 and 1985, is entirely black and white. Adam Oates, Ned Harkness and Joey Juneau all had their hockey lives supercharged in this old barn. But the popcorn is fresh, and not overly salted, served up by smiling student athletes who advertise their sport, in this case field hockey, on their tip jars.

Around the corner and into sprawling space of what appears to be a giant airplane hangar, the swim team and the soccer team compete for contest dollars from newly arriving fans: soccer men hawk 50-50 raffle tickets while Team Chlorine sells rubber discs for the popular "Chuck-A-Puck" intermission competition.  The swim team got my seven clams in return for four pucks for Steve and I to hurl toward the center ice logo for a chance at dinner in town. (0 for 4 for those scoring at home).  Scraps of white paper with black text instructed fans to go on line and vote for RPI's top scorer for the Hobey Baker Award. Function over form. On this frozen Friday there was a palpable buzz in the building as the national champs in navy warmed up on the far (East) side of the Field House. It was Hockey Night on Campus.  My press pass helped me score line charts as I settled in with a hot mocha mix and my old defense partner at my side for 60 minutes of Div I puck in a scene that was as authentic as any venue in north or south of the border.   Indoor winter sports bliss.

To honor RPI's player commitment to the true ice blue north, they played Canada's national anthem prior to the Star Bangled banner.  Steve and I belted out most of the words of our neighbor's fabulous tune, and then sat to take in the color, speed, sound and power of two squads of young 20-somethings going at full bore across the frozen 200 by 85. And true to the deserved hype, the swift and powerful Junior Ryan Haggerty burst down the wing and overpowered Yale's freshman goalie with his 22nd goal of the year, creating a visible bulge in the upper reaches of the net that ignited both sides of the Field House. There is is 10 foot runway even with the dasher boards that allows a super fan to sprint with his homespun RPI flag. Motion, color, energy. A buck and a half later Yale's supremely skilled yet undersized junior  defenseman Tommy Fallen executed a stutter step at the blue line and send an undetected stealth missile 60' into the top shelf to tie the game and sober up the joint.

The hadsome and charismatic 8th year RPI coach Seth Appert bases his victory formula on successful goaltending.  He can't compete with the BC's and the BU's in recruiting the snipers from Massachusetts, and the Minnesota state schools get the brilliant skating prospects from the land of 10,000 frozen lakes, so he cobbles together an assortment of ambitious Ontario citizens that will play two-way, honest hockey, and then he finds a goalie that will cover some of the deficiencies.  He has gotten the academically proficient Engineers into the NCAA's in 2 of the last 3 years, missing last year by a small handful of computer points.  He is a former Division I goalie (Ferris State) that thinks and speaks in in goaltenderese, he shares his theory of how 20 points of save percentage will make a critical difference in the unforgiving "Pairwise" computer rankings that determines whether your schools is inside or outside the NCAA March dance.  As February signals the stretch run of the regular season, RPI has gotten to the point where they have to win the season-culminating conference tournament to qualify for the dance, and the same is probably true for Yale.  In a post-game exchange the photogenic Appert conceded that his starter, 6'1" Scott Diebold was not big enough to stop not one but two seeing -eye snipes from the gifted Fallen.  Appert does have a star goalie, man-child Jason Kasdorf, who might very well have save % necessary to have RPI on the coveted NCAA tourney track, Appert's prize recruit is in the stands with a season-ending injury.  Somewhere in his soul coach probably wishes he could strap on the tools of ignorance to protect the Engineers' net and their tourney chances.

The game is controlled territorially by RPI, but Yale comes on in the third, scoring one power play goal to tie the game with less than 8 minutes to go in the third, and another to win it in OT. The final was a buzz-killing snipe one tick less than a minute into sudden death, sending several thousand locals back into the cold. It was a night filled with supreme images generated in and around the frigid old barn on this Hockey Night:  Appert's ritual sparring with the Albany Times Union beat writer over what the story of the game was; the Yale locker room door five steps from the Field House back door, with the bitter winds searing the players naked, wet bodies as they changed, cursing, near their locker door that was constantly opening to get the equip,ment to the bus; a relieved Yale coach Keith Allain in the inner bowels conceded that wins for Yale are rare and treasured up here in Troy. The Bulldogs were outworked and outshot and fortunate to sneak out into the raw night with a vital two points in the standings. They had an uphill struggle looming the next night against nationally ranked Union up in Schenectady.

My old hockey pal was part of the intermission smoking club, where he met his Berkshire travel partner for a smoke and conversation under the stark starlight in front of the box office each intermission.  The two of us earned Homeric history points out in the single digit temps for knowing a member of the 1954 RPI champs.  We shared Johnny Mags stories with the hard core RPI story tellers as the smoke circled our frozen heads.

Scoring star Ryan Haggerty's father Roger was in the near end zone, spending most of the second intermission in deep conversation with a representative of the Blackhawks.  As a free agent that can score and doesn't require player compensation, the Haggery clan finds itself in the enviable position of having teams compete for Ryan's services.  It was no surprise that Dad was a lot more interested in speaking to the Chicago rep than an old beer league compatriot. Appert thinks Haggerty is best suited for a top-6 forward spot in the Show, but he will have to take the job of a veteran scorer to gain a foothold in the NHL, a hypothetical multi millionaire that is enjoying a lengthy career, like a Patrice Bergeron or a Marian Hossa; a tough chore indeed.

Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute can be considered the MIT of the Hudson. Although not the academic powerhouse of its Cambridge counterpart, it is a splendid technical institute in its own right.  Their undergraduate TV club produces and directs the premier college hockey webcast in the land. Their staff consists of computer science majors who write their own code for graphics and replays, creating a quasi network look via their laptops.  The gang who crams into the control room before and after games looks a lot like the cast from Big Bang Theory, only nerdier and tech savier. If you know where to look you can find them in the cat walks 50 feet above the ice with high end Radio Shack cameras getting overhead video to enhance their replays.  They are impossibly endearing, and are held in high esteem by the ECAC Hockey conference, who hires them every time they are in a TV jam and need an important game televised. The RPI-TV club was deputized by the ECAC and produced their championships in 2012 when the league's deal with CBS Sports Network went south.  Coach Seth knows they are an asset and might be the key to shining much needed light on this program to help elevate the Engineers profile in their recruiting wars.

As the clock struck 10, the RPI coaches shared pizza as they started breaking down video in the hockey coaching office under the north stands, Yale was busing to Albany, and the ink-stained wretches of the Capital District were typing away on deadline in the upper reaches of the venerable Houston Field House. They told a story of hockey hard luck in a building that has seen both good and bad on the ice for 65 years.  Compared to hoops and football, college hockey is a well-kept secret. $10 tickets, Homeric history, world class coaches and unmatched buildings make it a beautiful fraternity. The 150 mile drive home under the high pressure stars illuminating the Hudson Valley was filled with memories of the sights and sounds of Hockey Night in the frozen grit of Troy, and its majestic old Field House.