USA Hockey Magazine

June/July 2012

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BY JESS MYERS Fun Frozen Four In The Sun At The TAMPA, FLA. Tampa Proves To Be A Great Host As College Hockey Makes A Southern Swing the main entrance to the Tampa Bay Times Forum, Phil Esposito was a goal scorer of some renown. At a time when Wayne Gretzky was just learning to skate, Esposito ruled NHL rinks for the Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins and N.Y. Rangers, making a permanent mark in the scoring record books. An hour or so before Boston College beat Ferris State University in the most recent NCAA championship game, Esposito held court with a few reporters deep in the bowels of the Tampa Bay Lightning's home rink, reflecting on his days in the NHL as a player and an executive, and noting how much things have changed, for the better, with the growth of hockey in warm-weather regions like Florida. "We'd play in Montreal and it would be 10 below when we went to the rink, and 12 below when we left the rink," said Esposito, who served as the Lightning's first president L 40 ong before he was instru- mental in bringing NHL hockey to a tropical paradise on the Gulf of Mexico, and long before there was a statue of him greeting visitors at and general manager. "Here you go to the game and it's 75. After the game when you leave, it's 73." It was indeed in the low 70s with a bright sun heading for the horizon as fans from all across the nation streamed into the Forum to witness the culmination of the first NCAA Frozen Four contested in the South. And for the members of the local hockey community, they didn't need to see the hockey sweaters from college hockey's "four M's" (Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts and Maine) to tell the visitors from the locals. They just looked for red arms and faces. "Many of the folks I met in the arena were college hockey fans wearing their home sweaters and enjoying the experi- ence," said Tim Madden, a vice president with Statewide Amateur Hockey of Florida, and a Tampa resident. "They commented on how much they enjoyed the special Florida flair for the weekend. A few probably should have done a better job reading the SPF levels, but a few sunburns and a lot of fun made for a great weekend." After hosting multiple Super Bowls and basketball's NCAA Final Four, the Frozen Four was not an overly daunting event for the sports commission in Tampa-St. Petersburg. Still they did their homework, traveling to the event in more traditional hockey markets like Denver, Detroit and St. Paul, and learning what worked and what didn't in those host cities. They took the best of what others had done, then added a distinctly Florida flair to the weekend. JUNE/JULY.2012 USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM That was evident when the four teams' planes landed and players from BC, Ferris, the University of Minnesota and Union College were greeted on the tarmac by local youth hockey players offering a stick salute, and a steel drum band playing the music of the tropics. On the night before the tournament, when the four teams traditionally gather at a hotel ballroom for a pre-event banquet, they instead took to the water. The Eagles, Bulldogs, Golden Gophers and Dutchmen boarded a yacht for a leisurely dinner tour of Tampa Bay, and watched the sun set into the Gulf. "We're a community that prides itself on our hospitality and our ability to put on big events," said Rob Higgins, executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. "What we appreciate most is what we've heard from the student-athletes. We got comments from them that we helped create memories that will last a lifetime, and that was our intention and priority." They also worked to create a lasting effect on the hockey community in Florida. The Frozen Four made its first foray into the warm-weather states in 1999, in Anaheim. The reviews there were decidedly mixed, but a dozen years later there has been a wave of college hockey players from Southern California who say they were first exposed to the sport when the best in the game came to their backyard. In the run-up to the tournament's first appearance in Florida, organizers focused on the grassroots levels of hockey in the state, taking the NCAA championship trophy PHOTOS COURTESY OF the Tampa Bay Sports Commission; Getty Images

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