Hockey Game at the Tsongas Arena

The men’s ice hockey team had unexpectedly lost the first game of the season after being ranked the best college team in America. Although they did win their next game, the sting of losing after all the hype was still felt by the hockey fans of UMass Lowell. Now they would play their third game of the season against Quinnipiac, the national runner-up in last years tournament. However, it was my first college hockey game as a part of a college fan base, and I walked through the doors of the Tsongas Arena not knowing what to expect. Was the hockey game going to be sloppy yet exciting like those of my high school or was it going to be clean cut and professional like we watch on TV?

Students were packed into the student section, but the rest of the seating was sporadically filled by locals and other students. Blue and red decorated the entire arena, and the fans were excited to get the game under way. Boo’s met the opposing team as they hopped onto the ice, while a roar of cheers greeted the Riverhawks from the tunnel. The atmosphere was filled by a nervous hope that the opening loss was nothing more than a fluke.

The first period of the game was back and forth, up and down the ice, but neither team found a way to put the puck in the back of the net. I was pleased to see how excited the fans got when a promising play developed. Tensity was felt all over the crowd, and gasps of excitement and nervousness were constantly matched by sighs of disappointment and relief. Both the team and the fans of UMass Lowell knew how important a victory would be.

After a fifteen minute break from all of the action, the teams came back onto the ice. The second period held more surprises than the first, but they were not in our favor. Quinnipiac scored three times in the second, and with each goal, it seemed like the energy of Lowell’s players diminished. The momentum of the game was clearly in the away team’s favor, and UML’s chances were looking slim. Fans began to look at one another as if their friends could explain what was making everything go wrong. The mood felt in the arena had changed over the course of twenty minutes.

The Riverhawks came out during the third period with an extra hop in their step. They knew they had a lot of pressure on their shoulders during the final period of the game. High expectations needed to be met, and the team did everything they could to meet them. Every shot that the home team took on net was pleaded to go in by the fans, and every save made on opposing shots was thanked. When UMass Lowell scored in the middle of the period, the student section erupted. It was a great experience to witness a goal by my school’s team at the college level. A spectator that had no knowledge of the score or the game situation would have thought that the team had just won a close game in overtime. The hope of a comeback suddenly became a bit more realistic, and the fans began to cheer a little louder. The common thought seemed to be that if they scored three goals in one period, so can we. The game went on, and with every failed shot attempt the hope of winning began to fade. As the final horn sounded, the scoreboard read 3-1 in favor of the away team.

Although the end result was disappointing, Riverhawk students shrugged it off rather easily. I heard more than one fan say something along the lines of “Hey, last year started the same way and look at how it turned out then.” We were reminded that it was only the third game of a very long season and that there was plenty of time to turn things around. I was impressed by the optimism being passed around the UML fan base, and it made me more excited for the intensity of the games later in the season. After losing another one to Quinnipiac, the Riverhawks hockey team has won five straight games, a good sign for things to come.