It finally happened.  Philips Arena, home to the NHL’s Thrashers and NBA’s Hawks, will finally host a playoff game for the first time since it's inception in 1999.  Yes, the Arena Football League’s Georgia Force has had playoff games there but that doesn’t count.  It’s a trivial thing to even care, but I had always wanted to be at the Thrashers’ first home playoff game.  They joined the NHL right around the same time we moved down here so there’s sort of a kinship there.  The Red Wings are still my first love but I’ve adopted the Thrashers as my secondary team, much like I did with the Cubs when I was in Chicago.

I’m lucky I’m even seeing the game though.  It’s this Thursday and I’m leaving town on Friday for an extended weekend.  For that sole reason of not knowing when the game would be held (I bought the tickets a few weeks ago), I bought the cheapest tickets possible in case I had to eat them.  I’ve never been up as high as I will be on Thursday!  It’s almost embarrassing to even try to offer someone my other ticket since it’s about as “un-premium” a seat as one can get.  But I’m inside the arena and that’s what matters.

As huge a hockey fan as I am, I’ve never been to an NHL playoff game before.  The Red Wings stunk in the mid-1980s and we didn’t have extra money to buy tickets when they started making the playoffs in the late 1980s.  Then I went to college in Peoria and was 2 ½ hours away from an NHL arena.  By the time I graduated and moved to Chicago, the Blackhawks were on their inevitable decline (and are still there today) thanks to a modern day Potter as owner.  Moving down here the same year as an expansion team meant there would be many more years before NHL playoff hockey was in the same town as me.  Now it’s finally happened and I’m happy for the franchise.

Here’s where a city full of transplants rears its ugly head.  I’ll be the first to admit I’m part of the problem.  Whenever the Red Wings come to town, the arena is 2/3 full of Red Wings fans.  The same thing happens (although on a lesser scale each year as the Thrashers expand their fan base) with other larger cities when their teams visit Atlanta – New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Philadelphia are the main ones.  Their fans take over the arena. 

Obviously the Rangers have a rabid fan base (heck, my blog host is one of those hardcore Rangers fan who will flood the arena) and with all the transplanted New Yorkers down here, I have a gut feeling that the crowd will make the Rangers feel as though they’re home.  Personally, I don’t blame them for swamping the arena in droves and screaming “Lets Go Rangers” at every possible lull in the action.  It’s just that it will be embarrassing for a home team’s first ever playoff game to feel like an away game.  Oh well, such is life in Atlanta.

As much as I am rooting for the Thrash, I think the Rangers will take it in six games.  Having their road games feel like a home crowd will help their cause.