Kansas City Tornadoes
Here’s a timely, midsummer post about the not-so-recent NHL Draft!
The New York City area had some crazy weather this past weekend, with powerful but scattered thunderstorms culminating in the ever few and farther between Tornado Watch for some or all of Queens and Nassau County.
I’ve heard of tornadoes threatening to touch down, sometimes succeeding, on the mainland just west of the Hudson, in New Jersey and sections of New York. But on Long Island, where I grew up, we don’t usually get tornadoes. Hurricanes, sometimes (Hurricane Gloria swooshing around the vegetable patch outside my parents’ window is one of my earliest memories, from September of 1985 when I was not yet 4), but not tornadoes.
The radio warning brought to mind a prediction about the future. It’s somewhat bold, and somewhat sad, but will have going for it no exchange of money: Weathermen and Major League batters, paid to fail.
It concerns the hockey team I should have rooted for growing up: the New York Islanders.
I should have, because they remain the team closest to the house in which I grew up. Failing that, it’s because I also root for the Mets and would align myself with the Mets-Jets-Islanders axis rather than the Yankees-Giants-Rangers confederation (even though I don’t root for the Jets, either. Some axis.)
I’ve certainly been to Islanders games. Two in particular come to mind: the first because it was on a February 29th, the one in 1992, and the first of my lifetime when I was old enough to realize how odd are Leap Year shenanigans, really. The second, because Montreal goalie Jose Theodore himself scored a goal AND had a shutout, which is so much more than I did that day:
Anyway, by having the first selection in this year’s draft, the Islanders recently made news, which is news enough in itself since they are not only terrible but forgettable. The Mets lose on huge stages (Castillo, the bat on Beltran’s shoulder), the Islanders in a Soviet-era bunker from which few if any signs of life ever escape.
That bunker, really, is at the heart of this long and winding column apparently about Kansas City Tornadoes, what? The Islanders, taking John Tavares with their high pick, now remind me very much of the deposed Seattle SuperSonics. Kevin Durant, fantastic ballplayer that he is, was able to lift the spirits and melt the hearts of a city for a very short amount of time, before the threats to move came to be realized and ownership shuffled the team from the coast to the American Midwest.
I’m no insider and can’t more than speculate just how dire the Islanders home-arena situation really is. But from what I’ve read, the franchise is leaking money, not unlike a dilapidated vessel their old Captain might have commanded. They are in desperate need of a modern arena, to remain competitive and eventually become profitable. But plans are tied up, and the possibility, however remote, still remains that the team may move, just possibly to Kansas City.
Enter the Tornadoes.
The Kansas City Tornadoes were a hockey team nickname I made up (probably not the first nor last) like many kids do, mine selected from the very best NHLers of the 1992-93 season. I have no access to the roster right now but I’m sure Luc Robitaiile was on it.
I was very excited two years later to be able to play on a roller hockey team called the Tornadoes whose jerseys bore my obsessive logo and color scheme. Phenomenal.
And so, perhaps, it shall be again, professionally. I certainly don’t wish for the Islanders to leave the arena 35 minutes from my house near where I used to intern in the summer of 2002 by those smokestacks. I hope they get their act together. I want Tavares to do his part. I wish DiPietro would get healthy or just give back the rest of his contract. I’d be thrilled for the Islanders to win again.
But. If the foreseeable happens, I just want to call the nickname now: Kansas City Tornadoes.
EDIT 6/11/11: Read my post-2011 Joplin tornado response here.
