After lunch, we trekked west on Front Street and headed for the Hockey Hall of Fame.
As we approached the corner of Front and Bay, we saw several guys from RU (who we found were from the era of Frank Burns—that’s 1972 to 1983). In fact, everywhere we went there was lots of Rutgers Scarlet.
Back to the Hall of Fame. The Hall is a relatively new building but with many surprises. The first is that when you first enter the building in which it is housed you are reminded of the Air Force Academy’s Chapel. The interior is a series of metal A-frames from one end to the other but within that giant A-frame is a beautiful old bank built some time back in the beginning of the 1900s. To get to the Hall, you go down stairs into yet another food court and press south.
Enter the Hall (there is a reasonable fee) and you’re in a modern museum of hockey in both North America and the World. There’s memorabilia from the NHL and international competition. Colorful (or is that colourful?) jerseys from teams past and present abound. You can spend an hour or two walking about the displays or head over and try your luck as a shooter or goal tender at the interactive games area.
Unsuspectingly you come to a small stairway with a sign: “Stanley Cup” and an arrow. Follow the arrow and you climb up into that beautiful old bank to find a wooden paneled room with an awe inspiring stain glassed dome above.
Look around at the architecture. It’s worth the time.
But it’s not why you’ve come to this shrine. Across the room you see it perched upon a pedestal before a wall of the greatest players, coaches and promoters of the game of hockey.
THE Stanley Cup
Every little hockey fans fantasy is to have his name inscribed upon the base of that cup. And lots of them come here to gaze upon their hero’s name and dream a little harder.
Me? I’m not much of a hockey fan. Just as I was starting to get into it, that is when I figured out this blue line thing and what the heck an offsides was when everyone is skating at 60 mph, the damn thing went on strike for a whole bleeping year! That’s when I figured I was better off sleeping through the months between football and spring training. (With the current NFL playoff system, that sleep has become a mere nap.)
We left the Hockey Hall of Fame and headed south toward the Lake and the Westin Harbour Castle which is the official headquarters of RU fans on this excursion and where there was a pep rally scheduled to take place a little after four o'clock.
