Feature Article   My First Up Close and Personal Hockey Experience By Melissa Minners               This may surprise you, knowing that I am such a sports fan, but up until a couple of weeks ago, I had never been to a hockey game.  Shocking as this may be to you all, there are just some sports that I would rather watch on television, or not at all.  I have never been one to enjoy watching basketball on television for one.  I’d rather be playing basketball than watching.   As for hockey, I’ve watched a game or two on television, but it was never really something that caught on for me.  So, a couple of weeks ago, when a friend of mine was taken to a hockey game for their birthday and decided to bring me along, I wondered what I was getting myself into.             Of all days to go to Long Island, my friends pick the date of one of the worst nor’easters to hit this area in quite some time.  Wind whipped through the state, tearing off branches and tossing debris everywhere.  Rain pelted down in relentless sheets, softening the ground and allowing trees to be uprooted, in other areas pooling up and flooding roads out.  This was the night they decided to head out to Nassau Coliseum to see the New York Islanders play the New Jersey Devils.  Sighing, I piled into the car with everyone else, deciding to make the best of the journey.  After all, having never been to a hockey game, I could cross this off the bucket list of things I would like to do before death…oh, wait, going to a hockey game was never on that list.  Oh, well, it will at least be something that I have never had the chance to do before.             I would like to say that I found Nassau Coliseum to be a wonder to behold, but the only thing I could behold was my hat on my head as I raced through pelting rain and gale-force winds to get inside so I could be dry and not feel like I was about to fly off into space.  Thus, I never really got to see the building I was heading to - it was a blind race to the dry interior.  Once inside, the building resembled just about any other sports arena with numerous venders hawking New York Islanders ware, food, etc.              Entering the actual stadium area, I discovered that we had seats fairly close to the ice.  This somewhat raised my excitement level as I realized that I wouldn’t be watching multi-colored dots racing around a hockey rink after a little black speck.  I was close enough to see faces mushed against the boards.  Even better, I was seated just to the right of one of the goals.  Hmm…maybe things were looking up after all.  Although I’m not much of a hockey fan, when I do watch, I root for the New Jersey Devils.  I thought that this would be a great spot to watch the Devils stomp the Islanders into ice dust.             Then, the game began in an exciting flourish.  It wasn’t long before the Devils scored and I was somewhat happy.  I got to watch the puck slam into the glass a couple of times, once flying up into the air and falling into the crowd some distance to my right.  That was interesting - a fan got a great souvenir and something to talk about after the game.  But after that, it was slaughter as the Islanders basically destroyed a Devils team that really hadn’t come to play.  The bright spot to my day happened to be a cup of hot chocolate, an intermission which featured adorable Pee Wee league teams playing against each other and Sparky, the Islanders mascot.              The most obnoxious moments: the fan sitting behind me making an ass of himself, the scantily clad girls cleaning off the excess ice every few minutes to the catcalls of the numerous drunk and drooling male fans and the extremely loud (ear-piercing is more like it) horn that exploded with sound after every Islander goal.  While I know that it is somewhat difficult for those not close to the action to see the puck land in the goal, does the horn have to be that loud?  Aren’t the flashing lights, announcer’s vocalizations and the illuminated announcements on the overhead scoreboard enough?             Then it came time to leave.  That’s when the real adventure began.  The gale-force winds were apparently ripping metal off of the roof of Nassau Coliseum and nobody was allowed to leave through the Ticketmaster entrance.  This had been announced during the game.  However, it would seem that the powers that be running things at the stadium had decided to herd a crowd of thousands out of one tiny door all the way on the opposite side of the stadium.  One drunken elderly man kept screaming, “Let us out, let us out!” basically doing his best to insight a riot.  I remember turning to him and yelling in his ear just as loudly as he had yelled in mine, “Shut the hell up, shut the hell up!”  Some folks decided to race out doors they weren’t permitted to leave through, only to be caught up at the locked gates around the perimeter of the building.             And then, after what seemed like an eternity of being jostled around by smelly, obnoxious and rather drunk hockey fans, we were through…and back out into the horrific storm that we had escaped mere hours before.  Now all we had to do was trudge through the blinding sheet rain and harsh winds to our car.  For some reason, that journey seemed really short.  I have no idea how we were able to find the damn thing, but find it we did and we were off, driving back home through flooded roads, once again dodging flying debris and now drunken fans leaving the stadium.             The moral of this story: It’s great to try new things, but sometimes you need to go with your first impressions.  Some would say that I was predisposed to dislike the experience because I already had decided that hockey was not my thing.  Maybe those individuals are correct, but I am always willing to try new things, so I felt it was something I had to do.  Now I know in the future - hockey is not my thing and I should just watch the games from home.  I’ll stick with going to baseball games instead…and maybe some year to a football game - I hear those are always fun to watch.  It’s safe to say that my first hockey experience will be my last.   For feedback, visit our message board or e-mail the author at talonkarrde@g-pop.net.