FanNation - The Republic of Sport

HockeyPrimetime.com's mission statement is, quite simply, to bring hockey to the masses.  From the young to the old, the inner city to the suburbs, everyone has a story about when they first fell in love with the game of hockey and we are committed to spreading that love of the game and bringing the greatest game on earth back into the public spotlight.

For me, it was back in the summer of 1996 during the Colorado Avalanche's first run at the Stanley Cup.  I'd never watched a single hockey game in my life to that point, despite having grown up in the hockey hotbed that is Nebraska, and by sheer luck I happened to turn the channel to ESPN right as the first game of the first round of the playoffs was beginning.  Having never watched hockey before in my life, I was confused about the rules at first, but the more I watched the more entranced I got with the game.  The speed of the skating, the ferocity of the hitting and fighting, the grace of the goaltenders, the elation of scoring a goal...All of this combined to grab hold and draw me into the sport.  That year, I watched every playoff game that I could and, during Game Four of the Stanley Cup Finals, stayed up well past when I was supposed to go to bed listening to the Avalanche defeat the Florida Panthers for the sweep.

Fast forward four years to the fall of 2000.  The Minnesota Wild's first season in existence.  I had just moved up to Minnesota to attend college and had lost touch with the NHL, despite playing hockey for a year or two in between.  I had just reached the campus in time to get swept away in the fever of the NHL returning to the State of Hockey.  I hadn't seen much hockey over the past few seasons, but the first game I caught of the Minnesota Wild's season was their 6-0 defeat of Minnesota's former team, the Dallas Stars.  The electricity of the Xcel Center was palpable, even through the television set, as the Wild dominated the Stars through three periods of play and shut the former North Stars out.  From that point on, there are very few things that could get me to miss a Wild game.

My point is not to bore you with the details of why I love the game of hockey.  But the point is that everyone has one of these stories.  Everyone has that point in time when they fell in love with the game of hockey, whether you were born on skates or whether you came to the game through a friend and this blog is completely geared towards getting a response from everyone possible to share how you came to love the game of hockey. 

As anyone who has visited HockeyPrimetime.com knows, we're all about the shameless promotion of the website and the game of hockey.  So my challenge to all members of the HockeyPrimetime community is, during these playoffs, to try to introduce at least one new fan to the sport of hockey and to the HockeyPrimetime community, which I feel is the best hockey community in the world (though I am biased).

So let's hear it folks...What started your Hockey Revolution?