They met over the Internet (doesn't everybody these days) and gather to watch a team that's creeping into the consciousness of Charlotte-area sports fans.
Brian Firmstone of Charlotte said groups of 20 or more in his unofficial Carolina Hurricanes fan club have been meeting to watch games at Dave and Buster's at Concord Mills.
The crowd watching the Hurricanes' pursuit of the Stanley Cup has included native Southerners and relocated hockey fans from Detroit and the Syracuse area.
"Judging by the accents, it's about 50-50," Firmstone said.
Game 3 of the finals is at 8 p.m. Saturday, and Carolina holds a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series that could bring North Carolina its first major professional team sports championship.Hurricanes officials say interest in the Hurricanes throughout North Carolina -- including Charlotte -- is increasing, but say the overwhelming majority of season ticket holders are from the Raleigh-Durham area.
As I pondered last week, it is interesting that Charlotte (or more of the state, for that matter) has not embraced the Canes; by the same token, it appears that Raleigh can boast a number of Carolina Panthers fans. Granted, hockey is not a "native" sport. And the distance between the cities is, as the article points out, similar to the chasm between Detroit and Chicago.
"I can't say that Charlotte is a market that we can draw from on a regular basis, but we have interest there," Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford told the Observer. "But I do think as time has gone on, especially this year, we're becoming more of a state team."
Rutherford said the NFL's Carolina Panthers get more of a regular audience from Raleigh than the Hurricanes do from Charlotte, though that's difficult to quantify.
The nature of the sports allows for the Panthers to attract more fans from a larger region, Rutherford said. The Panthers play eight home games, on Sundays when many fans don't have to work. A Hurricanes fan holding even half a season ticket would have to drive the five-hour, 40-minute round trip between Charlotte and Raleigh for 20 games, many on weeknights. Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos said the team's efforts to grow a fan base are based in the Raleigh-Durham area.
"Hopefully as the sport catches on, wider and wider in the state, people will like it," said Karmanos, who is from Detroit. "But we're four hours from Charlotte, I believe. So that's quite a ways. That's as far as Detroit is from Chicago."
For the record, mapquest.com shows that Detroit is 4 hours, 31 minutes from Chicago and Charlotte is 2 hours, 40 minutes from Raleigh. Though Karmanos overestimated the distance, his point that Charlotte hockey fans will only make that trip on an occasional basis seems valid. Firmstone grew up in Detroit and is one of the growing number of Carolinas residents relocated from areas that have had NHL teams for decades. Those fans are one group with interest in the Hurricanes.
Fans in Charlotte may not be so quick to hop on the bandwagon when the regular season cranks up next year. (After all, there's nothing quite like playoff hockey.) But the Hurricanes fanbase appears to be growing -- slowly, but surely.
"You're almost on the world stage now in the finals," Rutherford said. "And the fact that we have so many good, young players ... people can say, they're not leaving, they're going to be there for a while. I think it generates more interest."
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