The Aces Need a New Home

Watching every Brooklyn Aces home game during the regular season and the playoffs this past season, I couldn’t help but feel that things could have been different.

Despite their loss in the EPHL finals a few months back, I’m not talking about their play on the ice either.

What I’m talking about is the team’s home.

While Aviator Sports and Recreation is a great place, especially to those in the community who wouldn’t otherwise have a place to go rock climbing, ice skating and play hockey or basketball, it’s not the easiest place to get to if you don’t have a car, especially considering how poor the mass transit runs around the area.

Even though I found it easy to get there a few hours before a game by bus this past season, it was nearly impossible to get home after games. If it wasn’t for my insistence to cover the team and a family and girlfriend who saw how difficult the journey was, I may have ended up calling it quits early on and missed out on some great hockey and great stories.

However, the trials and tribulations of one car-less journalist are small compared to the bigger picture.

To see the team have problems drawing a consistent crowd, despite an excellent on-ice product, is simply unfair to both them, the league and their fans.

For that reason alone, the Aces need to find a better place to play.

The only other choice is to find a way to help their fans get to games via shuttle bus or some other method of transportation. Considering the fact that that plan was conceived early this season and never came to fruition, there seems no other way around it if the team is ever going to reach their full potential.

With the Danbury Mad Hatters [who have a great little place to play in, with great fans and still find themselves dealing with financial problems] in between owners and the Hudson Valley Bears future in serious jeopardy as well, the Aces need to cement theirs.

The best way for them to do that is to make it easier for the fans of the team to their games.

The price for games are affordable enough for everyone and even though the team is on the bottom of the professional hockey totem pole, the action is fast, fierce and fun. They also sent four players up to the ECHL for the first time this season and it’s only a matter of time until someone like James Brannigan cracks the lineup of an AHL team. None of that will matter in the long run however if the team can’t get themselves in a situation where more people can see them.

Because this team does have the potential to be something special in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Wonders, they are not.

Over the course of the season, I met a handful of reporters and fans that did nothing but bad mouth both the team and the league. Nevertheless, by the end of the first game they saw, their sentiments magically changed. Why? Because in spite of all the problems the league had, in the end, the product was an entertaining one and the players on the ice were passionate about what they did. If more people could see that, the league would be in much better shape than it is now with even more teams looking to join in on the action.

Let’s face it, being a fan of hockey today is like being someone that plays Dungeons and Dragons. Being a fan of minor league hockey is like being a fan of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most hockey fans that I know would do whatever it took to see their team live [including riding the LIRR and mass transit to Nassau Coliseum to see the Islanders like I have in the past].

It shouldn’t be that hard though.

For a team that needs fans more than the Isles, the Aces need establish a bonafide fanbase and get them infected the same way the diehards at Aviator were this season. You guys know who I’m talking about, like the big fella with the huge voice who everyone can hear regardless of where they’re sitting and who never lets a player from the opposition get away with getting sent to the sin bin. Those are the type of people that will do whatever it takes to support their team and if they had their way, the Aces would have their games on TV and even have a beat reporter for a Daily Newspaper covering them.

Rome wasn’t built in a day though and the first step in the team making as long term a stay as possible is for them to attract new fans.

Otherwise, your buddy yelling at the guys in the penalty box will have to find someone else to scream at.

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