Savvier readers among you may think that the pace of publication around here tends to the irregular. (You'd be right.) Such insouciance toward hard-hitting social commentary has served us well in the past, but the current whiplash-inducing velocity of the 24-hour news cycle has cast this estimable cyber-fishwrap (motto: As Work Safe As You Can Get Short Of Doing Actual Work) in a somewhat outdated light.

Take our take on the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, for example. When Elfpants' groundbreaking article hit our fiber-optic front page lo these many moons ago, it was roundly hailed as the last word on the incongruity of Southern-fried hockey (the last word, that is, because our editor couldn't get the ol' Pantsmeister to do a follow-up piece if he beat him half stupid with a full puck bag). And while ripened articles may be fine for those of you still mourning the passage of Suck.com, times have changed. Events have overtaken. The 'Canes have improved – they made it to the Stanley Cup finals two years ago. (They didn't win, but still...) Once unshakeable pronouncements have caught the barbed tip of time's arrow square in the chest.

Or, to put it plainly, yours truly had column space to fill. Thus, I demanded the opportunity to pen a companion piece to Elfpants' heretofore definitive account of ice-based diversions in the Tar Heel State. Laying out my argument in the most potent and self-evident terms to Our Esteemed Overlord, I declared that our humble publication had to reorient itself with the 21st century if it stood any chance of scoring a Pulitzer.¹

I freely admit to a little trepidation. Elfpants' original article chronicled the experience of a Hurricanes hockey game in all too detailed detail: neither the prospect of getting 2-for-1 coupons shat upon oneself from a great height by an inflated Beef.com bovine, nor the anticipation of Claude the Happy Trumpeter shattering one's inner eardrum with his Herb Alpert tribute augured anything close to an enjoyable evening.

But again, times have changed. Beef.com collapsed like a Guernsey with tertiary-stage BSE (thus removing any need for a bull-shaped airborne coupon-defecator), and the hockey club apparently took Claude 'round back and clubbed him to death with his eponymous instrument. So things were looking up. Elfpants, for his part, was resigned to going to the game, although not to the point of at least trying to bluff our way into the Media Only parking lot. (Probably worried that the article about his penis might not persuade security of the authenticity of his press credentials, although it's hardly slowed his tide of awards much. The jammy little bastard.)

I, for one, was immediately struck by the changes the 'Canes made, beginning with the arena's name. The slightly infelicitously named Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena had decided to rechristen itself the RBC Center. RBC is the name of a bank, specifically, the Royal Bank of Canada. You could interpret this as a subtle nod to the national sport of our northern neighbors, but you'd be wrong. Heck, upon witnessing the particular product being offered to paying customers, you'd almost feel compelled to write a check to the Office of the Governor General in Ottawa as reimbursement for the libelous misappropriation of Canadian heritage.

Not proving completely useless, Elfpants had cadged some primo seats. I had visions of Section 101, ice level, close enough to feel one of the hometown boys get plastered into the boards by an opposing defenseman from Red Deer, Alberta. What we got were two seats in the "mezzanine" level. Most of your newer stadiums have a mezzanine level. Alternately referred to as the "club level," "loge level," or some other marketing euphemism denoting a price structure normally associated with Russian loan sharks, this brand of seats generally features a separate restricted entrance, which prevents the riff-raff up in the cheap seats from clomping into your aisle and marring the hockeygoing experience.

Generally. "Mezzanine" in this instance consisted of a single-row balcony grafted onto the façade of the upper deck with an altogether Soviet concern for either creature comfort or structural soundness. Compounding the discomfort was the fact that we were not, technically, in better seats than Sailor Mur and her husband, The Admiral. Needless to say, this put a serious crimp in the evening's worth of disdain I had planned to inflict, which consisted of calling their cell at random moments and nyah-nyah-nyahing at their lower-class status.

As far as the game went, I can honestly confirm that, despite eight or so years in the hotbed of tobacco country and a trip to the Stanley Cup finals in the club's recent history, the locals' approach to This Thing Called Hockey has not improved. Take the off-ice entertainment, for example. Learning harsh lessons from their bull-and-bugler phase, the 'Canes have decided to steal a page from the If All Else Fails You Can Watch A Hockey Game school of marketing excess.

To wit, they now feature the "Storm Squad," a fresh-faced gaggle of co-eds in form-fitting red-and-black outfits. The general effect is akin to the Ice Capades hiring a pit crew. These fine young ladies – who with names like Barbie, Cassie, Chrissy, Dixie, and Trixie read like a 1956 edition of Soap Opera Digest – are there to cheer, dance, and supervise on-ice contests during period intermissions. And shoot at you. Or rather, launch T-shirts into the crowd with every self-respecting cheerleader's weapon of choice, the Giant Surgical Tubing Slingshot.

Here, two Stormettes brace each end of the contraption while a third (who keeps her CCW permit paid up, from the looks of things) loads, aims, and ballistas a 50-50 cotton/poly parcel into the first deck. Truly, it's a step up from the last time I encountered the pep-squad-with-a gun phenomenon; namely, at a baseball game at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. There, the Pirate Parrot decided to launch foil-wrapped hot dogs with what can best be described as a compressed-air bazooka. (Although at that point, even catching a barrel of double-aught frankfurters beat watching the Pirates.)

And no one had even scored yet. Which prompted the following exchange:

ME: (regarding the Stormateers) This is all a bit much, don't you think?
ELFPANTS: Just wait till they score.
ME: ...What's that, a threat?

He shrugged enigmatically, never a good sign. Then again, it was a Hurricanes game, so perhaps the threat carried less weight than his response at first implied.

Then Ron Francis got into the act. Francis, the Old Man of the franchise, who frankly looks more like the protagonist in a Levitra commercial than the anchor of the second-line squad, shoved one past the opposing goalie (who was as surprised as Ron was) and sent the Greater Triangle metropolitan area into full panic.

At least that's what it looked like. There are as many ways to celebrate a goal in today's NHL as there are arenas. On one end of the spectrum, there's the classic olde-tyme approach favored in Detroit, where some enterprising fan tosses a live squid onto the ice after each goal. Back in the 'Canes' former home (Hartford, Connecticut), the loudspeakers at the Hartford Civic Center used to play "Brass Bonanza"– which considering the venue was enough to push the building's engineering tolerances to their outer limits. Used to, that is. Doing what the 'Canes do now in their erstwhile central Connecticut dwellings would result in a full-blown House of Usher scenario.

You see, goals at the RBC have reverted to the leaner percentages in recent years, so whenever someone does score, it's an event – much like a hazmat spill is an "event." The newfangled approach resembles nothing so much as the third reel of a James Bond film, namely the bit where 007 yanks the self-destructo lever on the villain's main control panel and all sorts of living hell breaks loose. The lights dim, horns sound, and spotlights careen drunkenly around the arena's 18,000 bright-red seats, giving the impression that we just hit Defcon One. Not to be outdone, the crowd is pushed to further frenzy by the scoreboard flashing a picture of former 1980s WWF champion Ric Flair shouting "Wooooo!", celebrating the accomplishment of Radim Vrbata going top-shelf with a level of lusty bravado normally reserved for banging the Iron Sheik's head off the turnbuckle or copping the bronze medal in the Iowa caucuses. Come to think, it's a darn good thing they don't score much. They did it only once more, 35 minutes later, in the third period, which at least gave me time to settle the ol' pulse rate.

Of course I didn't see it. I was in line at the beer stand staffed by the local high school drama club, who were getting a cut off the top to sponsor their upcoming season. This will probably strike most of you as further evidence of journalistic negligence on my part; in my defense I shall say only this:

Getting liquored up for the local vo-tech's production of Our Town is the most journalistically productive thing one can do at a Hurricanes game.

If anything, it's for the kids.

Or at least that's what I told my editor.

1. To which he replied "Pulitzer? That’s a brand of organ, ain't it?"