BLACK METAL
IT IS 1998 and hockey is dying.
Its executioners are its own coaches, who have strangled opposing offenses with a variety of neutral zone traps. Scoring is down almost two and a half goals a game from the firewagon 1980s. Jacques Lemaire wins three Stanley Cups playing the most stultifying brand of hockey imaginable. At Michigan State, Ron Mason seeks to win games –1 to –2, and does with depressing frequency. Your author is mere months away from swearing off the Red Wings forever after attending two games at Joe Louis Arena at which the only reaction from the crowd comes on goals, of which there is about one a period, and when a man named "Mo Cheese" does a jiggle-dance on the jumbotron.
That fall, two people walked into Yost Ice Arena for the first time: Mike Comrie and I. I sat in the student section; Mike Comrie set people on fire and laughed about it. I don't know anything about Mike Comrie's childhood but I know it involved ants and a magnifying glass.
I just missed the Brendan Morrison era but even if I'd seen it, I'd probably still believe Comrie is the closest thing to an on-ice avatar of the Red Berenson era in existence. He was a tiny puck wizard who defied all logical modes of playing hockey with sheer talent. It was not uncommon for Comrie to make a zone entry by himself, then tool around the offensive zone like Spike Albrecht doing donuts in the lane. The opposition allowed this because the alternative was approaching Comrie and risking an explosive moment after which Michigan would have another goal and you would have no pants.
Over the next decade it seemed like Michigan had an infinite supply of these guys. After Comrie came Mike Cammalleri, Jeff Tambellini, Eric Werner (who belongs on this list despite being a defenseman), TJ Hensick, Andrew Ebbett, John Shouneyia, and Andrew Cogliano. They were all different versions of the same assassin. Collectively they are this Cammalleri goal.
Under Red Berenson, Michigan hockey was an electric middle finger to the neutral zone trap. It defied NHL norms of the time, and sometimes basic physics itself. It took no quarter, and gave none. It lived in Yost Ice Arena, which for about 15 years was the most intimidating environment in sports.
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YOST WAS BLACK, pitch black. Literally so. The shot at the top of the post is one of the bleachers that I had the good fortune to acquire when Dave Brandon's renovation of Yost was literally throwing them away. It is not the bright and shiny anodyne chrome of the current building. It is not even the respectable deep blue that Michigan has on hand for uniforms, logos, and what-have-you. It is black.
It is unnecessarily black. At one edge the paint has worn down and you can see that underneath there is a layer of blue. Someone erased that blue, probably for no reason at all other than hockey was a non-revenue sport and black paint was cheaper. So they painted it black.
To walk into Yost Ice Arena in 1998 was a mindblowing experience for someone raised on the relatively genteel ways of Michigan Stadium. To be a Michigan fan is to have your nose in the air about the unhinged activities of those people; Yost was the Scarface coke bender kept hidden from public view. It is the only environment in the history of Michigan sports that can be compared in any way to Miami and its general attitude.
I have thought long and hard about why this might have come to be and still have no unifying theory, but by the time you arrived in 1998 at the same time as Mike Comrie it took about three games to fully assimilate into the baying hive mind. Then-Lake Superior State coach Frank Anzalone once told me to "shut the fuck up" between periods, and while I don't remember why he did this I assume he was 100% correct to do so.
And I was just a guy, really, not one of the gentlemen in the section behind the opposing bench. One of the Superfans was there, the guy with the Flintstones water buffalo hat. Next to him was the guy with the megaphone, and around them was a cadre of the dirtiest dudes in town.
The megaphone, I think, is key to understanding the allure here. We have all had the experience of shouting something in anger at a referee at a football game. This is exactly as effective as shouting at your TV. There are one hundred thousand people in the stands and you are some vast distance away from the field even if you're in row 20; you are just a voice in the crowd.
At Yost, amongst six thousand people, in row ten, with the ears just the other side of some plexiglass, you know damn well that everyone can hear your every word. With a megaphone or without. By the time I had arrived there was a culture that understood and sought to exploit this, and it worked. I can't tell you how many times opposing players tried to spray people in the crowd with water bottles. The opposing parents were seated directly behind their bench, and directly in front of the dirtiest dudes in town, and since the dirtiest dudes in town had a tendency to select one player for excessive torment it was a semi-regular occurrence for a hockey parent to respond in kind. Rarely you'd catch a slightly unhinged one who would fume his way up the stairs and try to get in a fight.
The stupidity and the gloriousness of this should be apparent. For a period of several years the opposing parents had to be located across the rink, the ice serving as a demilitarized zone. Yost got people shook.
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The creation of this seething cauldron in the context of dead-puck-era hockey, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of the great miracles of sports. The none-more-blackness of Yost had something to do with it. So did the basketball team's malaise.
But the primary factor was Red Berenson, who never gave a damn about what you thought he should do. Berenson spent four years in college when college was not a path to the NHL. He was literally the first player to ever go directly from the NCAA to the NHL. He was the NHL coach of the year at one point and could have continued being an NHL head coach indefinitely if he so chose. Instead he came back to Michigan. At a time when the primary way to win hockey games was by murdering the game itself he played balls-to-the-wall.
Yost was a magnet for sadists because it was a place you could go and see someone blown off the ice 8-1. A promotion where attendees got free tacos if Michigan scored ten goals had to be discontinued because it was costing too much. Here is an arena where the residents are chanting for more goals when they are already at nine—nine! They are no longer beating the dead horse, but gleefully spitting on its grave. Yost was a reflection of the product on the ice.
Red Berenson did a lot of great things for his university, his players, his student managers, his coaches, his alumni, and they will all remember him for the things he did for them. The thing Red Berenson did for me is turn Yost Ice Arena into the greatest sports environment I've ever been in. He did that because he is metal. Bite-the-head-off-a-bat metal.
Black fucking metal.
[Bill Rapai]
Cornell was the seed, but if Red doesn't put together the dynasty, it never blossoms into the marvelous creature that is was.
Was when I fell in love with hockey. I was a freshman, went with some high school friends, and got the general vibe of it. Learned what a sieve was. And I yelled something - loudly - at the opposing sieve. Everyone heard it. They looked at me. I'm embarrassed today of what I said. Someone from the Michigan crowd came up and told me how messed up it was. And yet, a part of me still smiles because I know that sieve heard me say that. And it was worse than the guy who was telling him to kill himself.
One of my favorite Red memories came prior to the 2002 CCHA Finals. Michigan is squaring off against MSU, where Ron Mason has just announced his intention to retire as the all-time win leader in college hockey, so of course Fox Sports is hosting an unofficial Ron Mason Night. The teams are coming out of the locker room to take the ice and Shireen Shasky pulls Red aside and tosses him some question asking him to reflect on Mason's career and if he thinks he'll ever be able equal Mason's win total.
Red throws out some boilerplate platitude and then points out that equalling Mason's win total would be difficult, but only because he had such a long pro career as a player and coach before he came to Michigan; because Red pays deference to nobody. Then Michigan went out and dropped 3 goals on Ryan Miller to win the CCHA title and ruin Mason's swan song at the Joe. That was so great.
Games at Yost in the late 1990s were so wonderful. The atmosphere was electric, and the chants - the chants were hilarious, crude, effective, un-pc, and commanded participation. The cleaner bits were fun and demoralizing too:
Hey [Insert Visiting Goalie's Name], you’re not a goalie you’re a sieve, you’re not a sieve you’re a funnel, you’re not a funnel you’re a vacuum, you’re not a vacuum you’re a black hole. It's all your fault, it's all your fault, it's all your fault!
{Goalie removes mask} - Ugly Goalie, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap.Ugly Goalie, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap. Ugly Goalie, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap. {Parents object to goalie son being mocked} - Ugly Parents, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap. Ugly Parents, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap. Ugly Parents, clap, clap, clap, clap,clap.
I remember Marty Turco being interviewed when he was the Stars' goalie, and being asked why he went to Michigan. He said he went to a game at Yost, and never wanted to face that crowd as a visitor.
The antithesis of the "down in front" crowd in parts of Michigan Stadium.
Great piece, Brian. And THANKS FOR THE GREAT MEMORIES RED!!
I think it was during the NHL lockout, but I remember Marty Turco was visiting and got introduced to a thunderous ovation during first intermission. The rest of the night the goalie / sieve taunt got amended to goalie (point to Michigan's goalie), goalie (point up to the box where Turco was sitting), sieve! That was fun.
Sadly the renovations that turned Crisler from a dungeon into one of the finest arenas in the Big Ten also scrubbed away too much of the barn feel from Yost. I remember the first time I came to Yost to sit in my seats in the South End bleachers and the stairs didn't creak and bend under my weight as I climbed them. I knew then that we'd lost a little bit of what made that place special.
There was nothing like Yost in the early to mid - 90's. Thank you Red.
This may end up being tl;dr but whatever.
My freshman year at Michigan was 1988-1989. Lived in Adams House, West Quad. So did the hockey freshman: Doug Evans, Mike Helber, Tim Keough, Ted Kramer, Vaclav Nedomansky and...Denny Felsner.
My buddies lived next door to Kramer and Felsner and so we all became buddies with them. One day they said, "Come see us play; we need more fans." So they left us some tickets for a game.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
The following Monday I was at the ticket office to buy season tickets. Mind you, the season had already started. I asked the lady behind the window how much: "50 bucks." Sold. "Where do you want to sit?" Uh, Row 15, center ice? "Here you go."
Only sellout games were vs. national powerhouse MSU and their electric freshman, Rod Brind'Amour. (BA won rookie of the year, left MSU, then starred in the NHL.) The entirety of the south end zone section (which were enormous then) was all green.
Year-by-year, as the team improved, then empty seats vanished. By the time of the Cornell series in 1991, they were all gone. Earlier that fall, despite sitting in row 15 center ice for two seasons, my friends and I had to fight other students for first-come, first-serve season ticket sales. Some douche bag frat bro was first in line, had all his bros IDs, and row 15 center ice was no more.
As for the C-YA chant, there are many accounts, but this one is the truth. One Saturday afternoon in December 1990, Michigan Basketball was playing Duke in Cameron. Eric Riley fouled out. We watched in respectful shame as they Crazies saluted Riley with "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, SEE YA!!!"
That night, we went to a home hockey game and as the opponent committed its first penalty, my roommate, as a joke, saluted the player with the same chant. We all laughed our asses off and it instantly caught fire. Next penalty, our section did it. Penalty after that, the East side of the building. After that and henceforth, Yost.
So when Cornell came to Yost that spring, they learned it from the Children and took it back to Ithaca, claiming it as their own. I'd call them plagiarists and pirates, but hell, we stole it from the Crazies.
Yost was different b/c there were no old foagies there. They only older folks were the players' parents, Dekers Club members, and alumni of the program. These were hockey people, and they weren't about to tell us to settle down. They loved it. When you were at M stadium you were told "down in front!" At Crisler, you'd be the only one standing and you'd be in row 43 hanging from the buildings I-beams. At Yost, you were front and center and could be as rowdy as you want. For 18-22 year-olds, it was what you wanted and couldn't have anywhere else.
I don't have any Red stories, but back in the day I worked as a bartender at the Cottage Inn restaurant on E. William Street. The hockey team often dined there, as their per diem package included CI. Red's players were always the best behaved, most relatable, laid back varsity athletes on campus. They could've had big heads like many of their football and basketball counterparts, but they didn't and I believe Red had a huge role in that. Red himself was that way.
I'll respond to both you and Sharik here. To Sharik:
Awesome post. Drank every moment of it. tldr? Too Good, Didn't Care.
Bando: I'm fuzzy on the details, what did DB do to the Dekers (this is not skepticism, of course he would have, just curious how)?
As I understand it, he essentially pushed them out. Nixed their advertisements in the arena and tried to make them pay full price to put them back. Got rid of the 50/50 raffle. Took over some of their annual events. Shoved their table into a random corner of the arena. Pretty much neutered the organization out of sheer ego/control.
Bigger picture: The Dekers were the only athletic booster group to survive the DB era. Softball and volleyball used to have thriving organizations behind them, and Athletics absorbed/forced both of them out of business.
April 12th, 2017 at 11:50 AM ^
April 12th, 2017 at 12:22 PM ^
I missed the heyday of Yost. Glad I got the the PG 13 experience. Or maybe I got the R and this is the PG 13.
Nice write up as always.
April 11th, 2017 at 10:30 PM ^
All this reminiscing about the "Old Yost" has me lamenting one of the biggest mistakes made in recent years. While not nearly as egregious as the goal horn, barrage of commercials, and occasional piped-in music, the removal of the old-timey phone from the press area was a huge loss.
When that phone rang, everoyne in the building could hear it, and responded with, "Hey [Oppsing Goalie], it's your mom. She says, YOU SUCK!"
Great memories of Yost from 98 to 02 as a student. Perhaps it's nostalgia, but seems like a whole different venue today than it was in those days.
That phone was directly above where our seats were. The key to Yost having sound that carried was the roof--it was coated in some kind of metal-covered padding, so everything bounced around like crazy. Every time that phone rang, you could hear it in any corner of the rink.
They don't do that any more? I haven't been to Yost since like '03. I think by then there had been some castigation of the TIMMMAY chant, but it happened anyway. But my memory is fuzzy.
April 11th, 2017 at 11:06 PM ^
April 12th, 2017 at 12:33 AM ^
I went to around 10 games at Yost in the late 90s and early 2000s (my middle-high school years). I will say without a doubt that Yost is the best live sports environment I've ever been in. The intimacy, the indimidating nature, the quirky fans... I loved every second I spent there in that time. Thank you Red, you hooked me as a M hockey fan in 1997 as a high school freshman and I've been a M hockey nerd ever since. Lets bring back some of the magic from those day, hope we hit THE home run hire.
Go Blue
Thank You Red
Ah I still vividly remember watching Michigan kill Minnesota in 97 in Grand Rapids. We had the Minnesota goalie frazzled pretty good, a couple friends and I (annoying little kids heckling him unmercifully all game). Then watching Michigan beat ND at Yost the next year with my dad. That was a geat game and great year for Michigan sports.
Didn't follow close since then but those were good times.
April 12th, 2017 at 12:22 PM ^
April 12th, 2017 at 12:05 PM ^
Scroll down to the Dave Shand story that was also in Bacon's book Blue Ice about Red after losing to Lake State in the early days. This is the Red that hasn't been for the past few years, but THE guy needed to change the culture of Michigan Hockey at that time.
http://www.yostbuilt.com/2008/10/
I lived on Dewey in 98-99... went to all the games.
We had two freaking tickets and would sneak in like 10 of us a game!!!
April 12th, 2017 at 10:12 PM ^
The greatest moment in my Michigan career was entry-cadencing out the tunnel for the first time my freshman year.
The second greatest was the first time I subbed in for Hockey Band.
Both were incredible moments for entirely different reasons I shan't forget.
to remember how bad Michigan Hockey was in the early '80's. Before Red arrived, there was some very serious talk about dropping hockey as a varsity sport. In my mind, Red SAVED that program.
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