A generation of Carolina Hurricanes fans who’ve only known hockey is coming of age
Akul Gupta used to play basketball and football and soccer with the other kids on his Raleigh cul de sac, but when he’d look out the window and see them playing hockey he didn’t know what to think. This was new to him.
He ended up playing for the Junior Hurricanes for 13 years. His younger sister played hockey. His parents, immigrants from India, became huge Carolina Hurricanes fans. Hockey became part of his life.
Gupta, who graduated from UNC in 2018, is now 25 and a manager on the data analytics team at Lowe’s. During the pandemic, he started working remotely from Raleigh, which allowed him to attend games last spring. He grew up going to games with his parents, trying out the moves he saw the next day on the ice at practice. Now he’s a fully fledged hockey consumer in his own right.
“Now, after college, living independently, being employed, I can buy tickets on my own and go to games when I want,” Gupta said. “Having that ability, to have that freedom, that’s a big factor to feel more engaged with the Hurricanes compared to when I was a kid.”
This is not about kids in the Triangle playing hockey. There were 2,500 boys and girls registered with USA Hockey in 2019, before the pandemic, a number that continues to grow as new rinks are built. The number of college players from here continues to increase. There have been NHL draft picks who grew up here — and not all the children of NHL players — and there will be more.
There will, someday, be an NHL star who took his first strides on ice in this area code.
All of that is increasingly old news.
This is about what happens to those kids when they’re done playing hockey, when they become gainfully employed, when they have families of their own, when youth hockey players become adult hockey consumers.
“It’s the same building I grew up with, the third iteration of its name but still the same place I would go with my family,” said Ford Hatchett, who grew up playing hockey in Raleigh and is now a television reporter in Winston-Salem. “I have so many memories there, even as the generations have changed. The players, coaching staff, broadcasters — everything has changed. But it’s still the same team, the same home. It feels like home. It makes me feel a little old.”
Hatchett is 24.
This generation of young Hurricanes fans never grew up without a hockey team here. They played the sport as kids, or had friends who did. Their formative sports experience as children was not an NCAA basketball title but the Hurricanes’ unexpected playoff run in 2002, or the Stanley Cup in 2006.
And they’re the future of the Hurricanes.
New group of Canes fans
There have always been three basic groups of Hurricanes fans. The most devout, but smallest, were the people who were already hockey fans when the team moved here, the ones whose kids had to fight for opportunities to play the sport, who remember the Raleigh IceCaps, who commuted to Greensboro.
Then there were the transplants, people from elsewhere who grew up with the game and welcomed the Hurricanes’ arrival. That group continues to swell every day, with every new subdivision in Wake and Johnston and Durham counties, with every moving truck from Ohio and New York.
And there were the native converts, North Carolinians who knew nothing about hockey but found themselves captivated by the sport when the Hurricanes arrived — a group that most prominently includes Gov. Roy Cooper, but many, many others. The team has been here long enough now that anyone who might have been in that group long ago chose a side.
Twenty-five years in, there’s a new, fourth group: The children of 2006, the generation of Triangle kids who have never known anything else. It’s organic growth, limitless in its potential. And as that group comes of age, with jobs and disposable incomes and, someday, families of their own, their fandom will be the primary engine driving the Hurricanes far into the future.
One of them might even end up playing for the Hurricanes someday.
“I grew up skating during intermissions, buying $10 tickets up in the nosebleeds,” said Tyler Weiss, a 21-year-old Raleigh native and fourth-round draft pick of the Colorado Avalanche in 2018. “I’ve always been a Canes fan.”
Other than his talent, Weiss’ experience was typical of his peers. For previous generations of Triangle kids, their formative sports experience was often an NCAA basketball title. The Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup in 2006 came amid a relative drought in that department; North Carolina’s championship in 2005 was the only one between 2001 and 2009. The Hurricanes, with their unexpected romp through the playoffs in 2002 and their Stanley Cup championship in 2006, emerged to fill the void.
For kids of a certain age growing up here, that became the primary sports imprint on their developing minds. Especially for someone like Weiss, who grew up in a family of N.C. State fans. He was 6 when the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup.
“My dad went to N.C. State, which hasn’t really won anything in basketball for a long time. Same with football,” Weiss said. “I’ve always been an N.C. State fan, but I remember the Canes winning in ‘06 and the town going nuts. That always stuck in my mind, the fans and stuff. I remember we drove by the arena one time, just to drive by the arena, with all the people out there.”
Gupta was visiting family in India and watched the playoff games on television early in the morning. Even as an 8-year-old, Hatchett could see the perception of hockey in the Triangle start to change. It has been a slow process — even in high school, there weren’t a lot of other kids disappearing on the weekends to play in hockey tournaments, although there certainly are now — but he could see it happen.
“The turning point was after that Cup run, when kids even just a few years younger than we were then started getting into hockey,” Hatchett said. “Really getting into hockey. That (born in 1999) generation was when it really started to explode.”
Youth is being served
The Hurricanes’ involvement in youth hockey was slow in coming, but the Junior Hurricanes branding is now ubiquitous. It didn’t hurt that many of the stars from those breakthrough Hurricanes teams embedded deeply in the hockey community, as well.
Rod Brind’Amour coached a youth team while he was a Hurricanes assistant coach. Ron Francis, a Hockey Hall of Famer, coached a house league — recreational — team. Erik Cole and Aaron Ward are still coaching, and their teams played for national championships last season. Many other former Hurricanes (and IceCaps) continue to coach. Jesse Boulerice is on the Raleigh Youth Hockey Association board of directors.
The Triangle’s youth hockey scene now generates college players on a regular basis. One of them, Josh Wilkens, played for the Nashville Predators in a preseason game at PNC. Weiss, a senior at Nebraska-Omaha, remains the highest-drafted Raleigh player, but that won’t last forever.
“The hockey market, we’re still obviously trying to build and build and build, but it’s impressive where we’ve come,” said Hurricanes head coach Brind’Amour, whose son Skyler was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers and plays college hockey at Quinnipiac. “Now, obviously we’ve got to keep going. It’s way bigger than it was when we started, and it’s growing rapidly.”
It has also become self-perpetuating. Pat Bush has officiated youth hockey games in the Triangle for more than 30 years, long before the Hurricanes were a figment of anyone’s imagination, back when there were two sheets of ice (there are now nine) and you had to really want to play hockey. He’s starting to see a second generation of hockey players emerge.
“I had two of them this weekend.,” Bush said. “One of (the parents) says, ‘When I was playing, you were reffing then. How long have you been doing this?’ Too damn long! I’ve had three or four like that. Their kids are 14 or 15 now and I had them when they were 14 or 15.”
With that, there’s a new generation of hockey fans emerging. Those parents are taking their kids to games. The kids who used to go to games with their parents are going on their own. The generation that was introduced to hockey here has been succeeded by a generation that has never known otherwise.
“My whole friend group growing up, they’re going to Canes games every weekend, especially with the Canes doing so well and going to the playoffs,’” Weiss said. “Growing up, they didn’t really talk about the Hurricanes as much, but now that they’re older and they can go by themselves and with each other, it seems like they have a bond with the Canes now.”
Weiss is trying to make a career out of hockey, but the rest of the kids who grew up playing on the same ice are going pro in something other than sports. Gupta went into data science and started climbing the corporate ladder at Lowe’s. Hatchett studied journalism at Syracuse and got a job at WXII. They and their peers are flexing their consumer muscles for the first time.
“I got to go to a game with my dad, and when I walk in and I smell the bratwurst and the pork and the nachos and I smell the beer, now I can go buy a beer,” Hatchett said. “That’s different.”
They are not unscarred. Their fandom, like many others, waxed and waned during the 10-year playoff drought. Even the most bogus relocation rumors all sounded real to them and they wondered if the team would still be here when they came of age. But they have. And it is.
“I prep myself two hours prior to every playoff game, have dinner ready at home, just like when I was playing,” Gupta said. “I love basketball. I’m a Tar Heel. I went there. But at the end of the day, this is the No. 1 sport in my heart.”
This story was originally published October 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A generation of Carolina Hurricanes fans who’ve only known hockey is coming of age."
