A night in the penalty box

CEDAR RAPIDS -- There are two things you really notice by watching a hockey game up close and personal from the penalty box.

The first is the speed. Holy cow, these kids get up and down the ice.

Then there's how much they stink. No offense, boys, but there is no more "distinct" odor in athletics than in hockey.

Think about it. You've got all that unwashable, confined equipment that keeps accumulating more and more sweat.

It's a reek fest, for sure.

A quick thank you to Cedar Rapids RoughRiders CEO Jeff Jauch for allowing this longtime team beat writer the opportunity to observe last Saturday's game against Fargo from a place no fan gets to sit. It was me, director of off-ice officials Andy Pantini, scoreboard operator Steve Meyer and penalty timekeepers Al Gruwell and Jeremy Reuter.

I just tried to stay out of the way.

"There's actually a lot more they ask us to do than they used to," said Pantini, whose main duty is to provide constant game updates for the USHL's website. "Part of it is being a Tier-I league now. They want a lot more stuff, a lot more stats. It's hard for me to get after anyone because we're all volunteers. I think we do a good job for what we're asked to do."

Pantini is in charge of a crew of about 25 total off-ice officials. Ten work a game: four in the penalty box, two goal judges, two videographers and two guys who keep shots on goal charts.

"I like this better than being a goal judge," said Reuter, who has done both tasks. "As a goal judge, you're always watching the net. You miss games."

Pantini usually arrives at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena at 5 p.m. to prepare for a 7 p.m. game, with duties that include obtaining and inputting lineups for both teams. About 45 minutes prior to opening faceoff, Meyer meets with the on-ice officials to ask if they need anything and remind them of team in-game procedures, such as taking timeouts between the 12 and five-minute mark of each period.

I tag along and listen in, coming to the realization the officials aren't much older than the players.

"These guys go from league to league, arena to arena," Meyer said. "I just try to let them know how things work here at The Stable."

Gruwell and Reuter manually record each penalty on sheets of paper and keep track of who is on the ice for each even-strength goal for plus-minus rating purposes. They also are at the ready with towels, water bottles and chit-chat for officials, and extra pucks for linesmen when one goes out of play.

Those are kept in a small Igloo cooler filled with ice cubes.

"We start with 20 pucks," Meyer said. "If we get down to six or seven, then we ask for more."

Gruwell and Reuter also are penalty door gatekeepers (Gruwell for the RoughRiders and Reuter for Fargo on this night), letting guys out as penalties expire. That's done on a Pantini countdown.

"One minute!" he shouted as the first minute of Jordan Nelson's two-minute, first-period penalty for Fargo expired. Then, it's "30 seconds!" And eventually "Five, four, three, two, one, let him go!"

If you've been to a game this season, you've probably noticed the weird-looking "Green Guys," usually high-school kids hired by the RoughRiders to dress up in green lycra body suits and black shorts. They taunt opposing players from outside the penalty box, both verbally and non-verbally.

Kids - and many adults - get a kick out of them. Needless to say, opposing players do not.

"Are those guys here every game?" Nelson asked, shaking his head when told yes.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the night came in the second period when Pavel Zykov of Fargo goes to the box. The Russian doesn't say a word until he stood up to get ready to leave at the end of his penalty.

All of a sudden he yelled to Reuter "Open door! Open door!"

"He doesn't speak any English. None," a teammate later told Reuter. "He's only been here a month. We've got another guy (Russian) that helps him out."

This was a tame game, kind of a shame since I was really looking forward to some controversy. But there were no fighting majors, no disputable referee calls, just seven benign minor penalties in a 2-1 Fargo victory.

Each player calmly skated to the box and took a seat, with the exception of Fargo's Neal Goff, who earned a 10-minute misconduct for briefly arguing his cross-checking penalty to referee Andrew Wilk.

"That's pretty weak," Goff told Reuter he said, only with an additional word between '"pretty" and "weak" that you could probably guess.

After the game, Pantini wrapped up official scorekeeping duties on his laptop computer, as I headed to the main concourse to write a game story. On my way out, I grabbed a couple of non-used game pucks from the cooler and handed them to young kids on the other side of the plexiglass.

Let me know if I owe you any money, RoughRiders.

No great stories emerged from my night in the box, but it was a blast anyway. After all, how many times do you get to see a game from this vantage point.

"Best seat in the house," Meyer said.

I'm not going to disagree.