Hipster Hockey in New York Before It Was Cool
The philosopher Conan once said: "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women." True at the time, but the best in modern life to cheer with the smallest group of fellow-fans required for it to technically count as a public event. It is called being a hipster and it is the only way to be. Tragically, as hockey fans, hipsterdom is not easy, for these days most organized North American hockey is either affiliated with or aspires to affiliation with the NHL, and going to a midget game to cheer one someone else's kid is a bit creepy even for those of us with giant mustaches reeking of IPA. So we must look back into history, at some of the great hipster hockey teams that can never become too mainstream, because the river of time has passed them by.
For many years your author was a Canadian soccer fan, so perhaps you imagine I was thrilled to see Vancouver, British Columbia awash during the 2026 World Cup not only with soccer, but with Canadian soccer: with Liam Millar wraps on the SkyTrain and Canada kits seen on random walks through town, and crowds in the tens of thousands enthusiastically cheering Les Rouges on to a tournament performance that, while hardly remarkable, was better than expected.
Certainly not! It's all gotten so mainstream. Canadian soccer is for the normies now, urgh! Retch! Blech! To see a beautiful family of respectable people wearing matching Stephen Eustaquio sweaters, saying "morning! hope they win tonight!" as they skip through the sun singing "ooh ahh Canada" makes me sick! I enjoyed Canadian soccer long before it was cool; this must be how Nirvana fans felt when Nevermind came out (I don't know, I never got into Nirvana, they were too popular). Yet the old memories still provide fuel, standing in a decaying Communist stadium with nine other people cheering for Iain Hume to somehow find the ball in the middle of a cow pasture and put a goal past Cuba. So it is with hockey. If we look into history, there is great hipsterdom to be found; hipsterdom that survives not in spite of how terrible things were, but because of it.
Thus, the New York Golden Blades
