Seattle, Long Ready for Another Pro Team, Embraces the Kraken

SEATTLE – Will Seattle sipping a latte embrace the beefy NHL and their newest team?

I asked this on these pages three years ago after the league announced that it would be 32.

The answer is now clear: go over and clear some space, Russell Wilson. This city is in the middle of a love affair with its newest big team.

The early impulses were evident from the start. On the first day they could, 32,000 fans deposited deposits for the mere purchase of season tickets. A waiting list had almost 60,000 names.

Today fans queue up early to watch the training session in the team’s eye-catching new headquarters. On Saturday the team will play their first home game in the Climate Pledge Arena. When the team announced its name and went public with its sea-blue and slightly red logo, Kraken merchandise became ubiquitous. And talking about NHL hockey has become a thing.

Nowhere in this affluent, rapidly changing metropolis will you experience a more ardent passion for the Kraken than at Angry Beaver, which calls itself Seattle’s original hockey bar.

Tucked away in a low district in the north of the city, the Angry Beaver is not just a shrine to the game and a must for Kraken fans. It symbolizes the tough fight for survival during this pandemic: the trials and pain of the moment; the way communities can band together to survive, in this case with sports and hockey at the center.

When the bar opened in 2012, the NHL was barely on Seattle’s radar. When people thought about new sports franchises, they mostly talked about correcting an injustice: getting an NBA team back after the SuperSonics went to Oklahoma City in 2008.

“In 2012, no one spoke of a hockey team as just a distant possibility,” said Tim Pipes, owner of Angry Beaver, a former rock musician who grew up in Toronto and who loved the Maple Leafs.

Pipes, 59, built his business for the small piece of tried and tested puck heads in the city, many of which had moved here from regions with NHL traditions – New York and Boston, for example.

Business took off when a gas leak turned into a massive explosion on a late March evening in 2016 that razed several stores across from the Angry Beaver.

No one was injured in the bar that night, but the inside looked like a hurricane had lashed through.

Pipes boarded up the building for a while, preparing for a comeback.

A few weeks later, thieves struck in the pre-dawn darkness, carried away priceless mementos, and ravaged the place again.

Pipes could have gone away back then, leaving his dreams and hundreds of beloved customers behind. But he trotted on. When the 2018 NHL announced that Seattle would get a new franchise, it seemed like a brilliant decision.

“After all these years of fighting, I was finally ready for this real breakthrough,” said Pipes.

Then came the pandemic. The bar bore the brunt of the same brunt that small businesses felt across the country. It was closed at the direction of the government. Then it opened with partial capacity. Pipes tried to swivel. He turned his bar into a takeaway restaurant. When that failed, he turned on again.

“I was so overwhelmed that I just wanted to run away from everything,” said Pipes. “I wanted to get into my truck, throw my dog ​​in and just drive away, off to Canada.”

What kept him going above all were his loyal customers. They launched a GoFundMe campaign and raised approximately $ 42,000 to keep their favorite pub afloat.

With the Kraken’s inaugural season tantalizingly finished, the math became simple: could the Angry Beaver stay open long enough to benefit from the customers and interest the team would generate?

Out of grace and goodwill, the Angry Beaver stayed open just long enough. And now it is thriving.

Regulars and new timers filled the bar for Kraken preseason games. During the team’s regular season opener last week, a street game against the Vegas Golden Knights, the Angry Beavers rocked with pulsating energy. The rafters trembled as Seattle’s new team scored three goals in a row to level the score.

That game ended in a tough 4-3 defeat for Seattle, but the defeat barely dampened the excitement.

On Saturday, an hour before the Kraken’s street game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the fans were back in the Angry Beaver.

There, Todd Rosenbaum and his wife Rosie, longtime Devils fans, new to the neighborhood after a recent move from the east coast, sat ready to give the Kraken a hug.

There was Leif O’Leary, a Boston Bruins fan in a Boston Bruins jersey. O’Leary grew up in the Northeast and now said he will find a place in his heart for a second favorite team.

Jeff Roman sat at the bar and studied while he watched. “I’m a first time Kraken fan and first time hockey fan,” he said. “I got it when I saw the second Seattle game on TV this week. It was so fast and dynamic that I thought, ‘Where has this game been all my life?’ Now I’ll hang on this bar all the time. “

On the ice, the game against the Blue Jackets was typical of Seattle’s early season: gruff and hard-fought, with two teams separating only one goal in the end. Seattle lost 2-1 in extra time and improved their season record to 1-1.

Pipes watched everything unfold from the sidewalk, just outside the bar. That first week had been an emotional one. He had walked around with a lump in his throat.

“It’s easier not to be in the bar now,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I can’t help but think back to everything we’ve been through. I was so close to losing this place. It’s like I have PTSD but now I’m healing because the octopuses are here. We persevered, the team is finally here and the ice hockey fans are more than ready. “