Carolina Hurricanes fans bring college football vibe to NHL playoffs

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The only ice in the parking lot is crushed. It is also packed in coolers because out here it is 80 degrees.

OK, not all of it is packed in coolers. A large helping of it is packed into the cargo bed of a Ford F-150. More accurately, into an inflatable kids swimming pool in the back of a Ford F-150. And packed into the ice that is packed into the pool that is packed into the back of the truck is a rather rotund man in a Carolina Hurricanes swimsuit and tank top who is also packing down a six-pack of a local Belgian style ale called Hell Yes Ma'am.

"This is the pregame uniform because it's hot out here," explains the gentleman who asks to be identified as Tom Kazansky. You know, the Ice Man. "My game uniform is waiting in the truck. Jeans and a Canes jersey, because it's cold inside. Way colder than out here."

That's right, Ice ... Man. Because there's a giant ice rink where a giant Stanley Cup playoffs game is about to be played inside.

"Exactly," Kazansky says. "Go Canes, motherfers."

Welcome to big league hockey's wackiest, wildest, most Southern-styled tailgating scene. Truthfully, it's the NHL's only real tailgating scene. A gathering of thousands beneath the tall pines of the Triangle region, set to full blast Luke Combs and Ben Folds and enveloped in the sweet smell of hickory char.

The gang will get together again Thursday night as the Hurricanes host the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

While most NHL arenas are confined in the cramped spaces of big city downtowns, the Lenovo Center sits in the wide-open spaces located six miles east of Raleigh's center. The arena is adjacent to Carter-Finley Stadium, football home of theNC State Wolfpack, and both share acreage with the exhibition halls of the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, home to the Pringles chip-shaped Dorton Arena, which has hosted everyone from Led Zeppelin to Prince, and the remains of the State Fairgrounds Speedway, where Richard Petty won races on dirt and Robbie Knievel once jumped over a long line of assorted military vehicles.

In all, there are 20,000 parking spots in and around the home of the Hurricanes. The arena's max capacity for hockey is 18,547. In other words, everyone there could have driven their own vehicle to the game. That's a lot of room for tailgate creativity.

The story goes that this all started with one guy, and it wasn't in Raleigh. When the NHL franchise first moved south from Hartford, the Lenovo Center (then the Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena) was still under construction, so the team spent its first two seasons at the Greensboro Coliseum, the building made famous by so many legendary ACC men's basketball tournaments but located a full 90-minute drive west of the Triangle. Attendance wasn't great.

But among those who were there was Pat Garrett. No, not the guy who shot Billy the Kid, but a tech worker from Research Triangle Park who was hockey curious, so after work he would drive to Greensboro, crack open a couple of convenience store Foster's and sit with his toddler in the Coliseum parking lot before heading into the game. When the Canes finally made their Raleigh debut Oct. 29, 1999, as Garrett tells it, he set up shop next to the NC State football fieldhouse with a cooler of Michelob and some hot dogs cooked on a portable grill. Everyone else drove in, parked, watched the game and left. But many of them saw Garrett and decided that looked like fun.

When others caught on and started doing the same, the Hurricanes issued a "No tailgating" edict, presumably to protect concession sales inside. So the fans simply moved their party up Trinity Road to the parking lots at the state fairgrounds. Apparently realizing they had become literal party poopers -- and that they were losing out on parking revenue -- the front office bosses reversed course.

The Caniacs have been partying like it was 1999 ever since.

"I remember the very day when I realized that it was little different in Raleigh," Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said one year ago. He played for the Canes for 10 seasons and has been head coach since 2018. "It was during our run to the finals in 2002 and as we all got to the locker room, Ronnie [Francis, the Canes' captain] was like, 'Hey, look at these people!' On TV, hours before the game, they were showing a family splashing around in a swimming pool in the back of their truck drinking beer and waiting on the puck to drop. It was like a landscaping truck or a plumber's truck. I was like, 'OK, these people are different. I want to win for these people.'"

It is a crowd consisting of equal parts native North Carolinians who never expected to become hockey fans, Raleigh transplants from the Northeastern Corridor who have adopted the team they once knew as the Hartford Whalers and nomad Tobacco Road college football devotees who heard there was a place to party in a parking lot during the offseason.

"I am a big Tar Heel, like, live for UNC sports," says Beth Bowen, Raleigh native and Caniac. "My son married an East Carolina Pirate, so he has learned how to tailgate over in Greenville, where they do crazy tailgates for football and baseball both. And here we are, right next to Carter-Finley. You give all those fans all that room with an excuse to party like it's a college football Saturday? Of course it gets crazy."

Bowens and longtime boyfriend Tim Harrel are among those who can be found posted up along the coveted row of shade trees that serve as the unofficial entrance to the stadium where Philip Rivers andRussell Wilsononce took care of business. On Hurricanes game days, that foliage line is the domain of Johnny Holland, aka "Quadzilla." In 1987, Holland was serving in the U.S. Army in Alaska when a car accident left him paralyzed. In the years since, he has become a hero of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, winning gold medals in sports ranging from wheelchair rugby to weightlifting. When the Canes are in action, Holland rolls up to his spot near the arena in a tricked-out Quadzilla-branded van that was built by Harrel.

Holland is the unofficial mayor of a parking lot known for hosting pregame parties that are themed to fit Carolina's playoff opponent. WhenPhillycomes to town, everyone eats cheesesteaks. WhenBuffalocomes to town, everyone gets a Star Wars light, ahem, Sabre. You get the idea.

There are the guys who wander the parking lots dressed as Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr. of "Talladega Nights" fame to remind fans that "If you ain't first, you're last." There's also Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas from "Dumb and Dumber" repeatedly assuring their fellow pregamers, "So you're telling us there's a chance!" There are lines of Caniacs standing shoulder-to-shoulder to gulp simultaneous shots served in glasses that are mounted to an oversized hockey stick.

Then there are the lucky folks downing suds from 28-ounce "beer skates." The novelty containers were introduced at Hurricanes concession stands in early May for Game 1 of Carolina's second-round series with the Flyers. The team thought it had enough inventory to last the remainder of the postseason, but the skates instantly went viral and instantly sold out, nearly 5,000 of them in just two periods of hockey.

"I bought mine from a dude in the parking lot," one Caniac confessed to ESPN in a Facebook exchange. "I waved some cash at him. He finished the beer and handed it to me on the spot."

And how much cash?

"I ain't saying because my wife might see this."

All that beer is used to wash down all the barbecue. So much barbecue. Smoked and pulled pork served eastern North Carolina style, right out of the carcass and mopped with vinegar-based sauce. The proper term for the feast is pig pickin.'

"This is the way that Jesus intended for people to eat barbecue," says the Ice Man as he digs into a rib that has just been dug out of the skin. "It only gets awkward when Stormy comes by. Or especially if Hamilton is here."

You see, Stormy, the official Carolina Hurricanes mascot, is an anthropomorphic pig. Hamilton is an actual pig.

The Canes' opining for swine has existed since the team moved south from Connecticut nearly 30 years ago. When team owner Peter Karmanos was rooting through a trough of possible nicknames, he was committed to a moniker that would pay proper homage to the team's new home state. Before ultimately settling on Hurricanes, the Detroit-raised software mogul very seriously considered the Carolina Ice Hogs. Why? Because while Raleigh is known for its anchor industries of tech and higher education, the capital city is also the gateway to what North Carolinians refer to as "Down East," the coastal plain region that runs downhill from the central Piedmont toward the Outer Banks.

Fertile, wet ground (thanks in no small part to all those hurricanes) that has long produced some of the world's most desired tobacco leaves is also home to America's third-largest hog farming industry, trailing only Iowa and Minnesota. More than nine million hogs reside in the Old North State, and most can be found rolling around in the muddy earth of Down East.

That's why Stormy is a pig. That's why Caniacs young and old can be spotted throughout the tailgates wearing pig noses and pig earpieces. And that's why Hamilton, a real-life fine swine, has been the most prominent pig in the pregame parking lot.

"Honestly man, I got the pig because of a dare with my buddies when I said, 'Yeah, man, I'll get a damn pig!'" recalls Kyle Eckenrode, aka the Pig Dad, a Raleigh native and, along with wife, Karoline, and their two small kids, co-residents with Hamilton in a home just around the corner from the Lenovo Center. "That was in 2017. We had no idea where he was going to take us."

Or where they were going to take him. The still-new couple adopted the Juliana miniature potbellied pig from a farm in Laurinburg, North Carolina, just above the South Carolina state line. To prove he had held up his end of the dare, Eckenrode started taking his spotted companion to local bars. Hamilton -- named not for former Hurricanes defenseman Dougie Hamilton, but rather as a play on words ... ham, get it? -- loved the attention. He especially loved all the free food his admirers slipped to him as he rolled by in his Radio Flyer wagon. When Eckenrode's brother, a Canes season-ticket holder, suggested Hamilton come out to Lenovo, suddenly the chubby new guy with the squiggly tail was ruling the Hurricanes tailgate.

"It got so big so fast that at one point we had a contract with the team, and I had to hire security for him," Eckenrode says. "When the Canes made their run to the Stanley Cup in 2019, we would wake up in the morning and look out the window and there would be a random TV news van parked outside the house."

The dark side of it all was when the Hurricanes would lose. There are stories of overserved Caniacs wandering the parking lot after playoff defeats suggesting that perhaps it was time that Hamilton became a "picked pig."

"As Hamilton got older and we had kids, priorities changed and we stopped bringing him out to games," Eckenrode says, becoming audibly emotional. "You start wondering if people noticed he wasn't around. But then [the team] invited us to the Stadium Series game in 2023 at Carter-Finley. No offense to any of the other mascots or the players, but when they announced Hamilton's name and I pulled that wagon into the stadium, everyone there went crazy, 60,000 people. It was a moment."

These days, Hamilton's moments are limited to the backyard and the couch, where he plops down to watch the Canes on TV with his family. He's nearly 10 years old but newly slimmed down thanks to a very anti-tailgating diet of carrots and pig food. And every time the family watches another postseason win and the Canes move another step toward perhaps another Stanley Cup Final appearance, their shared excitement comes with a shared thought.

"If the Canes make another finals appearance," Eckenrode says, "perhaps Hamilton needs to make another appearance, too."

If he does, he will not be alone. When the parking gates are opened three hours before the puck drops, it's North Carolina's version of the Oklahoma land grab. The Quadzilla van. The Ice Man's F-150. And just maybe, a little red wagon with a not-so-little pig, draped in Hurricanes attire for one more ride around the lot. All eager to claim a spot in hockey's biggest party. And all with their eyes -- human and otherwise -- on that big silver cup.

"I think a lot of us see that Stanley Cup and only think one thing," adds the anonymous eBay beer skate buyer via a 2 a.m. Facebook DM. "If they win it, you think they'd bring it out here and let us drink from it?"br/]