After pigging out on college hoops and practice baseball this past week and more, what a refreshing switch to get back to some hockey. Today the Ultimate Sports Road Trip rolled into Norfolk, Virginia, and a visit to the Norfolk Scope, home of the American Hockey League Norfolk Admirals.

First of all here’s the skinny on Norfolk - this is one clean, gleaming and beautiful city. The downtown core has plenty of shiny office towers, a massive shopping mall in the center of it all, historical buildings and old homes lovingly restored into museums, a nice waterfront with hotels and attractions, Harbor Park, a nifty minor league venue that’s home to the AAA Tides. And on the north side of downtown sits the Norfolk Scope, a 70s era venue with about 9000 seats and home base for their AHL franchise.

The architecture of The Scope is sort of reminiscent of “Socialist Realism”, like something you would see in a Warsaw Pact capital. Large, sterile plazas and oversized pillars surround the entire complex. The building is unlike anything we’ve seen in the AHL, sort of an upside down saucer.

But don’t let that scare you - the venue is a neat throwback to old time hockey. One single main concourse wraps around the entire building, with plenty of glass and natural light and stunning views of the impressive downtown skyline abound from all angles. The seating bowl is broken into two levels, with the only premium seating arranged box style along the glass in each of the corners. The “light bright” scoreboard, a no frills dot matrix type, is scheduled for replacement with a high tech video board for next season.

The crowd on this night numbered only about 3000 (announced 4155), no surprise considering it was sunny and 82 in Norfolk today. Plus the team is having an uncharacteristically bad season, and will miss the playoffs for the first time since 1989. It didn’t get any better tonight as the Monarchs took care of business, beating the Admirals 4-0.

The Admirals have a couple of Buffalo connections - Norm Milley, who spent parts of three seasons with the Sabres and Rochester Amerks, is one of the team’s stars. Tonawanda NY’s Kevin Quick just recently signed with the Admirals, and is best remembered as a standout with the University of Michigan. Unfortunately both players were sidelined with injuries on this night.

Here’s another useless USRT stat - Jonathan Quick was in goal tonight and earned a shutout for the visiting Manchester Monarchs (the affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings). So this makes the second time this season we have seen Quick play, the first time being that game we covered out in L.A. when Quick made his first ever NHL appearance, and stonewalled the Buffalo Sabres in an 8-1 win at the Staples Center.

We were also invited onto the Norfolk Admirals radio broadcast to do an interview during the first intermission. Play by play announcer Pete Michaud and I talked sports road tripping. By the way, his broadcast partner is former NHL referee Pat Shetler, who worked in the league in the late 60s and early 70s and remembers the old Aud very well. I joked with Pat that I probably booed him as a kid while sitting in my orange seats.

Special thanks to Admirals PR honcho Keith Phillips. as well as broadcasters Pete and Pat, who showed the USRT a good time and a big welcome on our visit. Thanks guys!!!

After the game we headed over to Norfolk’s Waterside Marketplace, a neat waterfront shopping, restaurant and nightclub complex to catch a late bite and enjoy the ambience of this humming city. Tomorrow we point the car back to Charlotte, for the Elite 8 matchup between UNC and Louisville. Can this awesome road trip finally be winding down? Say it ain’t so!

The exterior of the Norfolk Scope

One of the many nice public spaces in downtown Norfolk, hugging historical buildings, many from the 1700s

An interior shot of the arena

The USRT on the air! Andrew talks hockey with play-by-play announcer Pete Michaud

RSS 2.0 Respond Trackback