New York, Nu York: Hockey on my mind

By ELLEN LEVITT
Here in New York City, the weather is spring-gorgeous: sunny, clear skies, trees and flowers in bloom, birds flying about, people wearing light jackets or even walking about in their shirtsleeves. The air has a clean quality, and unless you forgot to take your seasonal allergy medicine this morning, you might have a smile on your lips. The weather is "Classic Gotham Spring," in my estimation.
Having stated that, the biggest sports hoopla this week is not revolving around our two baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets. This week (and perhaps longer) the biggest cheers are being sounded for one of our local ice hockey teams, the New York Rangers. The "Blue Shirts" as they are also called, have beat the Washington Capitals in the National Hockey League (NHL) Eastern Conference. The series went to 7 games, and game 7 went into overtime, but the Rangers beat the Caps and now go on to compete against Florida's Tampa Bay Lightning.
So many New Yorkers are enthusiastically cheering for the Rangers, even though ice hockey is a wintertime sport. With this in mind, I decided to do some research, to find out if ice hockey means absolutely anything to Israelis, beyond loyal American and Canadian ex-pats. And thus I located a website for the Ice Hockey Federation of Israel. And you do field a bunch of hockey clubs! You have the Dragons! The Devils! (We do too, the New Jersey Devils.) The Hawks! (But the Hawks are a basketball team in the US of A.) The White Bears and the Horses! Cool, bros!
And then I decided to find out about Jewish hockey players: lo and behold, there have been at least 85 Members of the Tribe who have played the game. Jeff Halpern, as a matter of fact, even played for the Rangers. So ice hockey is indeed something that some Jewish boys can aspire to play.
To be honest, I am not much of an ice hockey fan. I sat through two professional games many years ago (both were Rangers home games) and I found them a bit boring. But I do like it when my local teams are competing and succeeding, so when my husband flipped on our living room television last night, and tuned into the Rangers-Capitals match, I did watch for a few minutes a few times. And I was pleased to hear that the Rangers had indeed won the game. (I was in the shower at the time of their victory, sorry fellows.)
Hockey and Jews, heh (as Canadians might say). A good combo.