Is Raleigh a Hockey Town? After two Stanley Cups, city claims major-league status

To understand the intensity of Raleigh’s hockey fandom, consider the hurdles hardcore fan Steve Eisenstadt jumped for the sake of a ticket — not to the Stanley Cup final itself, but for a sold-out watch party in the Lenovo Center with his beloved Hurricanes playing 2,000 miles away.

First, he stopped in a Maryland parking lot while driving home from vacation, jumping into the online ticket queue behind 5,000 fans, staring at his phone for 45 minutes only to come up empty-handed.

Second, he turned down a miracle ticket from a buddy because his wife flashed him such a furious side-eye that he knew going alone would trigger divorce. In a moment of reckless joy, he considered dropping $5,000 to see a hypothetical game seven.

But somehow two watch-party tickets appeared, and as Eisenstadt stepped inside Lenovo and took in the sea of screaming fans, climbing on each other’s shoulders, vaulting themselves in the air, running in circles and dancing in bug-eyed joy, he hit on a revelation: This only happens in a Major League City.

“As I looked around at this scene,” he said afterward, “I thought, man, we are something else now. We have crossed a chasm into a truly intense thing you see in other cities. I think what we’ve seen is Raleigh’s true coming of age now, not just as a hockey town. I think we have seen we are on the verge of crossing into something bigger.”

What makes a hockey town?

Even before the Carolina Hurricanes won their second Stanley Cup Sunday night, Triangle T-shirt shop House of Swank made a bold declaration across the chest of its newest big-seller:

Raleigh is a Hockey Town.

But what does that mean? A hockey town like Boston? Toronto?

Proof of Raleigh’s major-league caliber comes in a profound shift in attitude since hockey’s bumpy Tar Heel beginnings.

When Peter Karmanos moved his Hartford Whalers here in 1997 — playing two seasons in Greensboro — Raleigh scoffed at the idea of a cold-weather sport enjoyed by Yankees and Canadians thriving along Tobacco Road.

“Hockey?” wrote N&O columnist Jim Jenkins before the first home game in 1999. “In Raleigh? Where we’re lucky if a puddle freezes up for more than a half-hour and where a dusting of snow closes the schools for a week, cleans out the grocery stores and causes us to hunker down as if the Rooskies were about to drop the big one?”

Prominent Raleigh developer Willie York, who designed what was then known as Cameron Village, wrote to Mayor Tom Fetzer: “This is an area of college athletics, and we do not need professional intrusion.”

Never mind the ridicule from northern hockey pundits, who adopted the tone and vocabulary of Foghorn Leghorn when they wrote about Raleigh, dropping frequent Mayberry references.

Sports journalist Mitch Albom earned Raleigh’s eternal loathing when he mocked Raleigh’s hockey efforts in 2002, penning a conversation with his fictional cousin Moonshine:

“ME: Do you really think your team from North Carolina can beat our team from Detroit? MOONSHINE: In what? ME: Hockey. MOONSHINE: Oh, heck. Why not? I been playin’ it since grade school. Used to skip class every Friday to catch snakes down by the river. ME: Not hookey. Hockey.”

Even when the Canes won the Stanley Cup in 2006, the watch parties in Raleigh drew half-full arena crowds, and no concessions got sold. The team held a victory parade in the arena’s parking lot, and while a second parade down Hillsborough Street drew 8,000 fans, that number is predicted to at least quadruple for this Saturday’s festivities.

“It was almost a novelty,” said Jim Pugh of House of Swank, now busily cranking out Hockey Town shirts. “It kind of felt like a one-off.”

We are worthy

So what’s changed?

For one thing, Raleigh added 150,000 people in the 20 years between Cups — nearly half a million across Wake County.

That means:

One, thousands of fans moved south and east from bigger, more-established hockey cities, transplanting their fandom to Raleigh.

Two, an entire generation of kids who watched the Canes as toddlers can’t remember a time when Raleigh lacked a pro sports team. Many of them played youth hockey, maybe even as one of the Junior Canes.

They’ve worn red caps with storm-shaped logos their whole lives.

“This time around, we look more like a city and a fan base that belongs,” said Hayes Permar, who hosted spirited watch parties at The Rialto Theater. “An actual skyline with some tall buildings, a population big enough to pack the arena, Red Hat and probably every bar with the game on, and a parade will go through our downtown. These are things the outside world uses to measure you as a worthy sports town.”

The biggest measure is a fan base that stuck around for two decades between big wins — not quite Toronto Maple Leafs brand of faithfulness — but still the kind of loyalty that only a Major League City could produce.

“I was here for the good, bad and the ugly when we couldn’t win a game to save our life,” said Natalie Miller, 68, of Youngsville, recently chosen as the NHL’s Ultimate Fan. “But I still kept coming back. And now this is the ultimate, and I’m so excited, I can’t even talk.”

Talkin’ baseball

Fans now hope that Raleigh’s hockey hysteria will act as a springboard to landing other major-league sports teams — most notably a coveted baseball franchise.

The final second had hardly ticked off the game six clock before jubilant fans hit the streets declaring Raleigh the front-runner for an expansion team. Who could resist a city that sells out a 21,000-seat arena to watch an away game on TV?

“I definitely think we are on the radar nationally more than ever,” said Jonathan Melton, Raleigh City Council member, noting that contrary to early predictions, the Triangle’s college sports mania boosted Canes fandom. “I think supporting athletics is in our DNA. I think the fires of support were already burning, and the flames just got bigger with a team we could all support.”

Selling out a watch party doesn’t build a stadium. It doesn’t widen highways for baseball-game crowds or add parking decks to fit 20,000 new fans at 81 home games.

But it might show the world once and for all that Raleigh can put butts in seats, dollars in pockets and smiles on faces — the ingredients of any Major League City.

Staff writer Faith Wardwell contributed to this report.

This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is Raleigh a Hockey Town? After two Stanley Cups, city claims major-league status."

Josh Shaffer

The News & Observer

919-829-4818

Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.