Record-setting crowd packs Charlotte Checkers’ historic outdoor game: ‘The pinnacle’
Whenever one of his friends moves to Charlotte, Patrick Barley takes them to a Checkers hockey game.
The 25-year-old, born and raised in the Queen City, said he has been going to Charlotte Checkers games since his parents were changing his siblings’ diapers in the upper section of Bojangles Coliseum. He remembers being up at 2 a.m. in Europe watching the Checkers win the 2019 AHL Calder Cup on a laptop in a hospital.
Barley was ecstatic when he saw that his favorite team would host his hometown’s first professional outdoor hockey game and circled Saturday’s date on his calendar. He gazed at the packed Truist Field concourse, which was filled with fans in hockey sweaters and knitted hats on a crisp night, as opposed to ball caps and jerseys.
“This is probably the pinnacle of a minor-league team,” Barley said during the first intermission of the Checkers’ 5-2 win. “It feels nice to have your city and your team celebrated — especially in a sport that might not be the most popular in the region — because it shows that people care.”
Barley, wearing a white Checkers sweater, was among 11,031 fans inside the decked-out minor-league ballpark in uptown. It marked the largest crowd for a sporting event in the history of Truist Field, which opened in 2014.
Minor-league hockey predates Charlotte’s professional sports by a wide margin. It can be traced to the late 1950s, when the Charlotte Hockey Club replaced the Baltimore Clippers after the Eastern Hockey League team’s home rink in Maryland burned down.
Barley has always appreciated the tight-knit, small-town feel that Checkers games have — his dentist is also the team’s dentist. He said taking prospective Charlotteans to Knights games would be a similar concept, but joked that the baseball team’s initial home in Fort Mill, S.C., was over the state line and added to the significance of the Checkers’ history.
“We have our major-league sports, but we also have our minor league,” Barley said. “And those are more affordable, I feel like there’s less exclusivity to it.
“Everyone that goes (to Checkers games) loves it. I mean, most people are coming from the Southeast, so there aren’t a lot of hockey teams. Not a lot of access to it. We’re lucky, as a city, that we have this.”
After a fan fest was held outside the ballpark on Mint Street on Saturday afternoon, spectators made their way into the venue. Both teams took the ice coming out of field entrances near opposite dugouts, and the Checkers introduced each player one by one.
As left wing Brendan Perlini walked toward the ice, he noticed some military veterans standing off to the side. His excitement was building as his skates crept closer to the outdoor rink.
And then, he tried to take a step back.
“There’s a lot more going on in the world that is a lot crazier than going to play a hockey game outside,” Perlini, who scored the Checkers’ fourth goal, said postgame. “The whole experience is second to none. For me, that was a cool little moment where I’m like, ‘I’m really going to soak this in.’”
Charlotte ended the game with three straight goals after the sides entered the third period knotted at 2-2. Rasmus Asplund, Uvis Balinskis, Mackie Samoskevich and Lucas Carlsson also scored in the Checkers’ five-goal performance.
Said the Checkers’ head coach, Geordie Kinnear: “You don’t get these moments all the time. Everybody in that locker room has worked hard to get these opportunities within whatever their career has gone. Anytime that you can enjoy these, it’s a special feeling, and I’m proud of the group.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2024 at 11:39 PM.