BLACK METAL
IT IS 1998 and hockey is dying.
Its executioners are its own coaches, who have strangled opposing offenses with a variety of neutral zone traps. Scoring is down almost two and a half goals a game from the firewagon 1980s. Jacques Lemaire wins three Stanley Cups playing the most stultifying brand of hockey imaginable. At Michigan State, Ron Mason seeks to win games –1 to –2, and does with depressing frequency. Your author is mere months away from swearing off the Red Wings forever after attending two games at Joe Louis Arena at which the only reaction from the crowd comes on goals, of which there is about one a period, and when a man named "Mo Cheese" does a jiggle-dance on the jumbotron.
That fall, two people walked into Yost Ice Arena for the first time: Mike Comrie and I. I sat in the student section; Mike Comrie set people on fire and laughed about it. I don't know anything about Mike Comrie's childhood but I know it involved ants and a magnifying glass.
I just missed the Brendan Morrison era but even if I'd seen it, I'd probably still believe Comrie is the closest thing to an on-ice avatar of the Red Berenson era in existence. He was a tiny puck wizard who defied all logical modes of playing hockey with sheer talent. It was not uncommon for Comrie to make a zone entry by himself, then tool around the offensive zone like Spike Albrecht doing donuts in the lane. The opposition allowed this because the alternative was approaching Comrie and risking an explosive moment after which Michigan would have another goal and you would have no pants.
Over the next decade it seemed like Michigan had an infinite supply of these guys. After Comrie came Mike Cammalleri, Jeff Tambellini, Eric Werner (who belongs on this list despite being a defenseman), TJ Hensick, Andrew Ebbett, John Shouneyia, and Andrew Cogliano. They were all different versions of the same assassin. Collectively they are this Cammalleri goal.
Under Red Berenson, Michigan hockey was an electric middle finger to the neutral zone trap. It defied NHL norms of the time, and sometimes basic physics itself. It took no quarter, and gave none. It lived in Yost Ice Arena, which for about 15 years was the most intimidating environment in sports.
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YOST WAS BLACK, pitch black. Literally so. The shot at the top of the post is one of the bleachers that I had the good fortune to acquire when Dave Brandon's renovation of Yost was literally throwing them away. It is not the bright and shiny anodyne chrome of the current building. It is not even the respectable deep blue that Michigan has on hand for uniforms, logos, and what-have-you. It is black.
It is unnecessarily black. At one edge the paint has worn down and you can see that underneath there is a layer of blue. Someone erased that blue, probably for no reason at all other than hockey was a non-revenue sport and black paint was cheaper. So they painted it black.
To walk into Yost Ice Arena in 1998 was a mindblowing experience for someone raised on the relatively genteel ways of Michigan Stadium. To be a Michigan fan is to have your nose in the air about the unhinged activities of those people; Yost was the Scarface coke bender kept hidden from public view. It is the only environment in the history of Michigan sports that can be compared in any way to Miami and its general attitude.
I have thought long and hard about why this might have come to be and still have no unifying theory, but by the time you arrived in 1998 at the same time as Mike Comrie it took about three games to fully assimilate into the baying hive mind. Then-Lake Superior State coach Frank Anzalone once told me to "shut the fuck up" between periods, and while I don't remember why he did this I assume he was 100% correct to do so.
And I was just a guy, really, not one of the gentlemen in the section behind the opposing bench. One of the Superfans was there, the guy with the Flintstones water buffalo hat. Next to him was the guy with the megaphone, and around them was a cadre of the dirtiest dudes in town.
The megaphone, I think, is key to understanding the allure here. We have all had the experience of shouting something in anger at a referee at a football game. This is exactly as effective as shouting at your TV. There are one hundred thousand people in the stands and you are some vast distance away from the field even if you're in row 20; you are just a voice in the crowd.
At Yost, amongst six thousand people, in row ten, with the ears just the other side of some plexiglass, you know damn well that everyone can hear your every word. With a megaphone or without. By the time I had arrived there was a culture that understood and sought to exploit this, and it worked. I can't tell you how many times opposing players tried to spray people in the crowd with water bottles. The opposing parents were seated directly behind their bench, and directly in front of the dirtiest dudes in town, and since the dirtiest dudes in town had a tendency to select one player for excessive torment it was a semi-regular occurrence for a hockey parent to respond in kind. Rarely you'd catch a slightly unhinged one who would fume his way up the stairs and try to get in a fight.
The stupidity and the gloriousness of this should be apparent. For a period of several years the opposing parents had to be located across the rink, the ice serving as a demilitarized zone. Yost got people shook.
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The creation of this seething cauldron in the context of dead-puck-era hockey, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of the great miracles of sports. The none-more-blackness of Yost had something to do with it. So did the basketball team's malaise.
But the primary factor was Red Berenson, who never gave a damn about what you thought he should do. Berenson spent four years in college when college was not a path to the NHL. He was literally the first player to ever go directly from the NCAA to the NHL. He was the NHL coach of the year at one point and could have continued being an NHL head coach indefinitely if he so chose. Instead he came back to Michigan. At a time when the primary way to win hockey games was by murdering the game itself he played balls-to-the-wall.
Yost was a magnet for sadists because it was a place you could go and see someone blown off the ice 8-1. A promotion where attendees got free tacos if Michigan scored ten goals had to be discontinued because it was costing too much. Here is an arena where the residents are chanting for more goals when they are already at nine—nine! They are no longer beating the dead horse, but gleefully spitting on its grave. Yost was a reflection of the product on the ice.
Red Berenson did a lot of great things for his university, his players, his student managers, his coaches, his alumni, and they will all remember him for the things he did for them. The thing Red Berenson did for me is turn Yost Ice Arena into the greatest sports environment I've ever been in. He did that because he is metal. Bite-the-head-off-a-bat metal.
Black fucking metal.
[Bill Rapai]
April 11th, 2017 at 12:49 PM ^
has always been and continues to be A CLASS ACT.
April 11th, 2017 at 12:52 PM ^
I went to a game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The building was beautiful, but it was also municipal. It had absolutely no soul. It was cool to watch Manning (in his last regular season game as a Colt), but if it wasn't for him, the place was just too sterile to really get into it.
If I were a billionaire, major-sport team owner, I'd be building the smallest stadium I could get away with. I'd have luxury boxes so far from the field they might as well be in the parking lot. I'd want people packed in like sardines and as close to the action as possible. I'd have cheap beer and benches 20 rows deep, minimum. I wouldn't want you to be impressed when you walked in the door; I'd want you to make an impression on the opposing players. Screw Jerryworld; give me Arrowhead.
April 11th, 2017 at 12:56 PM ^
Here's to never taking it for granted that we have this guy running a blog for the school we all love!
I had the incredibly good fortune of being a student from '94 - '98, sitting at center ice, top row (before the boxes were installed) behind the benches (and the parents)... we invented chants nightly; we screamed at refs like Shegos; we called BGSU players tootsie rolls; were relentless against opposing goalies; we exploded after momentous 4 minute PKs; i think the roof literally blew off the top of Yost one evening against Colorado College. I never had a voice left on Sundays...it was a glorious time to be alive as a student at the University of Michigan in attendance at those games.
through it all, Coach Berenson kept restocking the bench with ammo on an annual basis, and the program churned out CCHA banners and frozen four appearances and Hobey Bakers and even the two glorious national championships won during our tenure...
Thanks to the players, to the guys who convinced me to sleep on the concrete outside the Union to get hockey tickets as a freshman (including the guy who used to wear the goalie mask on the top row with us, who now serves as the Yost announcer who tells you how much time is left, as well as his (and my) very good friend), to the band, to the fellow students whose camaraderie was so tremendous, and most of all, to Coach Berenson. I know our chants weren't the cleanest* but I think you loved that environment Brian describes above every bit as much as we did.
Congratulations again for all your accomplishments, and best of luck in retirement. You've certainly earned it.
*not only is the Yost environment more tame now, it seems many of the chants are less clever and simultaneously, more vulgar than they were in our day... students need to step it up.
SHEGOS IS THE DEVIL! That referee catcall never got old.
I could use your help with a project I'm about to start working on. Could you email me? adam [at] mgoblog [dot] com.
Loved singing "There She Goes" when he blew a call.
I love the Comrie paragraph. Players like him are why I'm a Michigan hockey fan. I've always loved watching great players do amazing things and Michigan Hockey has always had that. Red always had incredibly talented offensive dynamos that would do things that just made you laugh. Wizards, danglers, snipers, and JMFJ. Every year I always got excited to see who would be the next great players that he would bring in. Who would make those plays that would just make me shake my head and laugh. Thank you for making me laugh Red. Oh so many times. Replacing a legend is a hard thing to do. I hope Warde finds the right guy and that guy keeps me laughing.
As a '96 grad, I find it difficult to describe to newer fans what it was like in that building back in they heyday of the Yost madness. I grew up a minor league and NHL fan from a small Michigan town, and I thought I had seen it all from a hockey fan experience standpoint.
But by the 15:00 mark of the first period of my first game (vs WMU) I realized that Yost was a culture and an experience unto itself. An eyeopening bizarro world of Michigan sports when compared to Michigan Stadium and even Crisler during the Fab 5 era. The volume, the vulgarity, the anger, the arrogance... There was no analog, no describing it. Except awesome. It was awesome.
And man those teams. Brendan Morrison, John Madden, Aaron Ward, Steve Sheilds, Marty Turco, Mike Knuble.... Those battles with Lake State. Epic. I know we will return to those days soon enough. Thanks for the memories, Red!
Made a trip down memory lane looking at the old rosters of the era. Can't believe I forgot Chris Tamer, who was just a nasty dude, and in college hockey at the time there was so much stick work allowed, he was an assassin.
Other guys I loved: Mark Ouimet, Jason Botterill, and Brian Wiseman. Damn, that was some good hockey.
Won the stanley cup in 97 and 98
Thank you Red for saving the program in the 80s and winning two national titles. Hopefully we can recapture that 90s tear again soon.
33-0-3 at home from 11/17/1995-10/17/1997. Amazing.
You spent enough time ragging on the guy...
and I'll say it again. The "old Yost" was the best place in the country to watch a hockey game at any level, IMO.
It was also a fantastic place to play, which I had a few opportunities to do so. Brian Wiseman faked me out of my skates then sniped top corner (even though the net was wide open) the summer before his senior year (1993-1994). Granted, I was just a Freshman in HS. Still one of my favorite hockey memories. That and skating with/getting goalie tips from Steve Shields.
Also, he had an awesome helmet.
helmet when he played with the Bruins was sick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBtjSHm3ZH0
Neutral zone traps tried to kill the metal
But the faild, as the were stricken to the ground.
No-one can destroy the metal
Yost in those days will always be the best Michigan venue in my mind. Nothing compares.
Great piece, Brian. I had the good fortune of being at Michigan from 92-96 and becoming friends with a few members of the team. Great people, wonderful memories.
I will never forget the guy that berated Shegos during the refs warmup skate: "SHEGOS IS THE DEVIL! PRINCE OF DARKNESS!! 666!!" The whole building could hear him. Hilarious.
My dad watched Red play when he was a student at Michigan. Said that Red could do whatever he wanted on the ice due to his superior skill and physical ability. As intimidating as Red looks he's a really nice guy and great to have a chat with.
Red gave the better part of his adult life to the hockey program and university. For that, I will always be greatful.
tribute to a great man. UM owes this man a huge dept of gratitude for all he did. I'm exicted for the future and want to see Yost back to how it was years ago and UM hockey dominating the college scene again. Thank you for all you did Red!
Good testimonial by Brian. Not only did Red build the Michigan program into a national powerhouse, he did it playing the most exciting brand of hockey. Freewheeling, offensive and exciting, with a little more defense built in come tournament time.
Great memories of all the games my wife and I went to at Yost and Joe Louis. Road trips to MSU, Western, Ferris, Bowling Green, Omaha, Notre Dame, Illinois-Chicago (and some suburban rink the year they couldn't play in the Pavillion). All the Regionals at Yost, the Joe, Munn, Fort Wayne and Dane County. The Frozen Four trips to Albany, Milwaukee, Providence, Cincinnati, Boston and Buffalo. It was a great time and we have Red to thank for it.
For the future, Mel Pearson might not be the absolute best coach available, but he is the best coach for this particular job. He was instrumental in building the Michigan program with Red and his importance was made obvious by the program's slide since he left. He deserves the job if he wants it and I really hope he does.
Awesome read. Yost in its heyday is not coming back, but we will always have it.
My first game at Yost was in the early 90s. I'd been pestering my dad for a while that I wanted to go to a game, and he got tickets for some exhibition game that ended up getting cancelled (I think it was a Russian team, and they ended up nixing the tour for lack of funds). So he came through a little while later with tickets for a game against Michigan State. Score.
So we park in the neighborhood next to the arena and get there just before the opening faceoff. My dad hands our tickets to the usher, and the guy looks at me and says to my dad "Is this your first game here? If there's a problem and you need to move seats, let me know. You let me know, OK?" We'd been going to football and basketball game forever, why would there ever be a problem?
Woo boy. Turns out we were sitting right next to an overflow student section of some sort. The guys next to us had t-shirts and signs attacking Anson Carter, who was MSU's star at the time. The entire game, this guy was yelling at Carter, some variation of "Hey Anson, how's the herpes? DO THEY HURT?" Over, and over, and over again for the entire game. Then the cheers started. My dad was getting visibly uncomfortable. Michigan won. My memory of that night is a blur of noise, mayhem, and weirdness. I, of course, loved every second of it, even if I was too young to really understand what was going on.
We got season tickets the next season. I got my first hockey jersey that Christmas. Haven't looked back.
That was the old Yost, with Red at his prime, and a national championship on the horizon. It was a beautiful thing.
was game two of the infamous Cornell series in the NCAA tournament where the Cornell fans taught us how to be hockey fans. I was instantly hooked. Having grown up at Michigan Stadium, having gotten student season basketball tickets at Crisler after the national championship year, Yost blew me away.
It's hard to tell if the team played the way it did because of Yost, or if Yost became the madhouse it was because of the team. Either way, it can all be laid at the feet of Red. His teams played with relentless speed and skill. Everytime you looked up they were on an odd man rush. He wasn't adverse to running up the score, especially if he felt the other team had slighted his team or his players in any way. It was the exact opposited of Lloydball. And the crowd fed off that. We taunted, teased, and cajoled the opposition. You knew they could hear us. For that opposing goalie it must have been like jumping in a deep pool with a bunch of sharks. They could circle you for hours, but eventually they were going to strike, and once the first one got to you, it would become a feeding frenzy.
One of my favorite things at Yost was talking to, and watching fans who were experiencing the atmosphere for the first time. Numerous times I had people ask me, "What are they saying?!?" referring to some sort of quasi-obscene thing the students were saying.
At some point in the late 80s, early 90s, Notre Dame scrapped their hockey program. A few years later they restarted it (IIRC Dave Poulan was the coach). Their first year back they played a game at Yost that we ended up winning 13-0. At that game I sat near a guy from Boston who was talking about wanting to see the Michigan team to see if they were as good at the BU team he saw on a regular basis. After every goal he scored he commented in amazement about how good this player or that player for Michigan was. He spent the whole game with his jaw dropped. At one point midway through the third period with us already up by double digits, the crowd (mostly students) started chanting "F%$^ the Irish" The guy turned to me and said, "Boy, they don't let up do they?" As he was saying that, we scored another goal. I responded as I put both hands in the air for the goal count, "Neither does the team".
In many ways, Red was Bo, and Bo was Red. All the qualities that we admired in Bo, toughness, loyality, belief in hard work, dedication to making sure that his players were true student-athletes, integrity, tatical genius, Red had in spades. He just did it longer, but on a smaller stage.
Thank You Red, for making me a hockey fan.
amen!
the infamous Cornell series in the NCAA tournamentWhat was infamous about it?
more knowledgable than me have pointed to that series as the point where Michigan Hockey really turned the corner and Yost became the Yost that people are describing in this thread.
April 12th, 2017 at 12:25 PM ^
We stole the "C-YA" chant from them that weekend.
Utterly, totally false. See below.
It was the "sieve" chant, and the concept of organized chanting in general. It became the thing. Place was bananas after that.
EDIT: Here's an old Daily Article with a lot of good detail. Good stuff on the Molly game, too, though I selfishly think there are even better pieces about it elsewhere.
April 12th, 2017 at 12:24 PM ^
That's a beautiful post.
Hockey is different from the other money sports. While the rest of America is divided by six degrees of separation, the hockey universe works on two. I am reminded of this everytime I take my kid to play at Sharks Ice. As the Peewees and Bantams file on the ice, the San Jose Sharks file off, and 12-year-olds come face-to-face with hall-of-famers. Keep working hard, Larry Robinson once told my kid, as they passed each other at the boards.
For a very long time, Yost offered just such a microcosm of the hockey universe: public-skate coexisted with legends. Thank you, Red Berenson.
yup. i also remember that. going to open skate at yost and holding the door for red berenson, steve shields, marty turco... anyone who walked in the door.
I guess I didn't appreciate it at the time but I probably went to UM during "peak sports" time - hell UM football might have been the worst of the 3 programs. I had the Fab 5 in basketball, when in my 2nd year we had to camp out for HALF year season ticket packages, Red's era, and Desmond's Heisman era etc. (Let's not talk about that FSU or Colorado game).
Looking back at UM hockey in the time I was there (WD wasn't even born!) UM won the conf championship in 4 of the 5 years I was there (91-92 to 95-96). And 3 Frozen Fours. Oh and a NC.
| 1990–91 | Red Berenson | 34–10–3 | 24–5–3 | 2nd | NCAA Quarterfinalist |
| 1991–92 | Red Berenson | 32–9–3 | 22–7–3 | 1st | NCAA Frozen Four |
| 1992–93 | Red Berenson | 30–7–3 | 23–5–2 | 2nd | NCAA Frozen Four |
| 1993–94 | Red Berenson | 33–7–1 | 24–5–1 | 1st | NCAA Quarterfinalist |
| 1994–95 | Red Berenson | 30–8–1 | 22–4–1 | 1st | NCAA Frozen Four |
| 1995–96 | Red Berenson | 34–7–2 | 22–6–2 | T-1st | NCAA Champion |
| 1996–97 | Red Berenson | 35–4–4 | 21–3–3 | 1st | NCAA Frozen Four |
| 1997–98 | Red Berenson | 34–11–1 | 22–7–1 | 2nd | NCAA Champion |
I only went to about 6-7 hockey games as the other 2 sports were more my thing but I think Yost was the best atmosphere of the 3 places - and that's when Crisler was banging (UM v Duke during finals week of 91 might have been the best live game I ever was at). Very intimate arena, very loud, and all the regulars had chants going non stop. SIEVE SIEVE SIEVE
I really appreciate this article. brings back so many memories from going to Yost as a kid. I absolutely loved the atmosphere. as a young hockey player at the time, I just wanted to play for the wolverines. Michigan was absolutely crushing people as you mentioned back then. So were the Red Wings. It was a great time for hockey in Ann Arbor. The fans practically brought me up in the ways of foul language and dancing. Soooo much fun. Anyone else remember Disco Dan (or something like that)?
For a minute I feared Red had pulled a Bear Bryant and had just kicked the bucket.
For me, Comrie was the first of what's been an unending procession of the most talented players bailing on Red after spending just enough time at Michigan to burnish their pro credentials.
Whether present day Yost is still great is debatable - I wouldn't say it is, but whatever. But, what is true is that it is not like Old Yost. The regionals vs. N. Dakota in 98 and Denver in 2002 were the most intense sporting events I have ever been to. (97 UM/OSU football only thing close) For most of the game, it was so loud you could not hear people talking who were sitting right next to you. You had to sit down between periods just to restore some sanity. I can vividly recall regular grown up fans (like me in my 40s then) in end-zone seats screaming and taunting DU fans sitting in their fan section at the end of the sideline seats. They looked like they had been dropped into some foreign universe and were trying to figure out how the hell to get back to a civilization they knew. The chants, the noise, the band, and the intimidation of opposing fans, coaches, and players were at levels that cannot be appreciated by anyone who knows only the new Yost. Those teams, (I would say from 93-2003) inspired amazing levels of loyalty and support that turned Old Yost into an unforgettable experience. We owe Red a lot for those memories because those were different times and the Old Yost isn't coming back, no matter how successful the team becomes going forward.
Great piece. Really enjoyed reading it.
It heavily reminices about Yost in the late 90's/early aughts, but your last paragraph tied things together well. I think it's an appropriate tribute.
I appreciate your blog and the free info you provide. Really, I do.
I do realize that it is YOUR blog, yet it seems that so much of what you write is narcissistic crap. This is a time to celebrate Red. Period.
Sorry.
I felt like I was catching the tail end of the era. Those 2006-2008 years were really great, but I watch highlights from the Denver and North Dakota games when we hosted regionals, when the volume just clips out because it's so defeaning, and I'm sad I missed out on those days.
Nowadays it is noticeably more dry than before. I do think the renovations sterilized it a bit. It used to be old, dark, and dirty and I think the contributed to the rowdiness. It felt like you were in a place where it was more acceptable to be unacceptable. Now it feels more clean and professional. Hopefully we knock this hire out of the park and we're right back at it in a few years
Yost was church, especially from '04-'08 when football was heart wrenching. Disgusting, hilarious, ecstatic church.
I didn’t get to campus until 2005 but my 1st game was vs BC when JMFJ took a slap shoot that knocked the mask off the goalie. I was hooked and don’t think I missed a game the rest of my time in school. I wish I was there in person for all these late 90’s early ’00 stories because they are the stuff of legend!
My first hockey game was an exhibition game against Guelph to start the 1998-99 season. Even though it was an exhibition game - it was a great introduction to the crowds at yost. One guy in particular made so much fun of the name "Guelph" by the third period he even got to the Guelph goalie.
Hey ref - it's your mom...
Yost was the Scarface coke bender kept hidden from public view. It is the only environment in the history of Michigan sports that can be compared in any way to Miami and its general attitude. I have thought long and hard about why this might have come to be and still have no unifying theoryIsn't the consensus that it was the Cornell NCAA series that transformed Yost?
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