Written by Kristin Valentine
In April 2007, Long Island native and lifelong Penguins fan Mark Hanna – thanks to his father, a Pittsburgher – decided to start a group to connect with other Penguins fans in New York City. Thus, the NYC Pittsburgh Penguins Meetup Group was born! http://www.meetup.com/penguins/ on www.meetup.com. Mark held his first meetup during Game 5 of the Ottawa playoff series. Unfortunately, the Pens lost that game and ended their playoff run but the meetup had managed to bring two lone Penguins fans, in a city full of Rangers fans, together.
That fall Mark scheduled a meetup for the season opener and instead of two there were six fans. Over the next several months the crowd of regulars grew to about twelve. Two or three times a month Pittsburgh Penguins Meetup Group members would gather in a bar near NYU in the Village to watch our beloved Penguins.
As the playoffs approached Mark asked how often the group wanted to gather to watch games. “Games 1 and 4 and elimination games?” might sound reasonable to some but not to us. We voted to have a meetup for every playoff game that season. At the same time our group had grown beyond our expectations. By the start of the playoffs the core of twelve came to expect an additional five to ten people to show up to watch the game. During the 2007-2008 Stanley Cup finals the basement bar was jam packed with Penguins fans crowded in to watch with fellow fans. And while it was hard to watch our Pens fall to the Red Wings in the finals our group felt that we’d found something special.
The feeling that this meetup group was special was confirmed at the 2008-2009 season opener. We’d found a new bar, Foley’s, who promised us game sound and beer deals for meetups. Our core was now fifteen to twenty strong. We had built friendships over the past season; we’d taken road trips to Pittsburgh for the finals and to Wilkes-Barre to see the WBS Pens. The core looked at our meetups as not just a chance to watch Penguins hockey with other fans but as a chance to have a beer with friends.
In December 2008 we gathered to watch the Pens and to raise money for the Mario Lemieux Foundation. We raffled an autographed puck courtesy of the MLF and raised over $500. And Foley’s matched our donation dollar for dollar! In February, a small group of us carpooled to Long Island to see new head coach Dan Bylsma and a newly healthy Sergei Gonchar. Unfortunately, we lost the game but the NYC Pittsburgh Penguins Meetup was undeterred. We love the Penguins through thick and thin (and it didn’t hurt that Ray Shero stopped and took pictures with us before the game started. There’s nothing like an organization that cares about its fans.).
The team took off on a phenomenal winning streak after that and the meetup continued to grow – in numbers and intensity. In March 2009 we took our second annual road trip to Wilkes-Barre where we had the privilege of watching Miro Satan play. With the start of the playoffs we again adopted a meetup policy to watch every single game. We had begun the season with a steady group of fifteen and our numbers ballooned during the playoffs. We started getting fifty or sixty fans coming in to enjoy the games. And friends made in a Manhattan sports bar over buckets of Yuengling and Penguins hockey began taking trips together to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, to Washington and Raleigh, and even to Detroit.
Two hundred and eighty-seven (287!) members rsvp’d for Game 7 of the 2008-2009 Stanley Cup finals. We used every chair in Foley’s, stood five deep at the bar, and could barely move from our chosen spots while the game was on. A line formed outside the bar, including a lone Red Wings fan with a death wish. Between periods some of us decided to escape the crush and go stand outside. We were stamped to insure that we could be readmitted. For a few days following the game my arm read “Foleys/Shaun Clancy/18 W. 33rd St”. Our celebration was loud and raucous and it spilled over into the street and lasted past closing time. Many of us were congratulated for the incredible win on the way home from strangers who had heard that the Pittsburgh Penguins had just won the Stanley Cup.
On this coming Saturday, October 3rd, one hundred and six Pens fans – 106 meetup members and friends – will head to Long Island to watch the Penguins take on the New York Islanders. You can bet that the Penguins will notice our group when we cheer for them as we will be taking up two sections at the arena. A group that just over two years ago began with Mark, our ”captain”, and Sid, our “A,” now has two additional co-organizers, Cara and Kristin, 333 members as of this writing, and more than 100 Penguins fans willing to carpool with strangers, sit with strangers, and enjoy Penguins hockey with strangers. Strangers who’ll become friends because when we’re all Penguins fans we’re not really strangers.
Edit: adding Yinz Luv Da Guins Stanley Cup Finals 2009 Game 7 video
number of view: 774Tags: Bill Guerin, Foley's, Meetup, PSAMP, Ray Shero, Yinz Luv Da Guins