It’s not the Big Apple, but Columbus is alive tonight

By Tami Kamin-Meyer, Columbus Wired Columnist

On a night when local stages featured the likes of the incomparable Barbra Streisand and country crooner Toby Keith (different stage, that is), the Columbus Blue Jackets played their 2006-07 NHL season opener against the Vancouver Canucks before a sold-out crowd at Nationwide Arena.

“This is my first opening game ever,” said Jay Canowitz, a Columbus lawyer who attends several Blue Jackets games every season. “I like coming to games because it is a lot more fun watching the game in person than on television,” he said.
(Photo: Jay Canowitz. His wife Robin is seated far left).

His wife Robin is a longtime hockey fan, due in part to her high school and college experiences as a field hockey player. “I get invited to more games than him because I am more popular,” she joked.

New Albany resident Jennifer Siegel, also attending her first season opener, thought watching her hometown hockey team in person would be a great way to celebrate her 34th birthday. “I had no interest in Barbra Streisand or Toby Keith but I still wanted to do something fun,” she said. Streisand, whose Columbus performance was her second stop on her current 20-city tour, featured ticket prices as high as $602.

Steve Siegel, Jennifer’s husband of just over a year, admitted he was excited about getting to the couple’s suite level seats so he could keep one eye on the Blue Jackets game while keeping the other on the New York Yankees playoff game against the Detroit Tigers that was showing on a nearby television set.

Perhaps the most unusual reason for celebrating this seasons opener belonged to Stephen Wharton. “I am here tonight because I passed a kidney stone that was nearly the size of a hockey puck earlier this morning!” he exclaimed. The radio airtime salesman said he was at home this morning, cursing and writhing in pain while reading his Columbus Blue Jackets Media Guide, when suddenly, and painfully, the stone passed. “The only thing that pulled me through was praying I could make it to the game,” he said, smiling. According to his friend Greg Drobeck, a Columbus design engineer, “I’m just glad he passed that thing because he’s been whining like a girl!”  (Photo: R to L, Stephen Wharton, Greg Drobeck).

Longtime friends and radiologists Mike Levey and Bob Darwin have been part of a group that has bought Blue Jackets season tickets for each of the team’s six seasons. Said Darwin, “This is the year we hope they turn it around.” 
(Photo: right to left, Mike Levey and Bob Darwin).

Both men said they were pleased with their sixth row seats situated near the Blue Jackets’s attack zone for two of the game’s three periods. “I’ve always liked these seats,” he said. “And,” he said jokingly, “they’re cheaper than Barbra Streisand’s!”