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S58 PT #1 Empty Arenas

St Louis has been blessed with a wealth of what other teams would refer to as ‘locker room leaders’, in STL, we just call it the locker room! The team has no problem getting hyped in the locker room prior to the game. The pre-season playlist from last season gets an absolute blasting, with some additions to it from the new guys! That gets everyone super ready to hit the ice! Once we are on the ice though, it’s a different story. The players initially felt the eerie emptiness and quietness was just too weird, so the front office looked at how this could be sorted. The stadium team have implemented a system where fans can send pictures of themselves to be made into cardboard cutouts to occupy the seats! Some cheeky stamps have tried to slip in pictures of undesireables, like bin Laden, but we’ve caught them! And they’ve been piping in crowd noise over the PA. There was one unfortunate incident, where during a game v Detroit, the PA got stuck playing a loop of a ‘F*** Detroit’ chant, strange....

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Honestly, for us the fans never played too much of a role when it came to getting pumped for a game, that part was usually more about finding your own focus and getting your legs going, plus usually they tended to not even enter the arena until it was close to game time. While the game was actually going on that was a totally different story of course, there the fans play a massive role in carrying the team, pushing it forward and giving it that extra little bit of motivations that gives it an edge or its opponent. So I don't think the preparation for a game changes that much with no fans in the standings. What we do need however, and it has become a mainstay in many arenas of the sports world as well as when tv and other shows are recorded so it's not a crazy new or exciting idea as well, are cardboard cutouts in the crowd. Maybe we can even place a few very distinctive ones in strategic places as well to confuse players from the visiting team or even give them an inclination to shoot at one of the cutouts instead of our goal. You know, your Brad Marchands, your Ted Cruz's or Jareds from Subway!
(This post was last modified: 02-12-2021, 12:19 PM by soulja.)

It sucks that covid hit the entire world negatively. It literally slapped everyone from one dimension to the next. Things we were allowed to do before is of rarity now. So is the case with our beloved fans. Before covid, their cheers would spark energy in Zlatan Ibrahimovic jr's play. It will be like a boost of testosterone for the legend. Unfortunately now, Zlatan has to turn to something else to be full of energy for the duration of the game. His secret is taking 10 shots of swedish Vodka right before the start of the game. Just like the drunken Kung Fu master, Zlatan becomes the Drunken Ice hockey player. The vodka allows him to feel one with the world and thus his movements become very fluid. He will be able to slip past any opposition and create the right pass or take the right shot on net. The vodka has now become the fuel for Ibra jr. When someone sees Zlatan on the ice, they get petrified and freeze on the spot because the vodka makes him a different specimen. Zlatan did share his secret with the rest of the steelhawks but they are not the same species to do such thing. As a result, they resort to other things. Some listen to music, while others lock themselves in the toilet.

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Getting pumped for a game is definitely hard without crowd noise. So before each game we decide to play drinking games to get ourselves limber before we play. Or at least the rookies do the drinking as well we are rookies. My partner for these games was none other than Ethan Duncan. Duncan had taken me in recently when his agent took on the Baltimore job of assistant GM. So he told me that it is Platoon tradition to drink before the game wether we are in Baltimore or West Kendal. Also the players who played while we were in West Kendal are used to the stands being empty anyway so this is nothing new for them. We start with the usual beer pong but also recently have taken to playing Battleship before games. Granted my ships kept getting sunk and Ethan swears that he isn't cheating when we are playing. Anyway when the game starts I seem ready to go when we take the ice even though the rest of the team seems more concerned about me then they do ready to play. I usually only throw up four times a game so I don't have a problem at all. Anyway I think playing in any type of covid atmosphere mostly just needs loud music to get you hype to fill the quiet that was left when there are no fans in the seats

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With a lack of fans in the arena, it is difficult for the Platoon to get motivated, especially when as team this young needs to feed off the fan support to keep themselves in the game. The growing pains are always a concern but team veterans, Nat Emerson, Karl Krashwagen and Luca Del Vecchio found the perfect solution and got to work before pre-season began.
The trio got fans to send a picture of them cheering the team in team gear, made a cut-out of them and placed them in the stands. All 20,000 seats were filled up with fan cut-outs by the end of pre-season. Several cameras were also placed around the arena and available during pre-game warm-ups for fans to tune in from all over.
Lastly, every season holder got a goodies bag filled with official gear and merchandise, including a personalised letter signed by their player of choice. Needless to say, certain players had sore wrists by the end of this.
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We play music. Every game, one player is responsible for the pre game music, we decided to go by oldest player to the youngest rookie.  It has to be pump up type music, something that will get us moving and excited for the upcoming game. Celine Dion has a beautiful voice, but her songs are not exactly the type you hear in the arena to get the crowd going.

It has been pretty successful so far. We have heard the current pop hits making the rounds, awesome movie soundtracks, some Finnish heavy metal, classical, and even some good country stuff, something I never thought I would hear myself say. At one point somebody played the Russian Hardbass hit "Tri Poloski" and everyone tried to do their version of that dance. Pretty sure I failed miserably.

It ended up being a good idea because it shows off some of the culture from our diverse players and most of us now have a bunch of new song genres we are trying on Spotify.

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As the great pandemic of 2020 caused by the COVID has made it impossible for fans to attend games in Minnesota, the Monarchs have been pumping themselves up with the pre-and-post-game wings and beer. While the Monarchs are looking to start fighting for a playoff spot soon, this season is still looking like a tough one and the challenge of not having home fans in the stands when trying to win as an underdog only makes things harder. This season will be another slog, and the team is clearly approaching the season with a priority on teambuilding and fun as opposed to overly serious competitiveness. Although some of the boys may put on some pounds, some rookies need to build on their physicals, and putting on some pounds is a quick way to help bolster the lineup. That and the brews can only help make the tough season go by faster. The team has been able to build some great culture with this method so far, but maybe as some point the boys will have to pull back on the pre-game portion at least. 188

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Jakob will be getting excited before the games and before going onto the ice each shift the same way he got excited before each fight in ring. Blasting music by recording artists the Dead Kennedys over headphones. Well, specifically songs they did when Jello Biafra was still with the band. Since then they have really changed and for the worse. In any case, punk rock music is easily one of the best things Jakob has experienced since moving to America. Jello isn’t close to being the best singer in the world, but the music and writing in his time was phenomenal. Especially their parodies of some existing songs. His person favourite of those parodies is I fought the law. Really gets Jakob pumped up. Another one he tends to blast is take this job and shove it, which for him represents his old construction job back in the day in the Czech Republic.

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Bold to assume that we here in Texas care too much about what rules or regulations say about if we can have audience or not. So while this issue is mostly theoretical I can play games with you and imagine we didn't have any fans attending. First of all as we have been steadily improving over seasons we have gotten more and more used to stunning the home audience when we are playing away games so there isn't much need to do things differently, just chill out to good music before the game and then give it all on the ice. At home cheering crowd of 20 000 people is harder to replace with just silence so we will be playing audience background noise during game, ripped straight from EAs SHL 98 and to add to that we would add cardboard audience where you can dress up your own "avatar" for set price ofcourse to get that SHL 98 feel all over the place.

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While the New Orleans Specters currently find themselves on a bit of a downswing, the lack of fans in the arena don’t really affect the team as much as some others. The Specters have a really good pre-game routine of rocking out to music before games. In the locker room, we have a wheel with everyone’s name on it. It’s spun, and whoever it lands on gets to pick the pump up music. It’s been a nice way to get hoppin’ and boppin’ before games. The other thing we do is illegally gamble on our own games. No, not with like a bookie, but with each other. For instance, Cloutier will say “I believe Rush will score a goal tonight”, and people looking to take that action do. It’s been a fun way to hype up certain teammates (in this case Rush, who did, indeed, score that game, a 4-3 win against the Jet…Aurora) and keep us bonded as we go through a rougher season than normal. We all yearn for the roar of the crowd, but until then, this will have to do. (184)

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Playing without fans has certainly been an adjustment and Hamilton Steelhawks had to find other ways to stay motivated and get pumped before games. It all starts with our goalie A Jobin who claims to be the team's captain which he is not, I'm not even sure if goalies can be captains, but he is a great LR presence nonetheless and even in games with fans, Jobin remains our biggest cheerleader. Which isn't far away from the truth because Jobin rarely has to face any shots and the play is in the opponent's zone for most of the game, so Jobin has nothing to do but to cheer everyone. Before every game Jobin makes sure to talk to every player and wish them a good game. I will admit that the team felt unmotivated at times last season because everyone was so fed up with Gabriel Johnson, but the management finally traded him this offseason and it did wonders for team morale.

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jimmmy nutcluster is taking it upon himself to think of ideas that could benefit in the team in terms of hyping and encouraging without our beautiful, sexy fans jumping in their seats. one thing jimmy has tried is that he's shown up as a jester. fancy a lil humor wouldja boys?? he would do this act where he could bend his double jointed dick in various shapes and animals. he thought it was so amazing. his team did not. ok thought jimmy, i'll try something else. jimmy decided to dress as a pimp and bring in fresh hot babes for the team. NOW they were happy. so the team ended up chatting up the babes and playing some nice games and having a chill time, with, of course, some social distancing. we don't need no fans screaming at us while we're trying ot focus on our game, it's what happens before and after the game that really brings it all together for us.

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With no fans in the stands, basically the arena crew is just going nuts.  Those black covers over the seats are perfect for a laser and light show throughout the whole arena that you couldn't do if there were people in the building.  Plus, they are just cranking the music up a lot louder.  The players are getting to pick their favorite songs and adding a bunch of stuff that isn't in the normal "arena rock" rotation, including some stuff that probably wouldn't be kind to young ears, but hey, there's only adults in the building yeah? So the pregame and warm ups are basically like a dance party and then loud music and pyrotechnics when the home team scores and then silence if (IF) the away team scores.  Still gives it a bit of a "home ice advantage". We love our fans and wish they could be here, but if they can't then why not let the players have some fun?

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