Welcome to Quicken Loans Arena! A couple things struck me on my inaugural visit to LeBron’s Palace. First, the jumbotron is HUGE. This is the view from the lower bowl, well below this veritable Eye of Sauron:
The jumbotron at Quicken is HUGE pic.twitter.com/8ZTafaRVfx
— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) May 24, 2016
Mike Stothers joked that fans might not even bother watching the game with such a gigantic screen above them. Fittingly, when this scoreboard debuted in 2014, it was dubbed the Humongotron.
Second, I loved this tribute to Cleveland’s hockey history:
- Both (probably injured) Zac Leslie and (certainly injured) Kevin Raine participated in the skatearound. Both also stayed out with the extras later, perhaps to test their readiness for Game Three. Stothers said, “Everybody who’s here is available to play tonight.”
- Speaking of returning from injury, Brett Sutter returned on Sunday after a seven-game absence. “I felt like a young man again out there,” quipped Sutter. “Good to be back with the guys and going to war with them.”
- The Ontario Reign missed a whopping 26 shots at evens on Sunday. Was it more an Ontario issue or something Lake Erie was doing? “It’s probably on us,” observed Sutter. “[We need to try] to generate more second chances and get more traffic going to the net.”
- Stothers thought the mood at the skatearound was “great.” He added, “Mood was actually good after [Sunday’s loss]. They’re in a good place mentally.”
- After digesting the tape for a day, what positives and negatives could the Reign take from an ultimately disappointing weekend? “A lot of things from the third period, both games,” emphasized Stothers, referring to those back-to-back spirited comebacks. “I think that’s the focus for us right now, concentrate on what we did well.“