A trip to the bushes

 I learned to ice skate at McMillen Park Indoor Ice Arena. Sort of.

I was a south side boy and McMillen was south side, too, and so that's where I learned to skate, or at least to wobble around the ice like a newborn calf. I was never what you could call physically gifted, see. Athletically, I came in somewhere between Tree Stump and Driveway Gravel on the speed/agility/hand-eye coordination scale.

So I wobbled around the ice at McMillen, which was perfect for such purposes. It played host to youth hockey and figure-skating classes and wobblers like me, and never aspired to anything greater, because greater was not why it was built.

For instance, the Komets never played the Turner Cup finals there.

They will, however, play the first two games of their first Kelly Cup finals here, which looks a lot like old McMillen to me. Hat tip to my old friend and local sportscaster Brett Rump for the pics. 

Anyway, this is the Carolina Ice Palace, and there's a few bleachers on one side and not a whole lot else in terms of amenities, same as McMillen. It's also nowhere the ECHL should be playing its premier event unless it wants to announce to the world it's a bush league and always will be a bush league.

See, the Komets are playing the South Carolina Stingrays in the Kelly Cup finals, and South Carolina's legit arena, the 14,000-seat North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center, is unfortunately already booked. So McMillen Squared it is.

And an embarrassment for the ECHL it is.

Look. I'm an outsider looking in, so I don't know what sort of calendar gymnastics the league would have to perform to re-jigger the finals sked. But surely, something, anything, would be better than this. 

Now, understand, I do sympathize, at least some. These are not normal times. If they were normal times, the playoffs would be best-of-seven, not best-of-five. And the Kelly Cup finals, if they go the distance, wouldn't be winding up the day before the Fourth of July.

But this is still a joke. This is like playing the first two games of the World Series in a vacant lot because the Rolling Stones Oxygen Tanks 'N' Walkers Tour is booked into Fenway. Something, anything would be better than this.

Yes, I know I already said that.

Bears repeating.