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LIers own and manage Crunch, as in punch

Mark Herrmann

11:33 PM EDT, May 3, 2008

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All through the season and into the playoffs, it was clear there was a buzz about the Syracuse Crunch (rhymes with punch). Stands were packed and wins were piled high for a minor-league team that plays in-your-face hockey.

That peaked this past week, when the Crunch knocked out the Manitoba Moose and in-your-face became shave-your-head for team owner Howard Dolgon of East Meadow. The buzz crested in the thick black hair of the 50-year-old executive who had promised to get a Mohawk if his team reached the second round.

This will make him the only one at the table in the American Hockey League owners meeting tomorrow with hair cropped on the sides and sticking straight up in the middle.

"I'd rather have it that way than get knocked out in the first round," he said from Toronto Friday before his Crunch opened the North Division finals against the Marlies.

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As Mohawks go, his wouldn't make the cut on MTV. Unlike other team officials and fans who showed up at Onondaga County War Memorial Tuesday to get buzzed, Dolgon brought his own stylist. His new 'do is subtle.

"Subtle" definitely is not part of the uniform with this club. At hockeyfights.com, Syracuse has given new meaning to the word "hits." The Crunch led the AHL in penalty minutes and probably in loose teeth.

"We like tough players," said Dolgon, a former principal in the Alan Taylor public relations firm -- he and Taylor sold it four years ago; Taylor is now part-owner of the Crunch -- and a Rangers season ticket-holder for 30 years.

Dolgon has a healthy respect for the National Hockey League. The Crunch has a very good relationship with its parent club, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and Dolgon still has feelings for the Rangers. "They're my second-favorite NHL team," he said. It's just that he thinks the big league is off stride.

"One thing that hurts the NHL is that the passion, the physical part of play is gone," he said. "That's in part because of the new rules. A big defenseman can't battle in front of the net anymore."

If physical play indeed has left the NHL, we have a pretty good idea where it has landed. "Every guy on our team, even the highly skilled No. 1 draft pick, has bought into it," said the owner, who still lives on Long Island but spends at least one or two days a week upstate, watching his scruffy team and teaching classes at Syracuse University. "They're all playing the same way. When a team plays against us, it knows it's in for a battle."

Lately, it has been a losing battle. The Crunch has won its past 15 games at home. All four of its wins over the Moose occurred in overtime, an AHL first, and a sign the club's psyche is as tough as its fists.

Syracuse has noticed. For the time being, Onondaga has been renamed Crunch County. Twenty local businesses have vowed to let employees show up an hour late Wednesday and Thursday if they present stubs from games the previous nights. By Dolgon's count, one-fifth of the people at the clincher Tuesday sported Mohawks, in keeping with the style popular under Crunch helmets.

Dolgon got into this more as a fan than a numbers-cruncher, but even he couldn't have imagined this when he took over the franchise in 1994. He had been handling the account of Black Velvet whiskey when he met someone who was involved with AHL marketing. The suggestion was made that Dolgon might like to buy a team and he said why not.

He imported his whole management team from his home turf. Chief financial officer Vance Lederman is from Bellmore. Senior vice president Jim Sarosy is from Franklin Square, as is public relations manager John Neenan. Taylor is from Wantagh.

And their team seems descended from the Long Island Ducks of the 1960s Eastern Hockey League, which inspired the movie "Slap Shot," which was filmed in part at the Crunch's rink.

Of course, "Slap Shot" was meant to be a farce, and purists could argue that the Crunch is doing nothing more than flogging a stereotype. Somebody is bound to say, "I went to a fight last night and a Crunch game broke out."

Dolgon believes quite the opposite. He thinks he is the one being traditional. He insists that Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier wouldn't have won Stanley Cups in Edmonton if they didn't have Dave Semenko. He says the Islanders could not have won Cups without the bare-knuckles Bob Nystrom and Clark Gillies.

"If you remove that element, you're removing the part that fans like," Dolgon said. "It is what it is. I think you can't get too far away from what made the sport popular."

His team is proof that in-your-face hockey does work. It makes people sit up and take notice. It makes some people's hair stand on end.