Off the Post

Midnight Mania has officially turned into a pumpkin.

For the first time since perestroika, there will be no Midnight Mania at Boston University. Instead it has been replaced with “Hockey Mania,” a tamer 6 p.m. version set to take the ice on Saturday. Calling the change a disappointment is an understatement.

For the past 17 years, Midnight Mania had served as the official opening of the hockey season. An oasis in the desert of the off-season, Midnight Mania had become one of the most anticipated events of the year for BU fans.

Since its inception, Midnight Mania was matriculation into the hockey culture of Boston University. For the freshmen in the stands, it’s their first taste of BU hockey – even if it is little more than an appetizer. For the freshmen on the ice, it marks their first time wearing the celebrated scarlet and white jerseys. For both, it’s the ceremonial acceptance into a storied niche of the sports world.

While the experience might not be the same for upperclassmen, it’s no worse – just different. There’s the thrill of seeing the team back on the ice and the captains and assistant captains skating around with new letters on their jerseys. It also might be the only time you see certain players on the ice all season. There’s an air of reunion as you reacquaint yourself with people you haven’t seen since the previous April. Even though it’s little more than a trumped-up practice, there’s something surreal about counting down the seconds until midnight with a wild group of friends.

None of that will happen at midnight this year, because Midnight Mania is no more. What was once a virtual cult gathering late at night has become an early-evening social gathering.

It’s a move that doesn’t really make any sense. On all accounts, Midnight Mania was a success. In the past couple of years, we’ve watched as Midnight Mania evolved and became more popular. The addition of the skills competition, as opposed to the usually half-hearted practice and subsequent scrimmage, only added to the success of the event.

For a number of years, Midnight Mania struggled to attract people, but the past two editions have drawn some of the biggest crowds in the event’s history. Even though it would have been a drastically different experience at Agganis Arena, as opposed to Walter Brown Arena, it seems to be a strange time to scrap Midnight Mania with the event’s recent success.

To the credit of everyone involved, they didn’t get rid of the event completely. Still, it remains to be seen if Hockey Mania is an adequate substitution.

I do have this sneaking suspicion that Hockey Mania will look a lot like Midnight Mania when all is said and done. The Terriers will still be on the ice and the fans will still be in the stands. There’ll be all the usual stuff and then some, it just won’t be happening at midnight.

With the seemingly small differences between Midnight Mania and Hockey Mania, it might seem like a lot of fuss about nothing. That very well might be the truth. But Midnight Mania was a special event all its own. An event that people eagerly anticipated after seven months without hockey. To take such a lateral step, to give the fans a watered-down version of the real thing, makes very little sense.

In reality, Midnight Mania had very little to do with hockey and was more of a spectacle. With that understanding, it seems a perfect event for Agganis Arena, which has come dangerously close to choosing spectacle over sport.

But Midnight Mania was tradition. Moving into Agganis Arena has been great, but we’ve had to sacrifice a number of traditions in exchange. While some of that sacrifice has to do with simple logistics, this is not the case with Midnight Mania, and it’s a tradition that should be preserved.

Though it’s sad that counting down to midnight is an experience and feeling the current crop of freshmen will never get, this is just one minor hiccup in a very long season. While it’s never good to start off on the wrong foot, when the puck drops against the University of Massachusetts-Lowell (or even the University of Toronto, for that matter) no one will care whether it was Midnight Mania, Hockey Mania or Wrestlemania that began the season.