Making of: The Cow Palace ft. Drew Ramenda

Making of: The Cow Palace ft. Drew Ramenda

drew you’ve been here at the Cow Palace for like 10 minutes I’ve never seen you like this You are so excited to be back here What’s this like um honestly Brody this started the best time of my life being here back in the day Yeah 29 years old Yeah Assistant coach video coach Um there are so many great memories We didn’t win a lot of games here but there’s so many great memories because what you remember are all the people I remember how first off our very first night how we had people in the stands watching our very first skate right it was in the evening and when the uh Zamboni came out they cheered They cheered because it was a Zamboni They’d never seen a Zamboni before I don’t know And then I look you know I remember I pointed you up there and we’ll go through it obviously but you know the weight room/p press room press box I should say in the same place Weight room and press room Okay All right And then you know our benches are in our dressing room upstairs There’s so many great memories here There’s a lot of memories where you know you felt like breaking things after a game Yeah I remember Pittsburgh beating us 8 nothing ones and I can I can I can still see the goals but yeah it was hard times here because the Sharks were brand new The way expansion worked back then was not like it is today Was there a point where players came in and you said “Hi I’m Drew Amenda I’ll be your assistant coach.” It was literally like meeting people on the fly Yeah literally that Um I came from uh University of Calgary Hockey Canada and that’s where I met George Kingston their head coach first head coach Bob Murdoch Wonderful wonderful guys I couldn’t have asked to go through a time like that in my life when I was so young and dumb and immature that I had those two wonderful wonderful people help uh guide me along the way But yeah I I I remember the first the first skate we had Yeah George made everybody the players on the ice shake hands Shake hands Hi I’m so and so Hi I’m so and so Hi I’m so and so Hi Yeah And we’ve got that footage somewhere I’m gonna get that footage for this And um Yeah you did You had to And now I look back and I think Dean Evson Mhm Mike Sullivan Doug Wilson Rob Zetler um Dave Williams I think about Jeff Hackett Mhm All those guys you know and they just it brings it brings back a flood of nothing but great memories Did you have to accustom yourself to this building a little bit it was old back then It was not built for hockey Let’s be honest about that It literally is a cow palace Um when you came here for the first time and when other teams came in were they like “Where are we right now we’re not in San Jose that didn’t even exist yet Was there a lot of like acclimating to what this was for the guys yeah because they came from the from other NHL teams right um for for me I I worked where Hockey Canada was located in Calgary was in the Saddle Dome Um Saddle Dome at that time was a little newer Um but I came here going “Oh okay This National Hockey League.” And back then there’s the old Boston Garden there was the old Chicago Stadium there was the older Dome in St Louis Those were old buildings but they had history This one had a different history and a different smell too But that was I was going to say that was kind of the first thing you you ever got you ever got used to You’d walk in and you like what we had to go like on a like a nineame road trip once because they had the livestock shows They had livestock shows gun shows and boat shows That was that was that was what it was And smoke shows when you were here Never mind Thank you very much Um you know it’s it’s amazing because what we know about the sharks now the tank and San Jose and how culture of the South Bay have totally embraced the sharks We didn’t even know any of that yet It didn’t exist when the sharks were here I mean it’s almost hard to remember that this was such a small capsule of time that it existed way before what everybody knows now And do you feel lucky to have like seen it from the inside not even as a broadcaster Yeah You were the assistant coach back then You got to see something from its birth Yeah You were probably here when Sharky was born right wasn’t I was here when Sharky was born out of the Zambonian the second year he came from the roof Um and uh this is where the chomp was born That’s amazing This is where this is where the power play It started like over here in section 25 and it started and I that’s unreal Yeah I do remember the ch being born It was just it was totally organic I am honored that I’ve been able to be a part of this organization for as long as I have But one of the the best parts of it were the first two years And I know the wins and losses were quite lopsided in the L category Yeah But the one thing about when you start to get a little little a lot older now you look back at the people and we had such great people Not just the guys on the team or the coaches or the trainers or everybody It was everybody else It was the people that worked their tails off There was a real great feeling of yeah we’re all just trying to figure out our way We’re going to do it together And that was the great thing about being here on the ground floor especially in this this building Yeah There’s two more things I got to know Yeah When it happened for the first time when there was the first game here not even the first practice but when people came in and it was for real and you’d already played a road game by that point but Vancouver were there some nerves as in like I’m not sure this is actually going to happen or did it seem like it was all under control back then it really seemed like it was actually under control back then Not what was happening on the ice We were totally out of control figuring it out But but it it seemed like well for me because again I was I’m I was you were on the inside I was the inside but also it was also because of the people that were in charge Jack Ferrar Dean Lombardi um George and Bob It seemed like it wasn’t chaotic Maybe they had it figured out Well chaotic didn’t start until our first road trip And that’s a longer story We don’t have time for it But just suffice it to say things didn’t start to go sideways until we’ve got on that first plane to head to Hartford There you go I’ll tell you that story one of these days We’ll we’ll save that for another episode Okay so the last thing is we’re about to do a little walking tour here and we’ve probably already seen some of the video interspersed throughout this feature But what are the things and I imagine the stairway up to the dressing room has got to be one I heard there’s a satellite dish that we need to go see We need to go see where it was and how I used to get out there and where my office was And you have that the that you have to see that because it wasn’t like today where you just flipped the channel Yeah No it was you actually crank the sand Exactly And it’s not like everything was on was on TV back then And then there’s a spot just over there Brody on section 18 where um I had a like we did video back then and I had this big camera It was probably about I don’t know back then probably about 10 pounds I mean it was a big camera and we’d set it up and we at times we would we would record practice right and there was a it’s a ladder that goes up there Okay And as I was coming down cuz we didn’t leave it up there As I was coming down with it I missed the step and I fell from there right down to the right down to the So you want to go reenact that we’re not I’ll just show you how far it was And back then I bounced up like I was nothing cuz I was I was a I was a real man back then Now I’m just this old frail person that I am But you know what didn’t crack the camera That was the key Save the equipment Drew I appreciate you for coming here today It was a long drive for all of us but the memories of being back and what we’re about to see here this is awesome Thank you for doing this Okay buddy I’m glad we’re doing it

In his conversation with Brodie Brazil, Drew Remenda takes you back to the San Jose Sharks very first game at the Cow Palace, back when he was serving as the team’s assistant video coach.