Scott Nixon is a newly minted Caniac, stamped by the stormy intensity of a frozen sport he barely cared about in November, struck by the cardiac comebacks of his team's regular season victories and playoff run to the Stanley Cup finals.

Game after high-voltage game at the RBC Center has transformed Nixon, who was born in Virginia and raised in Charlotte and Cary, into a full-blown Canes fanatic who has to get just as close as he can to the icy action.

By the time postseason play started, he was eager to tap his bank account for the $1,600 that secured two seats up near the rafters of Section 301-- a perch for Nixon and his wife, Jen, for the duration of the playoffs. The Wake Forest resident also plans to buy season tickets for the Canes' next campaign.

Nixon is still a Yankees fan who believes the Red Sox are evil in its purest form. But the frenzied rush of ice hockey has shattered his interest in any other sport -- basketball, too many foul shots; football, too slow.

"From the start of a hockey game until the end, it's go, go, go, go, go," said Nixon, 31, a development manager for a computer and directory assistance company. "It's not sit back and watch -- it's get on the edge of your seat and jump up when a goal gets scored. ... It's certainly addicting."

Hockey's habit-forming chaos and the Canes' on-ice excellence have attracted a rapidly expanding band of disparate diehards, an odd-couple alliance united by love for the only major professional sports franchise in the Triangle.

Under a storm pennant of red and black, Northern newcomers who grew up watching hockey stomp and cheer with the sons and daughters of the South, who had to learn to love this fast-paced, hard-hitting but culturally foreign game.

But the team's galvanizing quest for the Stanley Cup has made strange bedfellows not only of Yankee transplants and Dixie-fried zealots. It also has bridged some of the deepest social divides in the Triangle sporting universe. Think of Blue Devils, Tar Heels and the Wolfpack faithful as Canes-crazed allies instead of bitter rivals.

It makes you wonder: Does the Caniac alliance, now in full roar, have an impact beyond the confines of the RBC Center? Have the Canes and their electrifying playoff run brought a heightened sense of community and civic pride to the Triangle that transcends sports?

Yes, said Kay Michael Troost, associate professor of sociology at N.C. State University. Sports fill a vacuum left by the receding influence of church, political party, civic club and fraternal organization. Cheering the home team also allows people to break out of the deep rut of isolation they have cut between work and home and to create a sense of place and belonging lost in moves from town to town in pursuit of the next new job.

"Modern life has made us regrettably lonely, so it's wonderful to connect on any basis," said Troost, who played hockey as a lad growing up in Minnesota and later played semi-pro baseball. "We announce our allegiance, and we are delighted when someone else has the same allegiance. It provides an opportunity for people to connect to us who are outside our little world."

But it's another question whether that feeling will outlast the echo of the final horn that ends the last game.

"I'm reluctant to say it's lasting, and I'm reluctant to say it's ephemeral," Troost said. "It occupies an important place in people's attention for a short period of time."

Maureen Smith, an associate professor of kinesiology at the California State University-Sacramento, is less ambivalent.

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