That first home game of that first season -- a 4-3 loss to Pittsburgh in Greensboro -- made you think that maybe Peter Karmanos had lost his mind, not to mention a pending shipload of NHL games.

It wasn't that the Carolina Hurricanes, that night, were awful. They weren't. In fact, they had several chances during the third period to win.

But off the ice, the scene in Greensboro Coliseum was downright surreal.

At least 1,000 or more of the fans were decked out in Pittsburgh Penguins colors. About 200 or 300 more fans were wearing blue and green Hartford Whalers jerseys. At one point, there was even a "Let's Go, Whalers!" chant that was quickly trumped by "Let's Go, Penguins!" followed shortly thereafter by "Let's Go, Canes!"

It was the ultimate three-ring circus, complete with an overwhelming throng of hockey novices -- folks who never had seen and never thought they would see an NHL team in North Carolina.

"It got a little crazy out there at times," Keith Primeau, Carolina's top player, said then. "Things will settle down soon, though."

But things didn't. After their first 10 games, the Hurricanes had one win. En route to a 33-41-8 record, they went through three more miserable slumps, including a season-ending run of five agonizing losses.

In an effort to hide empty seats, a huge floppy curtain was installed on one side of the coliseum. "Hockey's Iron Curtain" it was nicknamed by some national pundits. And the players, who were constantly being bused up and down Interstate 40, could have changed the team name to the Carolina Commuters.

Choosing his words carefully, then-coach Paul Maurice referred to the season as a learning experience.

It also was an athletic experiment that tested the patience and pocketbook of the franchise.

Although the second year in Greensboro went smoother and the team qualified for the playoffs by winning the Southeast Division (with the division's only winning record), the Canes never really found a comfort zone until 2000-01, their second season in Raleigh.

The day it became apparent that the experiment would succeed was April 18, 2001 -- the team's first playoff win in its new building. Down by three games in the best-of-seven first-round series against the New Jersey Devils, the Canes won in overtime on a Rod Brind'Amour goal. It was the game that bonded the fans to their team.

That win was followed by another in New Jersey before the Devils advanced with a rout in Game 6, but the excitement of that first playoff win lived on. The playoff magic that was carried through the Stanley Cup championship in 2005-06 was an extension of that 2001 win.

At the outset of this 10th season of play in North Carolina, there's little doubt that Karmanos and his team overcame imposing odds.

Hockey, a decade ago, was more than a new sport to most of its audience here. It was a difficult sport to understand, appreciate and even follow at times. The schedule grind begins in the middle of football season, then lingers past the NCAA basketball tournament and the opening day of Major League Baseball.

With modest television coverage and dangerously low viewer ratings, hockey has to find its fans the hard way. It can be a hard sell, but the Canes did it.

Late in the 2002 playoff run, battered and bloody Jeff O'Neill was asked to describe the Canes' personality.

"We're survivors," he said.

COLUMNIST CAULTON TUDOR HAS WRITTEN ABOUT THE HURRICANES FROM THE BEGINNING.