Sidelined

Michael Brick: AUSTIN, Tex. — Looking back on the whole marvelous caper, the high point was not so much the playoff runs or the bewildered crowds or even all those underdressed Texas sweethearts shivering around the hockey rink glass. No, the high point was probably Guaranteed Fight Night.

Guaranteed Fight Night, possibly the most self-explanatory gimmick in all of sports promotion, seemed to bottle the essence of the Austin Ice Bats, the sweatiest, rowdiest, most bruising pack of transplanted Canadians ever to charm this river city.

Charm they did, for one fleeting decade, and baffle and mystify and pander. Founded in 1996 to compete in the Western Professional Hockey League, the Ice Bats…