Well here it is folks, one way or another, the NHL season will end this evening, a scant 8 1/2 months after it began. It seems like only yesterday I was watching the Wild open up the season in Finland over my lunch hour, and now here we are, awaiting Game 7 of the Stanley Cup.
Actually that's not true, it doesn't seem like yesterday, but an interminably long time ago. Fall has turned to winter, winter to more winter, more winter into spring, spring back into winter, winter into summer and then summer back into spring, yet the game of hockey continues. Not a complaint, happy to milk as much as possible out of potentially the last intriguing thing on the sports calendar until college football season.
But with that being said, 8 1/2 months is a long damn time.
Think about all that's happened since that first puck dropped. The Twins went meekly against the Yankees, Vikings crashed and burned, Wild gave us a few less-than-compelling months on the playoff bubble, Gopher sports went belly up across the board, the Timberwolves turned in one of their worst campaigns ever and the Sioux hockey team choked. That is a staggering amount of futility to fit into one hockey season. The funny (perhaps masochistic) part? After tonight I'm going to find myself counting the days until we get to do it all over again.
Sure the Twins may get their act together enough to make things interesting, but there's no real chance of a true contender emerging from the current rabble. This team isn't even good enough to be compared with all the teams that weren't good enough previously. It's more than likely the next few weeks will be spent watching a them yo-yo up and down the standings while wondering if football is going to start on time. That won't be so bad, everyone has limits on the amount of futility they can endure, and summers are needed to recharge the batteries. But with that said, 10 weeks with only a bad baseball team to keep me company seems daunting, especially if the clock stays stuck on April, as it's been so far this "summer".
That's enough of that though, because things aren't quite over yet, we still have one game to determine who takes the Cup and who goes home empty handed. Game 7, one fanbase will exit with elation, the other with despair. There's nothing else like it, all we can as spectators is hope the game lives up to the anticipation.
Karma had a good start to the week, with Dallas finishing off Miami and the justice of team play trumpingthe tyranny of mercenary ball. It seems to me that the Bruins bouncing the Canucks, in all their diving/whining/biting glory, would be another victory for truth, justice and the (duh) American way. I called Vancouver in 6, still think it will be Vancouver in 7, and still want Boston to win...I think.
Although I've always detested the Vancouver Canucks due to the dirty hacks they employ, there's something about a long-suffering fanbase finally winning the big one that always gets me. Sure Boston hockey fans have also gond 40 years without winning a title, but can you really say any sportsfan in that town is suffering these days? A Bruins title would officially give the Patriots, who everyone would agree were the NFL franchise of the 2000s, the longest title drought among Boston teams. Now I've never harbored any particular hate for the Beantown squads, and was always a bit of a Bruins fan to be honest. But that is a staggering embarrassment of riches that is making me think twice about my rooting interest.
Salo, Sopel, Burrows, Cooke, the Sedins and of course Todd Bertuzzi, all hateable players who've made me come to loathe Vancouver over the last decade. But should the fact that they employ hacks, punks and dandies be used against the team's fans? I'm not so sure. Sure it's tough to separate one from the other, but I do know there are a lot of dedicated Canucks fans out there who a win would mean the world too, and have been waiting a long time to see it happen. It's doubtful that I can bring myself to root for them, but after reading the stories of Canucks fans and the city's angst, I can certainly identify with their pain. A small part of me will be happy for them if they finally get their reward. After all, if you're concerned about karma, it would be decidedly poor to root against a group of fellow losers.
Tomorrow, we start worry about baseball and figure out if I need to strap dynamite to my chest and make a pilgrimmage to the NFL labor meetings in Chicago, more to come.
Derek "come on folks, let's get some more commenters out here" Robertson said:
ReplyDeleteYes, it does seem like just yesterday that we watched the Wild in Finland, seems that I remember a loss in a shootout, but goodness only knows, it was THAT long ago. For those that want constant rooting interests 365 days a year, the answer is to have a good baseball team and a good hockey team. That way, you have quality sports the year-round, because one of these two is always going on. Baseball ends in early October (far too often in these parts) and immediately the NHL starts up. Then, even if your team doesn't make the playoffs, they wrap up around April, and MLB opening day kicks in.
That being said, we don't have quality in any sport right now, so I dream. Here's to Craig MacTavish.
Derek