Every night, when the kids are upstairs getting ready for bed, I have like 20 minutes to myself.
It usually ends up being closer to six minutes before I’m called back into duty but on rare occasions, it lasts the full 20 minutes. Most days I’ll spend the time starting blankly at the wall wondering where the hell another day went. Other times, I’ll cautiously turn on the news even though I know I’m not going to like what I see.
Last night was different.
Earlier this week, Sportsnet showed a replay of Game 5 of the Senators and Rangers from 2017. Presumably because they ran out of devastating playoff losses to remind us of. I couldn’t watch it at the time but I recorded it.
In a run full of “Did that just happen?!” nights, Game 5 against the Rangers has a tendency to get lost in the shuffle a little bit but it may have been the craziest of them all.
Chris Neil silencing Tanner Glass.
Big hits, dramatic comebacks, controversial goals and basically non-stop action the entire night.
Derick Brassard scored the luckiest of goals with clock winding down and Kyle Turris found time to play overtime hero on his way to the Capital City Condors banquet.
It’s probably because it’s been a long two months without live sports of any kind but I swear, the second I hit play on the remote, it was like entering a time machine. I was immediately taken back to that time and I could feel all the same things I felt during that run.
2017 was magic. There’s no other way to explain it really. The magic ran out a moment too soon but the memories that team left us with will last forever.
Usually when I look back on that run, I find myself missing certain players. I am long over the departure of my former-favourites but it’s tough not to think about the good ol’ days. Other times, watching anything from that 2017 run will bring back thoughts of the entire two months and make me think about the way that team re-ignited a kind of fandom I was worried I had aged out of.
Last night though, as I sat there alone in my living room, what I really missed was the building.
The occasion, more than anything.
You know, the feeling you get when you walk into the CTC on a playoff game day. That buzz in the air prior to puck drop.
That awful, wonderful feeling you get when you invest so much in something you have absolutely no control over and the strange comfort you get from surrounding yourself with 20,000 like-minded strangers while you do it.
The sound of a goal. You know the one- from complete silence to a damn jet engine taking off a foot from your ear.
The excitement, the tension, the sadness and the elation. All of it.
Maybe it’s because I just don’t know when we’ll have that feeling again and maybe it’s because our current global situation makes it impossible for everyone but last night, I found myself temporarily overcome with emotion. To the point that a single tear came dangerously close to dropping from my eye until…
“Dadaaaaaaaaa….it’s time to read my books”
I just miss sports, is all.
-Still nothing new on the June Draft proposal the league tabled over the weekend. And listening to Pierre LeBrun’s hit on TSN1200 yesterday, it sounds like the NHL is giving it some extra thought. After Monday’s Board of Governors meeting, where the Montreal Canadiens presumably threw a tantrum for the ages, Gary Bettman and Bill Daly have seemingly gone silent on the idea. It still seems pretty clear that the benefits (SPORTS! MONEY!) outweigh the negatives (TRADES! SAD HABS!) but we’ll see what happens. For what it’s worth, LeBrun still seems to think a late-week announcement is a possibility. From where I’m sitting, there’s only one real option being presented for the Draft and the Draft Lottery and it’s the one that the league detailed in a friggin’ eight-page email last weekend. Nothing has really changed since then so I would expect that outside of some tinkering with the lottery to appease the angry teams, the league’s approach will remain the same.
