Ah.
To be honest, I started writing this a couple weeks ago. Risky, I know.
The closer they got, the more I realized there were some complicated feelings linked with this moment. I’d listen to people talk about the possibility and find myself getting weirdly emotional. I was driving home a week ago and the guys on 1200 were talking about what they remember from the last playoff run and I actually had to pull over.
Dramatic perhaps but I guess it was a realization that one of my favourite things in the world was just kinda gone for eight years.
I’ve done a lot of great things in my life, both personally and professionally. I have two incredible kids, I have good friends and I have met some amazing people. My job pays the bills, this website keeps me entertained and I have hobbies and things that I do in my free time that I enjoy and that challenge me.
Yet as I tumble towards the midway point of my existence on this planet, I’ve realized that there’s only one thing in this world that makes me feel like playoffs. And that’s playoffs.
God it’s good to be back.
The journey to this moment has been a long and complicated one. And looking back, it’s a miracle we’re all still here.
When that shot fluttered in some eight years ago now, it hurt. Hockey pain on a level I had never really experienced before. There are times when I wonder if maybe I died that night and everything since then has been some sort of dream sequence. I remember it vividly – heading home that night and thinking, I just need to get back there. I need to feel those things, the good and the bad, again.
Back in 2019, I wrote about that night…
-There must have been 15 of us. Another biggest game in franchise history and a bunch of guys got together to watch it at a friend’s place. I often agonize over where to watch playoff games, convinced that the decision I make will have an impact on the game. Game 7’s are hard enough but with a chance to go to the Stanley Cup Final on the line, this was on another level. The number of stress-beers I drank that night was the same as the number of minutes Cody Ceci played- too damn many. It ended up being one of the most devastating nights in franchise history. I still can’t watch the highlights. But oddly enough, I’ll always remember the sound in that basement when Ryan Dzingel tied the game late. I don’t really understand the noise I made but it was like 20 plus years of bottled up frustration and hope coming out all at once. My attachment to the team has evolved over the years but there was something about that 2017 team that brought out the kid in me again. That group had a soul that reminded me why I invest so much into this team. It’s those moments where you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. I want to get back there. I need to get back there.
I just had no idea how long it would take and how challenging it would be.
I underestimated how long it would take for the organization to stockpile picks and prospects and rebuild the roster back to this level. I misjudged how difficult it would be for the franchise to piece the business side back together and to put community at the centre again.
Just as importantly, I had no idea how hard it would be for the fan base to hold it together during those dark times. And how invested I would be in that personally. In the depths of it all, there were years and years of unrelenting negativity. Which, as you might imagine, can be challenging when you’ve branded yourself as the optimistic Sens blogger.
This is a hobby at the end of the day but the reality is, keeping this site afloat over the last eight years took an emotional toll. But in those low points, I kept reminding myself what it was like in the good times. The way a hockey team can bring a city together and the way the city comes alive at playoff time. And I knew I wanted SensChirp and the one-of-a-kind community we’ve built here to be around when that fog finally lifted once and for all.
In September 2019, Thomas Chabot locked into an eight year deal. It was one of the first signs that there were better days ahead. At the time, I talked about that fog…
The last couple years have been tough. In the grand scheme of things, our era of suffering has been fairly contained. Across the major sports, there are franchises that have gone through decades of pain. But what has been unique about the Sens fan experience, is the amount of disappointment we have packed into such a short period of time. But today, with one tweet from the team’s official account, with one stroke of a pen…the weight was lifted off our collective shoulders.”
When Brady Tkachuk signed his contract a few years later, it was another giant step in the right direction…
Getting to this point in the rebuild hasn’t been easy and we all coped differently along the way. Some of us turned on the team. Others turned on those that turned on the team. The real crazy ones started podcasts. But deep down, we all knew it was right. Even if the initial motivations behind the rebuild were shady, we all knew a scorched earth rebuild was probably the best course of action. It was the path that would ultimately get this team back to regularly playing in games that matter.
And now finally, they really do matter again.
At the same time, I’ve been trying to teach my two daughters about sports fandom. Not just because they’re interested and not just because the moments I spent with my Dad watching hockey stick with me decades later but because I believe it’s good for your soul to invest in something you can’t control.
But over the last seven years, I could see them both wondering, but when is the good part? It can’t just be the popcorn. When I saw my now seven-year old daughter Emma chanting “We want playoffs!” in a packed rink over the weekend, there was this look in her eyes…okay Dad, now I get it.
We’ve watched this team grow before our eyes.
A young kid from North Dakota viewed as a reach at the time is now one of the best defenceman in the league. A relative unknown from those obscure YouTube clips in the German league is now a star in the NHL. A gangly kid with a familiar name is now a one-of-a-kind player that drags his team into the fight and a Captain this city can be proud of. And Thomas Chabot, some 509 games later, finally gets to play in a post-season hockey game.
They all finally get their shot.
And this year in particular, we watched the team speak an identity and then become it. This is just another step and there’s work left to do. The group in there knows it. The thing is, they are just crazy enough to think they can win the whole damn thing.
It’s been a long road getting back to this point. But finally, the fog has lifted in Ottawa.
Enjoy the hell out of this, Sens fans. You deserve it.
