The hockey playoffs are upon us. This year — as nearly every year —
they begin full of cautious optimism and promise for those of us whose
lives and moods wax and wane with the fortunes of our team.
I am 40 and a grown-ass man with a respectable job, but I continue to root for a team of kids,
all of whom are younger than I — and some of whom are not even as old
as a tattoo I've got. I have and will always root for the Flyers. They
were born a year before I, and I was born rooting for them. I know no
other life.
And so each April (when we are fortunate enough to
make the cut) begins with the possibility — some years better than
others — that this will be the year they skate till June and make us weep with ecstasy and relief as they drink bad beer from that monstrous and glorious silver cup for the first time in 34 years.
The
playoffs wreck my sleep. I get both less sleep and less relaxing sleep.
After late-night wins, my heart is pumping and nerves fried. After
losses, my body is exhausted but my mind is racing, turning over
what-ifs and lost opportunities. And I'm not even playing. But
that's the playoffs for you. The end is inevitable, and the longer each
series goes on, the less the payback seems when the whole thing ends
with a lost final game.
Back in 2000, before I had cable TV, a
sympathetic friend who did was nice enough to leave me his keys so I
could watch the games while he was out of town. One night
early that May, I stayed up till 3 am to watch the most exciting game I may ever see.
Because in the playoffs, there are no ties, and there are no shootouts.
And so occasionally the overtime periods pile up like dirty laundry
until a weary soul scores to end the marathon. When that night's mayhem ended in the fifth overtime period, my unstifled scream surely woke up my friend's tenants one floor below, and possibly their unborn relatives.
I
drove home in maybe the most contented silence of my life. And when I
got back to my apartment, I walked into the darkness to find a blinking
red light on the message machine. I had checked messages remotely a few
hours earlier, so this signaled to me that either my brother or my
parents had also managed to stay awake. It was my brother, as it turned
out, and that little light was a beacon in the night, the embodiment of
our lifelong bond — to both each other and to the orange and the black.
My
dad called me at work the next day to tell me — literally — that he was
proud of me. I had cowboyed up to not only watch the entire game but,
running on fumes, report to work on time the next morning.
The
playoffs bring my family together. We have a shared history, sure, but
the playoffs provide context. We know what year it was and where we
were when J.J. Daigneault sent the Flyers back to Edmonton for game 7
of the Cup finals. It was 1987 and we were seated in section 12 of the
old Spectrum — and we all knew right then and there two things: that we
would be forever linked by that glorious moment (it was so loud the
building literally shook); and that one shot was the peak of J.J. Daigneault's career and it was all downhill from there. We were right on both counts.
Several
weeks after that five overtime game in May 2000, the Flyers fell apart
as AKL and I traveled through Italy. It was early in our
relationship — her first playoffs — and if she was concerned about my
sanity, she managed not to show it. I ducked into internet cafés and
surfed day-old scores and highlights, and when the boys coughed up
three straight series-clinching games to the Devils in the conference
finals, it felt like I had been sucker-punched. I found it difficult to
speak. It was our final night of the trip, in Fiesole, a beautiful
little hill town overlooking Florence, and I felt as ill as Eric
Lindros after the Scott Stevens hit that left him in the fetal position on the ice.
It
was not my finest hour. I was tired and irritable and still under the
impression that as I went, so went the Flyers, and vice versa. I was
unfocused at the time, so they were unfocused. They imploded
emotionally, so I did too. No, it doesn't make sense on an intellectual
level, but being a hardcore sports fan has nothing to do with
intellect. Because the word fan is short for fanatic. And fanatics, whether religious or political or sporting, are people blinded by emotion.
I
was much more able to let go four years later, when — again in the
conference finals — the end came. Again in game 7. Again with the
Flyers unraveling, again while we were traveling. We were, thankfully,
in paradise. It was my first trip to Jamaica, and we were there to
celebrate AKL's mom getting remarried. After a decade of living and
working together, she and her partner decided to tie the knot in a
low-key ceremony, and we were invited along as the sole witnesses. We
did not come cheap, and I was damned if I was going to ruin my
mother-in-law's shindig.
There was joking as I excused myself
from drinks and dinner a few times that night to check the game 7
scores live on the web. And when the end came, the victors shortly went
on to win the Stanley Cup, and the Flyers went home to fish and play
golf. It goes without saying that I was hugely disappointed. But that
year's team had overcome hardship and injuries and had gutted out some of the most satisfying wins
in franchise history. And I was, after all, in Jamaica with a bellyfull
of fish and a head full of rum. And so, with my wife lying beside me,
and a soft cacophony of lapping waves, island birds, and heavy rain, I
had possibly the most peaceful night of sleep in my life.
I woke
up completely refreshed and hungry for the day, if a bit shocked at my
sudden ability to let go of a bad game and put the season, and life, in perspective. Was
the Planter's Punch I'd been drinking really Prozac for the
sports-minded, or was I actually maturing?
Honestly, I don't
know. It's five years later, and the Flyers are fighting tooth and nail
to advance. It's the playoffs; anything can happen. I'll let you know
when it's over.
Until then, don't freaking call me during the game.
