The National Hockey League has, after so many missteps over the years, put together a really cool marketing campaign for the playoffs. Their history will be made TV spots are a cool bit of simple cinematic trickery for the casual viewer; historically poignant for the true fan; and, as a smart piece of business, quickly expandable.
Helpful too that as it turns out in this year's long slog toward The Stanley Cup finals, the Philadelphia Flyers actually did make history deserving of their own ad (with which they were quickly rewarded), pulling off one of the most amazing comebacks in sports history. Down 3-0 in the second round to the Boston Bruins, they won game 4, game 5, and then game 6 to force a game 7.
To those of us who follow sports, Game 7s are the pinnacle of excitement, anxiety, fear, gamesmanship, skill, guts, exhilaration; in short, everything that is sport itself.
Even when the Flyers are not part of the equation, I will watch any game 7, any time, anywhere. Game 7s are like the Super Bowl, but with a soul.
And Flyers-Bruins 2010 delivered. In game 7 itself (in Boston), the Flyers found themselves down 3-0 after the first period. There was an odd perfection to the score. After going down 3-0 in the series, the Flyers were now facing the same deficit in goals. To win the series they would again have to come back against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Here, I just have to say that I've played hockey nearly all my life. It is the single greatest game I know. I've been on the wrong side of blowouts, and the right side; won close playoff games (one in the final second of play), and lost them. And I have to say, even for the ultra-competitive among us, it's not all that difficult sometimes to just give in to losing. Professionals and athletes at every level — good, hard-working, honest people I respect and would be honored to go into battle with — give in to losing. It is easy — simply going to sleep in the face of hypothermia. Something we can relate to. It is not death, only sport. And even if sport is one's life, we realize the material difference between the two and perhaps that is precisely why it is so easy to just give in and give up.
Only the Flyers didn't.
They regrouped, dug in, cowboyed up, got a bounce, and went to work. They found a way to win in the face of certain loss.
I have been a Flyers fan literally all my life. They are my one team; the single thing over which I fall prey to true fanatacism. And yet, I'm a middle-aged guy, and practical; equal parts dreamer and cynic. So where they found the enormous stones to do this, I cannot say. Only those few (those "happy few") on this team might ever know exactly where the strength of this team lies. But what they pulled off in their series of comebacks was one of the most incredible sporting feats I have ever seen.
Riding the wave of their win over the Bruins, tenacious forechecking, and smothering team defense, the Flyers went on to beat the Montreal Canadiens in five games, and now — mind you, after making the playoffs not only on the final day of the season, but thanks to an overtime shootout victory on that day — we find ourselves (yes, that is how we fanatics discuss our teams) back in the Stanley Cup finals, after a 13-year respite (and a 35-year drought of being Cup champions).
And it feels damn good.
I love our chances too. Perhaps more than I should. I mean, Chicago is the hot young team; they're supposed to win. But the Flyers, by any measure, have precisely what it takes to win a Cup: hot goaltending, team defense, a relentless forecheck, clutch snipers, skillful role players, a few absolute shutdown defensemen, a couple a-one pests, fearless shot-blockers, a combination of young legs and veteran experience, excellent coaching, a system the team believes in, confidence in their abilities, and as we've seen, the biggest cojones there are.
Forget about the odds, forget destiny even; we're in it to win it.
Drop the puck already.



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