It’s just a game, right?
But come every spring, Canadian hockey fans lose their minds over a silly little past time involving the grown men of the NHL chasing a disc of vulcanized rubber around a skating rink.
Okay, well-paid men and very expensive skating rinks that cost a lot of money to get into to watch said well-paid men.
But when the Stanley Cup playoffs roll around each spring, many of us suspend critical analysis, dispense with practical priorities and let ourselves to be completely taken in by the athletic grace, at times, brutality at others, of the NHL’s championship tournament.
This year’s annual fervor has a distinguishing element to it, compared to many past playoffs – the city of Vancouver and fans of its NHL team around the province of B.C. have been allowed to participate. Amazing!
Of course, all the fan bases of the NHL’s other cities who participate in the annual spring bash – and we mean that literally – are taking every opportunity to scoff at the Vancouver Canucks’ fans and informing them of many reasons why they are not worthy of participating in the festivities. Their teams are regular participants in the playoffs and are therefore much more entitled to the hooting, hollering and chest thumping that are all part of the annual ritual.
Still, to the surprise of everyone, the Vancouver entry into the exclusive NHL club has earned the right to bash each other around the rink in pursuit of a stainless steel bowl to be awarded to the last team standing. And the team’s fanbase is therefore – grudgingly, to some – allowed to join in the party.
So now adults and children alike are allowed GO CRAZEEE! and yell and carry on in an effort to encourage their bladed, padded and stick-wielding representatives to “eliminate” their competitors in a series of mini-tournaments against progressively surviving teams on the way to the Stanley Cup final (cue the choir of angels) where the best may win all the marbles. Which is a curious expression given that along the way, many of the fans – and some of the players – will have lost their marbles. Things will be said that can’t be unsaid and deeds will be done that will warrant one, two and even three-game suspensions as means of punishment.
Hopefully, the team we support will be the one to fight and claw its way to be one of the last two teams to be left standing.
And then, if past history follows suit, the Canucks, should they be one of the final pair, will lose in some heartbreaking, gut-wrenching manner.
NOT! Who are we kidding? this is it! This is the year! The Canucks will win the cup. If they do, you read it here first. If they don’t, what did you expect?
Meanwhile, have fun Vancouver Canucks fans (and fans of other teams too).
There’s plenty of time to return to sanity in a couple months.