Hawk Trumps Bear



2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks



I won’t say that I was totally engaged with the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, but as the rounds went deeper, I watched more of the games. It became a case of voting out the teams I cannot endure, so I was content with Chicago getting to the final for the west. In the east, however, my will was consistently foiled. Pittsburgh is my second string favourite after Philly, but when the Boston Bruins shut down Sid Crosby and the Penguins and advanced to the Cup final, I started to fret.

And foam.

And use poor language.

I loathe the Bruins. Can’t say why, I just do. I think they’re a bunch of goons, and being a Flyer fan of old means that I know goons when I see them. I like their goalie, though. He’s deadly cute, for one thing, and Finnish for another. I like Finnish goalies. They’re steady, efficient, and reliably cool under pressure.

The Blackhawks are young, slick and skilled. I’ve had their captain in the office hockey pool for three years in a row. Patrick Sharp and Michal Handzus are both ex-Flyers. The team bit Detroit in the collective butt in round two, coming back from being down 3 games to 1 and winning in seven. Phew. So I reckoned, if they ran circles around the Bruins and tired out the lumbering oafs, they had a good chance of winning the Cup.

And they did. They had to work for it (winning the Stanley Cup is easy, after all – you just have to win 16 games), but by the gods’ dainties, they did it. How they did it I really don’t know; they were stonewalled at almost every turn, but in the end, I think they did exhaust the oafs. They got hit, they got up. They got scored on, they scored back, even if the game meant going to overtime – and it did. Three agonizing times. They were even shut out in one game, thanks to the deadly cute Finnish goalie. Back and forth, up and down, amid stupid penalty calls and stupider non-calls, the Hawks refused to go away. And last night, just as we were resigning ourselves to a seventh game, Bryan Bickell popped one past Tuukka Rask (I told you he’s Finnish) with something like a minute and a half left in the third period. Now the game was tied and yet another overtime looked imminent. I was just thinking about making tea for the duration when Ter suddenly yelled, “He scored!”

Yup, seventeen seconds after Bickell’s goal, Dave Bolland got another past Rask and it was a done deal. No way could the Bruins come back within the remaining minute, not with their loutish lineup. Hats and horns! The Hawks won their second Cup in four years, and this time I enjoyed it (the first time they beat the Flyers and became anathema until this year).

Everyone is at different stages on the great cosmic journey and Love is the only rule. Kindness, acceptance, tolerance, fairness – they’re all principles in which I implicitly believe. Generally, I live by those principles. However, when it comes to hockey, I become a tiny, petty, egoically-identified cretin whose greater delight stems not from the Hawks winning the Stanley Cup, but from the Bruins not winning it. Yep, it’s small. I’ve pondered my shrivelling wickedness, and I’ve decided against apologizing for it. No one died, no homes were lost, everyone kept his job (unless you’re a coach), the world looked the same this morning as it did last night and, as my father always reminds me, it’s just a game.

Sure, Dad.