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| Basher and Ru ready for a win ... and still waiting |
“Hey, Ter, you
know how I said I was a little sad that we didn’t go to the game after all?”
“Yes …?”
“I’ve changed my
mind.”
It’s a statement
when the tribute before the game is better than the game itself. Not that it
was a bad game; it was just a losing effort. The Flyers got on the board first,
the Canucks answered, and then it was over—in seventeen seconds, to be exact,
after Alex Burrows broke loose and scored twice in the third period. An
empty-netter finished them off, so the final score was 4-1 in Vancouver’s
favour. Now we’re 23rd in the league, eleventh in our conference and
fifth in our division. 73 points over 72 games with 10 left in the season.
$#*^%*
After Burrows’
second goal – the knife to my heart – the colour commentator remarked that the Flyers’
playoff hopes were getting slimmer. I snorted and snapped, “What playoff hopes?
Did we have playoff hopes?”
Ter patiently
replied, “He’s being nice.”
Augh. What have
we come to, when the opposing broadcast crew shows us mercy?
All right, so I’m
a bad loser.
The night was
special because the Canucks honoured the late great Pat Quinn, who had also
coached the Flyers to their 35 game win streak in 1979/80 (losing game 7 of the
Cup final to the heinous misbegotten Islanders), but was mostly responsible, so
they say, for making something respectable of the Vancouver franchise. St. Trevor
of Linden brought in the very best of the Canucks’ alumni, and my hero was
among those from other teams where Quinn left his mark. Bob Clarke was captain
of the Flyers when Quinn coached in Philadelphia, and when I heard him announced,
I briefly regretted the decision to skip the trip and see the game live. I had
to remind myself that he would have been there anyway, just up in the visitors’
royal box, not on the ice and wearing a Flyer jersey.
Ter and I would
have been there, but for the mutual decision to spare ourselves the expense of an
overnight and two days’ work at a critical time of year. I gave the tickets to
a colleague who lives on the mainland, and who took his son as a belated
birthday present. They sent me a selfie taken during the first intermission. The
birthday boy was beaming in a signed Canucks jersey—clearly a fan of the home
team. That made the decision not to go even more worthwhile.
Well, 4 -1 is better
than the result of the January matchup, when Vancouver visited the Flyers and
won 4-0. Letting the opposition score four unanswered goals was … exactly what
happened last night.
*&$^%#
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