Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

And in the end

I should go to bed, but I know I'll just lie there for hours, replaying the hockey game in my head.

The Capitals lost, in overtime, after fighting back from 1-3 in the best of seven.

I've seen this show before, but not really. The fluke (a penalty in overtime, after the referees had swallowed the whistles for all of the third period?), the heartbreak. There was one thing that made this insult a bit easier to bear than all those other years...

Leaving the game, I was not serenaded by hundreds (or thousands) of fans of the team that just beat us. I was not alone in misery. The Metro platform was a sea of red, with grumblings about the officiating, murmurs of condolence, or rueful reminiscing, not taunts, jeers, and epithets.

This must be what it feels like to be the home team.

Also, if you'd told me in November we'd be in the playoffs I'd have laughed. I wrote them off in February, too (too brittle, I said.) I was wrong. They adapted and fought and adapted again...the series was like watching the season in microcosm. I don't love everything about this team...I still crave a couple of 21st century versions of Scott Stevens and Rod Langway. But there is some damn good talent that I haven't properly acknowledged, mostly out of some crazy loyalty to the past.

Another thing. My heart is hurting right now, so I guess I care about hockey again, after all. Maybe this makes me fickle, maybe I owe the sport an apology. It looked like there was room on the bandwagon, anyway.

I have come to terms with the fact that seeing Olie Kolzig wave to the crowd from the ice tonight was the last time I'll see him in a Capitals uniform. I wanted to leap over the glass and beg him to stay, even just another hour tonight so we could cheer him longer and louder for everything he's done for this team and this city. The biggest reason I wanted this miracle run to go all the way was to get him name engraved on the Stanley Cup.

And it is just a game...a diversion, an escape, or a metaphor. The sun will come up tomorrow and I'll go to work (feeling hungover, though I had no alcohol tonight), and come home to listen to the baseball game, and I'll cheer and cry and cheer, then it will be hockey season again, then baseball, and so on, until someone is remarking in my eulogy about how much time I wasted on sports.

Posted by Nic at April 22, 2008 11:40 PM | TrackBack