Every Game 6 needs a hero
Reigniting a boyhood fascination with the Stanley Cup Playoffs
I’ve always felt a bit of pep to my step in the spring, starting in mid April into June. I remember cultivating it as a kid. The days would get longer, school would get easier, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs would enrapture my imagination.
Every boy who laces up a pair of skates in this country dreams of playing for the Stanley Cup. I more or less let that dream go when I was eight years old. I tried out for the select team in my town and finished worst in every drill. I skipped day two of tryouts to attend Scott Howard’s birthday party, and with that decision, I knew my NHL ambitions were over. But in earnest, the dream lived in my imagination for years after.
My first taste of sports heartbreak also came around that time, when my boyhood team the Buffalo Sabres lost in the Cup Finals on a dubious and controversial Game 6 overtime goal by Brett Hull of the Dallas Stars. My mom made me go to bed at the end of regulation because it was a school night. I remember waking up and watching footage of angry Sabres fans throwing a steel barricade through a plate glass window in front of the arena; an appropriate response to a harsh injustice in the mind of an eight year old.
My team has never tasted the ultimate success of Stanley Cup glory. I cheered for the Sabres until they traded Dominik Hasek, then as the ultimate contrarian, I picked the Ottawa Senators as my new team to annoy my Toronto Maple Leafs fan friends. I remember getting nervous to the point of hyperventilation while watching the Sens win the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals in another Game 6 overtime. The Cup Final was the biggest anti-climax of all time, as they lost in a gentleman’s sweep to a much better Mighty Ducks team. Heartbreak again.
I eventually started watching Leafs games with those very same friends I tried to piss off, and their enthusiasm for the hometown team was infectious. I grew to like the players, and because of regional blackouts, I watched the Leafs way more than my Sens. These were also the years of the young Kings and Blackhawks dynasties, and through watching those teams I fell deeply in love with the sport itself. Especially during the playoffs. I watched every night from April to June, often without a rooting interest, just hoping to catch a good game.
My newly adopted Leafs were at first mired in a playoff drought. Then came new players and a promise of a brighter future. We all know how that worked out — six consecutive first round losses led to the most immense frustration I’ve ever felt watching sports. They finally broke through this year and I was happy.
Many people are still piping mad about how the next round played out, but I’ll cherish that John Tavares overtime goal in Game 6 for a long time. 31 fanbases face some form of disappointment at the end of the year. The players are the ones for whom winning is everything — for us, it’s all about the journey.
I still watch as much hockey as I can between April and June. I see the players faces light up when they score a goal or close out a game. I notice their brows furrow with intensity during scrums and while talking shit between the benches. I witness the dejection and the welling of tears when a season ends in disappointment. This is what I watch the game for, more than anything. The emotion, the excitement, and the imagination.
In my imagination, I played on that doomed 1999 Sabres team with Dominik Hasek and Mike Peca. We won the cup that year, and the year after. Then I followed Hasek to Detroit and won the cup there too. There’s a completely alternate NHL timeline in my head which involves a small, scrappy and talented right winger named Vince Guglielmi winning more cups than you can count on two hands.
I still, to this day, imagine what it would be like to win the NHL’s ultimate prize. I watch them hand out the cup and try to feel what it would be like to touch it in that moment. Even in the abstract it’s something many will never get to achieve — a finite and tangible marker of professional success that you’ve dreamed about since childhood. One splendid moment when you know you’ve accomplished your life’s goal and no one can take it from you. I imagine what I would say in the post-game interview. I ponder what the party would be like in the dressing room. I think about what it would be like to fall asleep that night knowing you reached the mountaintop.
The tired cliche that every kid in Canada plays the overtime hero in their own driveway is painfully boring but it touches a universal truth. Everyone wants to reach the mountaintop. I gave up on my Stanley Cup aspirations in 1999, but the dream lives in my imagination. One day I might get to have my own version of the Stanley Cup, and maybe someone will see the unbridled joy on my face as I parade around whatever room it takes place in.