I can’t sleep. This is ridiculous.
It’s not all because of the game. I do have a three-year-old who’s been rolling around in our bed like a pig on a spit, only this pig sticks a hoof into your kidney every once in a while. But then I’m awake, I remember the game is tonight, and I get to wondering. Next thing I know, I’m blogging in the laundry room at 3:30 a.m.
I’m ready for this to end. It’s fun, but it’s exhausting. My job is partly to blame. Other fans probably have a little trouble concentrating at work on game days because they’re thinking about the Canucks. When the team goes this deep in the playoffs, my work becomes the Canucks. We monitor discussions among fans on our website. We seek out the videos they’re creating on YouTube. We read what they’re saying in Boston. We wait for reports from practices, from news conferences, from airports. We compile information about public viewing areas and think about how the crowd will react if they win, if they lose, and how we’ll cover it. I’m in on all of this. Then I drive home (with sports talk radio on, of course) and watch the games. Win or lose I get up early to blog about the Canucks, go to work, and do it all again — all while coping with the same playoff stress as an accountant or realtor who has been a fan since the ’70s. It has been two months of this.
The last kidney kick got me thinking about yesterday’s quote from Ryan Kesler. They asked him about about his offence drying up, and he said: “If we win we become legends and I don’t think anybody worries about that I have one point in six games.”
He’s right, of course. I just wasn’t sure the players knew that. I knew they all wanted to win the Stanley Cup, but before Kesler I had never heard any of them acknowledge that doing so would give them a status above that of any other athlete who’s competed for this city in 125 years (I’ll stand at centre ice in Cyclone Taylor Arena and say that). And that it would last forever, because there can only be one first time. Players aren’t supposed to think about that stuff, let alone talk about it. Kesler did, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
At this point, it probably doesn’t matter. I think of another quote I read yesterday, uttered by then-Canucks assistant coach Ron Smith in 1994: “Here’s the thing about elimination. It’s a different feeling. You charge up the hill, knowing you’re looking in the face of disaster, but you charge anyway — and if it’s your time, if your name’s on the bullet, so be it.”
Is this the hill the Canucks want to die on?
You bet it is.
