The end of a hockey game doesn't normally bring on the waterworks, but I guess this wasn't a normal hockey game. I also wasn't planning on writing a blog at midnight on a random Monday, so hopefully I don't regret it. On second thought, maybe it's not so random.
There are plenty of things that have been setting my anxiety into overdrive the last couple weeks, but let's just set this stage by saying that today, September 28, is my dad's birthday. He would have been 75 this year and there would have, of course, otherwise been a huge party. But instead, #Mom, #Jeff and I went to the cemetery and had a picnic of fried chicken and Mom's homemade macaroni salad, his favorite foods. Not exactly the big party I had envisioned, but as many wrenches as were thrown into said vision, 2020 would have had the last wrench anyway, so there's that.
Tonight I watched the Tampa Bay Lightning win the Stanley Cup in a culmination of an incredible two-and-a-half months of bubble hockey. Congrats to them, they were a force from the start and absolutely deserve the championship. But the ending of the game cued up a flood of emotions I wasn't ready for. Let's examine further.
I was the biggest critic of the #NHL's Return to Play plan. Hockey in bubbles to award the Stanley Cup? Daily Covid testing? Having all these people away from their families and friends for an extended period of time after a four-month layoff? No fans in the arena? Why bother? I didn't get it. I thought it wouldn't happen. I thought it shouldn't happen. But it happened. And I couldn't be more grateful.
The #Kings may have been left out of the tournament, but the games every day for two months were what I looked forward to most. I allowed my schedule to revolve around the game times and one morning I even had a game on behind my laptop while in a Zoom meeting. No shame! Shoutout to all my regularly scheduled FaceTime calls that moved our digital dates to accommodate a game or a game that went into overtime. What can I say? My people get me. 33,000 negative Covid tests later, we were able to crown a champ for the season. Hats off to the events team - every last detail was impeccable - we've never seen anything like it before and we will likely never see anything like it again. It was truly a spectacle to behold.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention #Matt here. In his ninth season as an NHL linesman he made it to his second Stanley Cup Final. The officials progress through the playoffs just as the teams do - on merit - and are eliminated after each subsequent round. Working a Cup Final is the crowing achievement for any official in the NHL, so this is a huge deal and I'm so proud of him! Getting to FaceTime him in the bubble and watching him work the games all the way to the end gave me an extra exciting dimension I wouldn't have had otherwise. Before the game today I sent Matt a 'good luck' text and I told him that my dad would have been so excited to watch him in the Final on his birthday. That text had so many layers and to be honest, after I hit 'send' I wasn't sure which part was more surreal to me.
I'm used to being bummed at the conclusion of a season - twice actually - once at the end of the Kings season, then again after the Cup Final. (Remember not so long ago when those things occurred simultaneously?!?) This time, however, it's different. There is no promise of tomorrow. With the pandemic, there is no set date for the start of the next NHL season. I don't have the rink to go back to for a distraction. There are no summer Kings stories to write. There are no events to plan, no celebrations to attend, heck, I don't even forsee dining at a restaurant any time soon. Also, while this normally happens at the end of spring/beginning of summer when the weather is warming up and beach days and vacations are on the horizon, there isn't any of that either. I'm not even sure what the holidays will look like this year. Understandably depressing. When I first started writing this I felt that awful, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. But now, getting everything out on "paper" and reflecting, I actually feel a little better. Funny how that works. Perhaps today was a bit of a perfect storm, but I guess it's not until the storm has passed that the skies are clear.
In some unrelated notes, I am looking forward to decorating my condo with some fall decor later this week, something I haven't done much of in the past. Keep your eye on the 'gram for my final looks! There will also be some good content on the blog in the next month, including a new featured post, and I'll have a new project to reveal! Plus, in a tiny personal victory, how proud are we that I learned how to embed tweets in the blog?!?
"Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened." -Dr. Seuss