Another (Not So) Brief Sports Interlude

(Photo credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

I have been waiting to see this since I was four years old and I watched Mario Lemieux hoist the Pittsburgh Penguins' second Stanley Cup in a row. Now, seventeen years later, after two near-bankruptcies (Lemieux himself saved us from both - the first one when he bought the team and came out of retirement in his 40s to play again, the second one when he negotiated the construction of a new arena with the mayor and other city officials, so that we could seat more fans and make enough money to stay afloat), the Cup is coming home.
We could not have picked a more dramatic time to win it, either. As multiple radio announcers have said since our 2-1 victory on Friday night, if someone had written this year as a movie script and shown it to a director in Hollywood, they would have said, "Sorry, but this would never happen." Except that it just did.
Four months ago, we weren't even sure we would make the playoffs. When we did, we weren't even sure we could beat Philadelphia. We nearly lost to the Capitals. Even though we swept Carolina, they certainly made it a tense four games for us. And then we found ourselves face-to-face with the team that defeated us soundly last year, the team that one of our better players joined at the end of last year because he thought he stood a better chance of winning the Cup with them. We lost the first two games, though not without a fight. And then we won the next two, with the support of our fans and the home-ice advantage. In game five, we were soundly beaten. 5-0, a score that might have depressed most teams beyond chance of recovery.
But, though we faced elimination in game 6, we dominated the first two periods, and emerged at the end with a 2-1 victory. It all came down to game seven.
I had never actually been nervous about a sporting event before, but I had knots in my stomach all day on Friday. I wanted to win this Cup so badly, for so many reasons. We deserved one, after all this time, with the amazing new players we have now (and I wanted to prove Hossa and the Red Wings wrong. They didn't think we posed that big of a threat. Even their coach was cocky about their wins). I wanted to show them that we are a better team than we were when we faced them last year.
And we did just that.
With two goals from our good-luck charm, Talbot, and some incredible defensive plays by all of our guys (but especially Marc-Andre Fleury), we won all the marbles, baby. I just got back from the parade downtown to celebrate the victory. 350,000 people showed up. Detroit calls itself Hockeytown? Well, I guess that makes us Hockeyburgh, then.
So thank you, Cardiac Kids, for bringing Lord Stanley back. He was quite a sight.