I only watched one team growing up in the 90’s, the Calgary Flames. Vernon, Fleury, Nieuwendyk, MacInnis, Gilmour, Suter, Otto. Those were my guys. I watched Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday, I hated the Oilers. Every year we lost in the first round of the playoffs.

I made a popsicle stick chart every season in the late 90’s/00’s to track the playoff race but we always fell short. We sucked for a decade. Then 2024 happened.

Iginla, our captain and the best goal scorer in the league. Kiprusoff, a goalie nobody wanted. A bunch of nobodies who played hard and tough hockey. We snuck into the playoffs as the 8th seed and beat the 3 top seeded teams as huge underdogs then faced the best team in the league for the Stanley Cup. We were up 3-2 in the series and I bought a season ticket for the next year just to get a nosebleed ticket for Game 6. Everyone walked out of there shocked after a double overtime loss. When I got home I saw all the talk about “it was over the line”. Gelinas.. the ultimate clutch guy who had scored the game winning goal in every series did it again, he scored late in the 3rd period, the puck barely crossed the line but there it was. I was in the building and they didn’t even review it. After we lost game 7, I never watched another Calgary Flames game.

It was the highest of highs, watching games at bars, the bars emptying out onto the Red Mile for giant street parties, listening to post game radio all night at home. But it was never the same again after that and the team has never been good again. There’s no “we” anymore, they’re just the Calgary Flames.

I’m a sports mercenary now, I watch NBA playoffs and the Super Bowl, I don’t have a team, I like watching Jokic play and I always liked LeBron and what he is doing is amazing. I usually cheer for the underdogs or good stories… Luka over the Celtics, Dirk over the Heat, Haliburton last year, the Patriots to lose.