Hobo Sports: Hockey

While Hobos Inc. was in utero and Tiresias was brailing her way through the first few Hobos in Space entries, I, Cass was penitent, knee-deep in that high holy time of year. Yes, that’s right: playoff hockey season. And last night, well, I didn’t see this one coming. I predicted my team (the Sabres) would finish better than the originally slated 14th place….yeah thanks for that ranking SI & ESPN & every other sports network that continues to dump on Troy b/c they’re really pissed that we have a few things left to hold on to, like pro sports teams….but I also foresaw this as the year of the Cup. The year that a bunch of fast, young, no-names, who play as a team and aren’t all “me, me, me” would hoist Lord Stanley’s coveted cup high above their heads in honor of a real sports victory, not one purchased by recruiters and billionaire owners. And in that moment, they would justify all those times, we in Troy, had to suffer through loss after loss, all those times I’ve had to listen to jackass after jackass say, “four straight Super Bowl losses huh?”, as if I’d forgotten. And they would qualify all the time, money, energy, and indigestion I’ve suffered over this season. And they would show Rick Reilly and all those other naysayers that we, Troy, did it. We had a Championship. I believed, you see? I’m not mad at them. They played one hell of a season, and by the end, we were decimated with injuries. They played their hearts out, and that's good enough for this disbelieved prophetess.

But what killed me, what made me want to drop kick the fellow hobo who panhandled me on my way back to my apartment, was that we lost Game 7 to a team from the South. That’s what killed me. It wasn’t that I got drenched on the way to watch the game, that I had to wring my jeans out at the bar, that my hair resembled MJ in the early days of Jackson Five, or that the bartender kept changing the channel because he assumed that as a disbelieved prophetess I couldn’t possibly be watching a hockey game. It wasn’t any of those things. It’s the South. I didn’t even know anyone played hockey south of the Mason Dixon line. They certainly don’t care about hockey down there. And while yes, I love you Tiresias, dear Faulkner, O’Connor, and all the other brilliant Southern writers, the South is fried chicken & NACSAR & Scarlet & croquet on rolling plantations, not hockey. I mean how do they make ice in a place where the temperature never drops below 60 degrees F? And by the way, they have cheerleaders…real ones, all blonde and midriff baring and over-processed. I mean, come on? It’s enough to make a prophetess pen a letter to the NHL…. "Dear Mr. Bettman, there is something inherently wrong with having cheerleaders at a hockey game; it’s un-American, well frankly, it’s un-Canadian." Hockey doesn’t have cheerleaders….they have mullets and crack beer and fights and toothless folk and Canadians and drunks making tin foil Stanley Cups in the stands. Those are the pillars, the tenets of hockey. They are what make it pure.

Prediction for 2005-2006 Stanley Cup Champions: Edmonton Oilers. Because, at least the Canadians up there: recognize snow when they see it; appreciate the inherent loveliness of a crisp, cross-ice pass; feel the pain of a I-didn’t-see-you-coming-I-don’t-see-anything-now (a la Umberger) hit; see the skill in a backhand shot or a butterfly save; can point to the top shelf, where-Momma-hides-the-cookies; and feel gratitude at the sight of overgrown, summerteethed, unshaven, athletic men drinking from a silver Cup.

Your kind expressions of sympathy are welcome and appreciated at this difficult time.