"We are the champions!" - Freddie Mercury
"I'm so happy, I can't stop crying." - Sting
IT FINALLY HAPPENED! The St. Louis Blues are STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS!!! And I'm still not sure I believe it actually happened. It's all very surreal. I've waited my entire life to watch my favorite hockey team win hockey's ultimate prize and there were honestly many times I doubted it would ever happen. 52 years and countless heartbreaking losses will do that to you.
By now, anyone with even a passing interest in hockey knows the story - last place team miraculously goes from worst to first after firing their coach and installing an unheralded rookie as their new goaltender. It's an incredible story and if you presented it as a screenplay for a sports movie, the studios would undoubtedly reject it as being too schmaltzy. But rather than recap that story, I want to step back and take a broader look at the end result and why it is so meaningful to so many people.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge Blues fan and have been since I was a kid. When I was in college at Baylor, I was well known for often wearing my circa 1991 Brett Hull Blues jersey. Whenever the Blues had a game on national TV, I'd watch it, often to the chagrin of my non-hockey fan roommates. Whenever the Blues played the Stars in Dallas, I'd make the 100 mile trip north up I-35 to catch the games live. Year after year, I followed the team on TV and in person, game after game. There are thousands of other diehards like me who lived and died with the team hoping that, some day, our faith and fandom would be rewarded with a Stanley Cup championship. There were times that it never seemed that it would happen, but it finally did.
I've been fortunate to witness my favorite teams win five championships during my lifetime: three for the Cardinals (1982, 2006, 2011), one for the Rams - when they were in St. Louis (2000), and now a Stanley Cup for the Blues in 2019. While I have obviously been excited by all 5 of them, I've never been as emotional as I was when the Blues won the Cup last week. I was bawling when the clock struck zero and the players celebrated on the ice. That's the first time that I've cried over a sporting event and it got me wondering why this championship was so emotional for me and for so many others. Certainly, part of it is the wait - 52 years overall and my entire life of 45 years. But part of it is also because a part of me never thought I'd see it happen.
The Blues franchise has been blessed with a number of Hall of Fame players and coaches. Brett Hull, Bernie Federko, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger, Brendan Shanahan, Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville. The list goes on and on. Every single one of those players had their best seasons while wearing the blue note and every single one of them - with the exception of Federko - won a Cup during their careers while playing for another team. It became frustrating year after year to watch our superstars win a Cup only after leaving St. Louis. As for the coaches, the Blues gave both Bowman and Quenneville their first NHL coaching jobs. While both coaches had a lot of success in St. Louis, they could never win a Cup while coaching the Blues. However, after leaving St. Louis, both coaches won multiple Cups with other teams, often at the expense of the Blues and while coaching our bitter rivals like the Blackhawks and Red Wings.
It was easy to look at the retired numbers hanging in the rafters and the statues outside of Enterprise Center and wonder why none of those very successful players and coaches could reach the pinnacle of the hockey world while with the Blues. As the seasons turned into decades, it became more and more frustrating and disappointing. To add insult to injury, while Blues fans waited for a Cup, every single other original expansion franchise won a Cup. So did teams in non-traditional hockey markets like Raleigh, Tampa Bay and Anaheim. Some of those teams came out of nowhere to win a Cup despite a history of often lousy play. The Blues, meanwhile, had one of longest continuous playoff streaks (25 years) in NHL history but rarely advanced beyond the second round, let alone threatened to win a Stanley Cup. So, you can't blame Blues fans like myself for genuinely doubting whether or not we'd ever see someone wearing a blue note on their chest raise the Stanley Cup above their heads and give it a kiss. And that's why we were so emotional when Alex Pietrangelo took the Cup from Gary Bettman and why this championship means so much.
I was fortunate enough to watch the victory parade this past weekend surrounded by my wife, kids and parents....along with a million or so of my best friends. It was a memory I'll never forget. And while I obviously hope the Blues win more Cups in the future, there's no way any of them will mean as much as this first one.
To quote the boisterous (and, no doubt, inebriated) hometown hero, Pat Maroon: "WE'RE STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS, BABY!"
And now I can die in peace...
