My wife often likes to tell me during particularly stressful hockey games that the outcome, “has no effect on your life.” To an extent I guess that is true. My life does go on. The sun comes up and goes down, still have to feed the dogs and cut the grass and so on. However, recently a remarkable thing happened you may have heard about, the St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup for the first time ever. My life did change. In the sense I had a brand new attitude towards an institution that has brought me joy as well as sorrow and pain since I was ten years old. There was a new pride and massive sense of relief they finally did it in my lifetime that I could feel both physically and mentally.
To the non or casual sports fan this probably sounds ridiculous. I admit that indeed it is quite ridiculous. Nonetheless it is true. Not only is it true for me, but for tens of thousands of die hard fans and maybe even a few of the over a million casual fans. After decades of frustration and heart break our lowly and always disrespected team took the ultimate trophy despite all odds, criticism, and prediction by sheer will and determination. Our Blues in a lot of ways represent the city of St. Louis, which even though the mass majority of us “St. Louisans” don’t live in the city itself, it’s still our city whether we want to admit it or not.
Much like at home or abroad, when hockey is brought up it’s almost a little painful to admit I was a Blues fan. Intolerably it always seems I have to tell this to a Chicago or a Detroit fan which usually gets either an insulting or sympathetic “OH.” Those two cities have piles of Stanley Cups which their fans make sure you remember at all times. Similarly when asked where I am from and I reply “St. Louis,” I get the same insulting or sympathetic response. Our city like our team gets zero respect and seems to always be thought of in the worst terms.
Anywhere I have traveled and have given my identity away as a St. Louisan immediately I am bombarded with questions or accusations about racism, murders, rednecks, terrible and fattening food, you get the picture. I see in their eyes pity and or disdain. What a sad little violent city I’m from. Very much like my sad little violent hockey team.
Our city continually makes the wrong choices. We’ve made the wrong choices in leadership with bad mayor after bad mayor (all Democrats just saying). We spend our measly budget in the worst possible ways with failure written all over them. For instance, we allowed ourselves to be duped in the city and the county into forking over tens of millions of dollars to the NFL for a team that was pretty obviously here only temporarily until they could move back “home” to LA. Leaving us all in debt and with an oversized convention center/stadium that was crappy to begin with. Meanwhile the St. Louis public school system falls in and out of accreditation status graduating people who still can’t even read. It is barely protected by woefully understaffed and under paid fire and police departments. There are blocks and blocks of abandoned houses, tenements, and warehouses. We tripled the size of our airport while simultaneously allowing our largest airline hub move out leaving us empty runways, no direct flights causing other big companies to not want to move here, and a lot of good people and good neighborhoods bulldozed out of their homes to make room for said unused runways.
Compare that to our town’s hockey team and you see a lot of parallels. The Blues have a long history of bad or underfunded ownership. We’ve been harshly and unjustly punished by the NHL time after time (Google the Scott Stevens deal). They have almost moved, they’ve been broke and skipped a draft, they’ve had unlimited potential for the ultimate victory to only somehow shoot themselves in the foot. How do you have a team of Brett Hull who inspires the city to build a brand new arena, Brendan Shanahan, Curtis Joseph, and for the love of all that’s good, freaking Wayne Gretzky only to trade them all away, because you have an egotistical coach you also made the General Manager. He set the St. Louis Blues back at least a decade in maniacal destruction. Though we had the longest run reaching the playoffs every year more than any other team in all of professional sports, we always fell short. The ridicule and disrespect went on and on. Our normal response would be, “Yeah but the Cardinals have 11 World Series.” Not a great feeling for a hockey fan.
In normal St. Louis Blues fashion, we got all excited about a new team put together by our General Manager. On paper it looked outstanding. The right amount of talented veterans and upcoming rookies with unlimited potential. All to fall flat on their faces into last place in the entire league. “Here we go again,” was collectively stated throughout St. Louis. Then a few weird things happened. A fight broke out at practice over someone’s work ethic or lack thereof. An unknown rookie goalie came up from the minors and dominated instantly and consistently. Ryan O’Rielley gave all of himself from the first preseason game all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. This finally rubbed off on the other veteran players as well as the rookies. An eleven game winning streak took them from last place with only a month or two to go into playoff contention. We felt afraid to believe, but there was no denying this team was not going to be denied. Every time they blew it they returned even fiercer and more determined to win.
Even more strange a locker room victory song was born in a Philadelphia dive bar of all places. For some reason fans started singing “Country Roads” by John Denver every third period of every home game. Even after the music stopped we kept singing to finish out the chorus. Once in the playoffs we were basically mocked and discounted by the hockey “experts” on NBC Sports. Their blatant anti Blues coverage only encouraged the team and its fan base. Although we were the least penalized team throughout the entire playoffs, magically we had two players suspended and racked up an inordinate amount of penalty minutes against the Boston Bruins. Did you know that the owner of the Boston Bruins is also the President of the Board of Directors of the NHL? It just so happens I am sure that we got hit with all those penalties and suspensions while playing his team and his Board oversees the Disciplinary Board. Didn’t matter. We blew it at home, but owned them in Boston and no matter what they did we took the hardest trophy in sports from them in their own building.
Not until our third goal, but before the winning celebration for Game 7 in Boston, I started to cry. I knew we were going to win. You see I had been positive beyond any doubt that we were going to win the Cup at home on Game 6. There was no way they would lose the Cup on home ice. Then our local newspaper and a couple of grocery stores advertised our Championship publicly before we won it. This seemed to help fuel the Bruins locker room and I suppose the pressure and nerves were too much for the Blues who didn’t seem to show up. My certainty was all but dashed. Could we win a third game in Boston that just so happened to be Game 7 of the Final? I employed every superstition at my disposal and sat and stood in my basement alone with a terrible stomach ache that could only be relieved by a win.
The tears came as I realized my life had changed. I was beginning to feel a brand new pride in my team and in my city. I knew I would no longer be ashamed to say I was a Blues fan or a St. Louisan. Yes we still have all of those problems, but we won the Stanley Cup. What else might we be able to do. I felt the emotions of missing my Uncle Kirk who introduced me to Blues hockey, but passed away before he could see his beloved team raise the Cup. I grabbed my 13 year old son and hoisted him in the air knowing he wouldn’t have to wait as long as I did to see his team win it all and he could be proud too when he travels to Chicago and Detroit and the kids there try to give him crap about the Blues. I messaged my daughter whom I share the deepest Blues connection with. I tattooed a Blue Note on my arm for her coincidentally as they went on their 11 game win streak. Tons of fair weather (kidding) fans waited till after they won the Cup for their tattoos.
I thought of kids I had met or heard about attending St. Louis Blues 14 Fund fundraising events. Like many NHL players ours are very good about visiting with local kids in the hospital. We have some very special ones that created very strong bonds with current and former players. Some of those kids lost their battle with cancer. I know their memories weighed heavy on the players. I know that because they still kept in contact with the parents even after the kids passed away. I know the bonds between players and these kids are real. The team brought a very ill little girl named Laila to their games as inspiration. More to them I think than for her. How many Stanley Cup winning teams brought a sick kid out to Game 7 away and down to the ice to be one of the first St. Louisans to ever kiss the Cup? I think I was more proud of that than the win itself.
NBC, still disdainful of our win, posted on their Facebook page about how awesome and courageous the Bruins captain Zdeno Chara was. They only gave us credit for a measly 390,000 fans showing up downtown in the rain for our victory parade even though every other news organization and the city itself estimated 1.5 million fans in the streets, parking garages, and under the Arch celebrating this historic win. That’s a lot of people regardless and not one car flipped over, nothing set on fire, no shots fired, not even as much as a drunken brawl.
In fact my daughter bravely drove her and my one year old grandson from Detroit to take her little brothers down to the parade to meet with my cousins who happen to be my Uncle Kirk’s kids, and try and push a stroller through a million people. When she got stuck in a crowd on her own with the boys and the stroller, some strangers picked up the stroller for her and cleared the path ahead saying “Blues baby coming through!” I’ve been in town for multiple World Series wins and even a Super Bowl win. I was even at a couple of them. It was fun and there was a lot of high fiving and such, but the Blues winning the Cup was something altogether different.
How many other cities have SOLD OUT their arena and a baseball stadium for Watch Parties? I’m pretty sure the answer to that is NONE. That’s how much we wanted to be together to help will them to win and to help ourselves feel hope together without fear of the usual heart break. We could just feel it. If we stuck together even if it was watching the jumbo screen at Busch and Enterprise or in the neighbor’s garage we would feel a part of something huge. Something that had nothing to do with politics or religion or whatever. Just cheering on an underdog team from an underdog city that we all could wholeheartedly agree deserved to win were destined to win.
I have never seen any professional sports team celebrate a championship with their city like the Blues did this year. Lots of teams especially hockey teams, party hard after the big win, but very few include their fans in it. From the moment their chartered plane landed back in St. Louis they joyfully handed off the Cup to fans waiting at 4AM around the airport. That day they made no secret of which local watering hole they would be celebrating at. Though it was a “closed event” it didn’t stop the players, coaches, management, and owners from partying with fans in the parking lot or from the balcony of the bar. They hugged, high fived, selfied, drank, and kissed the Cup with every fan they could get their hands on. No security was needed, no cops were called, and they partied all day and all night.
At the parade this group of teenagers, 20 and 30 somethings professional athletes, didn’t sit in their convertibles or fire trucks for more than 5 consecutive minutes. Much to the consternation of the parade organizers and tv people, these young men, pro athletes, jumped into the crowds. Their superstar Vladimir Tarasenko went out into the crowd multiple times to hand the Cup to a disabled guy in a wheelchair, a kid with Down Syndrome and held the Cup up for the them to kiss like they were on the team. They cried and we cried watching. Were they drunk and dropping the F bomb unabashedly? Yes they were. Is that the most appropriate behavior you want your kids emulating? Well of course not, but again these are basically kids themselves. Mostly Canadian kids at that where the F word is just another word. On the ice and the locker room right or wrong the F word is just another word. Do I want my kids saying it in front of me or anyone else? No. On the ice and in the locker room is on the ice and in the locker room. They become more players and less my kids.
This group of “kids” just won the Stanley Cup for a team and a city that had waited 52 years to win. When you hear that the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win in professional sports, you can believe it. After getting yourself to the playoffs after 82 hockey games you have to beat four of the best teams on earth and win 16 games more. With all due respect to all other professional sports, they ain’t hockey. Hockey is brutal mentally and physically. Everyone is bumped, bruised, torn, broken, bleeding, needing surgery, but they gut it out to their last breath if they have to or they just can’t stand up. It is as dangerous as it is beautiful. Angry as it is graceful.
After taking the longest beatings in pro sports, they handed beers and accepted beers from fans in the street along the parade route. They threw up on themselves, fell off a truck, and swore, but they also signed autographs, pulled little kids out to walk with them in the parade and up to the grandstands giving them back stage access to the rally at the end. How many 20 something millionaires do you see doing things like that? I’ve never seen it in any sport in any championship celebration. I’ve never been more proud of a team or my city.
Which finally brings me around to some philosophy. I really hadn’t planned to compare the city to the team at all, it just kind of happened. What I was initially thinking about was hockey the game itself and the relationships and character it builds. I am currently writing this early on a Sunday morning in the screened in porch of a fishing cabin out on a lake in High Hill, MO. We are guests of a hockey family that owns it. We are welcome here and feel as at home here as our own house. This is a family we have spent one season with several years ago. Yet since then, we have become close friends in and out of the rink. As I have stated before and will continue to say, spending 6-9 months with people seeing them 4-5 nights a week, going out of town for long weekends, staying up late and getting up early for tournament games, you end up making some really great lifelong friends whether your kids make the same team ever again. It doesn’t matter.
I contend that hockey is like no other sport. Oh I know strong friendships come out of baseball, football, soccer, gymnastic, swimming, cheerleading, softball, and volleyball teams. However, personally I have been a part of or around organizations for all of those sports, and I just don’t see the same kind of bonds built between those families and those of hockey families, unless those teams are made up of hockey players that wanted to play together in other sports. Maybe those parents go on vacations together and hang out at the lake together etc in fact I am sure they do, I just don’t know any and I still don’t know that it’s the same. When my father in law died a few weeks ago we had several members of our hockey family show up at the funeral and they were the ones with us afterwards for beers and the blowing off of steam.
I think the difference is in the sports themselves. Hockey is inherently an expensive yet violent sport. You might argue that club or select sports other than hockey are also very expensive, and I know that they in fact can be even more expensive than hockey which is mind boggling to me. Take soccer for example. In general you can play soccer just about anywhere. You just need a field, shirt, shorts, shoes, shin pads, and a ball. Yet I know families that pay thousands for their kids to play on club/travel soccer teams. There are infinitely more soccer fields in St. Louis then there are ice rinks yet these kids are somehow paying more. We pay tremendous club fees primarily to pay for ice time. That said, hockey is still considered in the Midwest as a “rich kids’ sport.” Relative to most of the kids around the globe who play “football” in the dirt barefoot with a patched together soccer ball it is a rich kids’ sport and we are all rich parents.
When you compare us together around the St. Louis area, it’s all relative. Like I said I know people who pay more for soccer and baseball then we pay for hockey and one of my kids is a goalie which about triples our costs in equipment. Still growing up hockey was an unattainable sport for me to play and I feel very blessed we are able to “afford” both of our boys playing. I only bring up the wealth factor in that when you decide to let your kids play hockey you are making a serious investment which in turn makes you seriously emotionally invested in the sport.
Due to the violent nature and physical abilities required you are trusting your child will be as safe as possible. A huge investment bigger than any price tag. You want them on the best team, with the best coach, while having the most fun. “Best” can be a very relative term. The vast majority of us have kids that will never play AAA or professional hockey at any time. We mostly get hung up over labels like “B” instead of “A2” and so on. We stress mightily over tryouts. As your kids get older and you get to be friends with more parents, you realize you stop hoping for the higher level team and just hope you land on a team with your friends…and the kids friends of course. Mostly your friends though. I mean we are the ones paying and driving and stressing.
You hope for a coach who focuses on molding better human beings instead of winning every single game at all costs. You hope he or she teaches them respect for the game, for their parents, and for each other. Though it seems like “rich kids” wouldn’t be allowed by their snooty wealthy parents to play a sport that is harsh, sweaty, smelly, unforgiving, and violent. That’s because though we are wealthy in the eyes of many we are mostly lower-upper middle class suburbanites with white and blue collar jobs. Some live in duplexes and farmhouses some live in two stories and gated communities. In the locker room and on the ice everyone is the same. In the stands and on the bench we are all the same. White, black, girl, boy all the same.
When you look sociologically at groups of people in the US you could find that groups that share violent or dangerous jobs are generally tighter than people who say have office jobs. Soldiers, cops, firemen etc tend to share much closer bonds than bankers and lawyers or engineers. It just happens. When you go into the desert or the streets and battle together it creates bonds that cannot be broken and that will last forever. In a little less of an extreme, hockey players and parents share the same type of bond warriors and first responders share. I would guess you could say that baseball/soccer and so on, players/parents might not.
When you have spent your vacation or retirement fund on your kids hockey equipment and registration fees to watch them fly around the ice on blades of steel with sticks getting pounded by other kids on blades with armor and sticks with a frozen piece of rubber flying in the mix, you can get pretty amped up. When your Kindergartner can get blasted into next week by another kid and smash their head into the boards or glass it can make you fighting mad. In a very short time you feel as protective as every other kid on your team and maybe even the other team as you do your own. Especially the bigger the kids get the more intense it gets. No one else understands the angst and excitement watching little gladiators on ice like other hockey parents. Only hockey players “get” other hockey players. Just like only cops get other cops. Only hockey parents “get” other hockey parents.
Now all sports and all kids have their good and rotten apples. I have two extremely rotten apple hockey players at my house, yet when they’re at other people’s houses I hear how polite and respectful they are. At school and at the rink they pay attention to the younger siblings, at the hotels for tournaments their teammates include the younger siblings in hanging out and playing. Even though both my boys are undersized they have an unlimited amount of guts and they always defend their teammates, each other, and kids they see getting bullied on or off the ice. Liz and I are going to take some credit for that, but a lot of their character comes from hockey. Hockey teaches a respect for hard work and for life. It’s a hard sport to even attempt to play. There is so much going on and it demands every part of your body and your will to compete. Your head has to be on a swivel at all times, where is the puck, who can I pass to, is that guy going to clobber me, all while ice skating as fast as you can. Like basic training or the police academy it puts strangers together at the beginning, but hopefully by the end of a season, a band of brothers and or sisters comes out.
It has its share of entitled, spoiled monsters, but from my experience in St. Louis for the most part, along with my experience with professional players, they share the same good characteristics. Strong bonds, respect for the game, respect for the sacrifice of their teammates, coaches, and parents, and sticking up for each other and for the little guy.
So when I saw my Blues persevere and take the hands down hardest trophy in all of sports to win, I could feel and see all the hard work, devotion to each other, the devotion of their spouses and family that supported them to that point. I cried and I yelled. As they left a trail of Bud Lights throughout St. Louis I saw the crazy side of hockey players swinging from balconies and falling off fire trucks. Yelling the F word unabashedly on live network tv as if they were in the locker room. I also saw the respect parts come out of them. Refusing to sit in those cars during the parade and instead joining in with the high school band and cheerleaders, picking out the “little guy” in the crowd being in a wheelchair or mentally disabled, making them feel that they had also won the Cup. Reading text messages from a player to a parent of a child who had passed from cancer, but was still on the hearts and minds of the team.
All of this did have an effect on my life. Sports do matter. Hours upon hours of family tie stories to the Blues were told on ESPN radio after “We” won the Cup. The effect was that the world got a little brighter. Our small part of the country felt a little less divided. In fact most of the country at large regardless of what NBC reported, rooted for one of the biggest underdog teams, and stories versus the Boston favorite. Some rooted for us just because it meant rooting against a cocky arrogant city of Boston. Home of the cheating Patriots etc. The Bruins and the media already had the Cup in the bag as far as they were concerned. Then all of the sudden this underrated, yet determined team of unlikely heroes put together the most unlikely of victories is St. Louis and maybe all of sports history together.
I can now high five any stranger in Missouri and say “Let’s Go” or “We Went Blues!” When it rains for days on end and things are flooding, the news is depressing, anything bad in general happens in my day I can think, “Eh the Blues won the Cup,” and instantly get a smile on my face. That’s my new hockey philosophy. If you work hard and stick together miracles can happen whether you get paid for wearing the Blue Note or not.
Jacked Up Dad 