The Best Time of the Year

It's the best time of the year, why? Summer's close? Nope. School's Out? Nope. All good reasons for being a good time of the year, but not the best. The real reason? Hockey playoffs. Specifically the first round. Turn on the TV and we get at least a few games every day for 2 weeks. And it's not just regular hockey. It's playoff hockey for the biggest prize in all of hockey -- The Stanley Cup. So you know everyone's giving it their all. And with playoff hockey comes the most exciting part of all exciting parts -- Sudden Death Overtime. First team to score wins, doesn't get more nailbiting than that. You don't score, you keep playing until you do. No matter how long it takes.

So finally I get to go to my first playoff game, game 1 of the first round, the Vancouver Canucks vs. the Dallas Stars. Two evenly matched teams who split their season series all with identical scores of 2-1. Both defensive minded teams with little scoring and great goalies. We all expected a close game, but not like this. The atmosphere is incredible, and as cool as it looks on TV, you have to be there live to experience just how cool a visual it is to see an entire arena waving towels. TOWEL POWER! I even joked that a playoff game between these two teams could cause the game to go into multiple overtimes, little did I know....

Longest Canucks game in history, 6th longest in NHL history. I'm gonna skip the entire regulation except to say that the Canucks blew a 4-2 lead in the third period. Let's jump straight to the intermission after overtime period #3, where the equivalent of 2 full games had passed. I needed water but didn't wanna pay an arm and a leg for it. I can hold out (for now). Overtime period #4, less than 2 minutes less, preparing for Overtime #5, and about to give up that arm and leg for some bottled water. But alas, we score just short of entering period #8.

I gotta say though, as much as I love sudden death overtime and these superlong games, they gotta find a way to shorten them, like with a shootout or 4 on 4 in OT. They gotta do that for the players, it's just too much for them. It's just not fair for them to play that much in one night, and have to do it again in a couple days. They all played their hearts and muscles out, but you could tell that they were all on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion. I was getting tired watching, I can't imagine how it was to actually play that long.

Luongo made 72 saves, and while he may have let in a couple "soft" ones, he made the ones that counted, and always gave us a chance to win. He was named First Star, and it was well deserved. We were badly outplayed for much of the game, and were badly outshot, but upon learning that we lost 2 key forwards and were basically rolling 3 lines for almost the entire overtime periods, it made much more sense. We weren't badly outplayed, we were outmanned.

First playoff game, and what a game it was. It was almost two and a half games for the price of one, so I definately got my money's worth. I can now say that I was in the building during the longest Canucks game in history. It was a game the Canucks should've won outright in regulation, but it was not to be. Fortunately, we got the win anyways, eventually. Ok, time for bed, I need it.