I fell in love with sports for the stories.
It’s that simple.
I fell in love for the drama and the passion and all the things that instant replay can’t reveal. I fell in love for what happens on the sidelines and in the locker rooms and sometimes in the stands.
I fell in love for the poetry of a season played out in tandem with my own quotidian existence.
Which I guess is why I fell in love with hockey. It’s the roguish underdog of the major league — a roller coaster of turning points.
That whole fighting thing only augments the metaphor. In a sport so jam-packed with adrenaline that athletes need to duke it out, the pace can change in a heartbeat. There’s a fine line the sport skates between finesse and brute force.
And you’re addicted to the damn thing because you need to know which way the game will swing.
The season is so long and the fanbase so cult-ish that anything goes. It’s like what those playoff commercials promised a few seasons ago: history will always be made.
Sometimes it’s not over til the fat lady sings. In hockey, it’s truly not over til the Stanley Cup is lifted in the air.
So what the hell is happening this year?
Answer: The NHL is on hiatus for the foreseeable future, all thanks to a damn lockout.
This is the second lockout in a decade. Every time the collective bargaining agreement expires, it brings about a frustrating stalemate.
Remember that fighting thing? Let’s extend the metaphor one step further. These people endures fights for a living. The players are conditioned to weather physical fistcuffs that rack up both penalty minutes and stitches. Stunts like that ought to take a toll, but these guys play well into their 30s.
They’re used to physical endurance on the ice. It probably takes half that amount of stubbornness to wait this thing out.
So the main storyline this season: there is no story. This sport is already so precariously low on America’s radar, and now it has entirely dropped off.
There’s no chronicle of redemption or revenge. There are no streaks or slumps. There’s no sense of do or die because the arena is essentially already dead.
Last week, the league had to cancel the Winter Classic. It’s nearly impossible to get the Players Association and Bettman into the same room. Negotiations devolve into stalemates. Rounds of talks pass by without improvement.
It’s petty. It’s unacceptable. It’s heartbreaking for fans much more diehard than myself.
This isn’t the story that dragged me in. This isn’t the story I fell in love with.
I want hockey back. I want to wear my five-dollar San Jose Sharks shirt without a hint of saddened nostalgia. I want to play 60 minutes of catch-up as I desperately follow the puck around a laptop screen. I want to cling to the image of the Stanley Cup lifted above the champions in June.
Instead, the stories have evaporated. At this rate, the Cup will gather dust. The locker rooms are empty. The grandstands are silent. There’s no drama, no passion, no underdog to love.
Every other season, fans are witnesses to the story. Fans are bit actors who may not have a hand in the action but certainly dictate the hype and the reaction.
Every other season, fans like me — the ones who live solely for the stories — never run out of material to cherish. Tragedies turn into triumphs. Teams rise and fall. Roller coasters blitz past at lightning speed and nothing remains constant.
But this season we’re a different kind of witness. This season we watched the coaster careen off the tracks to be corroded by rust.
And this is what becomes the unchanged constant.
Contact Annie Gerlach at [email protected]
Comment Policy
Comments should remain on topic, concerning the article or blog post to which they are connected. Brevity is encouraged. Posting under a pseudonym is discouraged, but permitted. The Daily Cal encourages readers to voice their opinions respectfully in regard to the readers, writers and contributors of The Daily Californian. Comments are not pre-moderated, but may be removed if deemed to be in violation of this policy. Click here to read the full comment policy.