For as long as I live, I’ll never forget The Moment…
Sure, up until that fateful moment in the Blue Jackets’ inaugural season, I considered myself a hockey fan. Having been a life-long fan of Denver’s pro sports teams – I celebrate John Elway’s entire catalog – I leapt onto the Avalanche bandwagon in 1995-96, and enjoyed the Stanley Cup championship season from afar in rural Northwest Ohio. I played street hockey with a tennis ball and a stick my dad bought me at Ace Hardware, and even earned a badge of honor after needing stitches to close a high-sticking wound above my left eye. I used fast-food napkins, athletic tape, and a borrowed helmet to triage that situation, and kept playing; and felt as if I at least then partially understood what it was like to be a hockey tough-guy.
But it wasn’t until The Moment in November 2000 that my love-affair with hockey would truly begin. I was watching my new team – my hometown team – the Columbus Blue Jackets take the ice in their shiny new arena…with their shiny new uniforms…with the – what the heck is that, a lime green bug on their shoulders?!? Still, I couldn’t wait to don my newly-acquired Ron Tugnutt jersey and get out to support the team. This was the big-time….a major professional sports franchise in our over-sized college town, and a chance to see the best hockey players in the world skating in my own back yard. Since the Vancouver Canucks were in town, “O Canada” would precede “The Star-Spangled Banner”….it doesn’t get any more hockey than that. This was going to be epic…
The first period came and went without any scoring; and almost half of the second period had passed scoreless as well when the Jackets’ Tyler Wright took a slashing penalty. The Canucks were about to go on a second power play in just a couple minutes, with a golden chance to grab the lead. But that’s not the way it would happen.
The Moment came seven-and-a-half minutes into the second period, with the Blue Jackets on the penalty kill. Somehow Columbus’ Jamie Pushor ended up racing towards the Vancouver net – which happened to be directly in front of my seat – and depositing the puck for a short-handed goal and the first lead of the night. In an instant it was absolute mayhem in Nationwide Arena! It remains one of the loudest and most exciting moments I’ve ever experienced first-hand as a sports fan, with the crowd of 16,000+ losing their collective minds over this most improbable of feats. We screamed and jumped in the aisles of Nationwide, we high-fived perfect strangers, we reveled in The Moment. Our upstart team, The Little Engine That Could, had slapped the face of those bullies from Western Canada and seized control of the game. Yes, my friends, this was going to be a good night!
And for me, that was all it took. It was The Moment when this game of funny-talking Canadians and funny-named Europeans was woven into the fabric of my being. I mean, so what if play stops in a seemingly-arbitrary fashion for ‘icing’ and ‘two-line passes,’ right? Nothing could diminish the intoxicating excitement of The Moment. It was The Moment in which the Union Blue began to run in my veins alongside the Scarlet and Gray of my alma mater….which those who know me, know is not a statement I make lightly.
I imagine that most die-hard hockey fans have a similar moment in their history, which represents the point when the game wasn’t just a game anymore. (For that matter, this isn’t a hockey-exclusive phenomenon….ask me sometime about watching Eddie George tear through the Purdue defense like a wet paper bag in Ohio Stadium, and I’ll tell you about knowing from that moment forward I absolutely had to become an Ohio State Buckeye.) Heck, it’s not even unreasonable to think that there may have been others in Columbus on that November night who shared The Moment with me; and who, like me, have spent the past 11 years trying to feed their insatiable craving for Blue Jackets hockey.
Prologue
So you’re probably wondering how it ended, right? How many more goals did the Jackets score that night against Vancouver? How badly did they hand it to the Canucks by the time the smoke had all cleared? How raging were the post-game parties in the Arena District after that epic victory?
Well, folks, therein lies the irony of The Moment, and the theme that has defined so many subsequent moments in the history of this die-hard CBJ fan. After scoring the shortie and jumping out to the 1-0 lead, the Blue Jackets would give up six (six!) unanswered goals in dropping a 6-1 decision to the Canucks. After the one shining Moment, the hometown team became a helpless little mouse being pawed and chomped by the big, bad Vancouver alley cat. In the evening’s cruelest moment, Vancouver’s Markus Naslund would tally a short-handed goal of his own before the second period ended – his second goal of the night, in fact – to eclipse the lone accomplishment of the home team.
But like that one solid tee-shot amidst a day of bogeys so multiple they have no common prefixes (sextuple?), The Moment keeps me coming back. It is The Moment which makes it impossible to escape the grip of the game, of the team, of the experience. It keeps me riding the roller-coaster of the highs and lows.
So, so many lows. But those are stories for another day….for now, let’s just enjoy The Moment.