It’s a great year for the Toronto faithful, according to columnist Mike Finigan.
Great year for the faithful, both present and departed
What. Two, three more years? If that? After 50 years, pfft, I can do that standing on my head!
The Red Sox waited. The Cubs waited.
The Leafs. Oh boy. Listen! Hear that? That’s the sound of nobody laughing anymore.
As I write this column, on Thursday, April 20, the Leafs and Caps are tied at two games apiece. By Monday, if you’re reading this now – oi. I’m getting dizzy. The series could be over or we’re going to Game 7. (What? I’m not my aunt Madame X the fortuneteller who once told me I was going to Toronto and I should not go, so I didn’t).
And you know what I like best about these playoffs and this whole entire flipping year? That Kuznetsov laughed. In game two. He scored and then proceeded to mock, taunt and laugh at our Leafs.
And then what happened? We, pardon me, beat the snot out of Kuznetsov.
Next night? He scores and goes into this Kung Fu stance from “Karate Kid.”
And then what happened? We beat the snot out of Kuznetsov.
If I’m the Caps’ coach, I’m in the dressing room throwing the garbage can at him. “What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at!?”
It’s joy in Mudville, folks. Every flipping game we’re watching the Leafs play is Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. Win or lose. We’re here. We are young and we own the night. We’re fast, we’re skilled. Our bones are soft. You crush us against the boards and we squirt out like somebody stomping a pack of mustard, and we’re 50 feet down the rink with the puck.
It’s music.
It’s beautiful. But I’m a little sad, too. I think it’s safe to say, that like most Cape Bretoners, when I pick up the paper in the morning, the first thing I turn to is the obituaries. I think it’s a testament to our enduring humanness: everybody
“Me, if I get to Heaven, I hope it’s a lot like here. On a nice Tuesday afternoon in the fall. I’m out hiking. I’ve got a couple sandwiches, a bottle of water. My camera. Wreck Cove or Dominion Beach). I hope those departed Leafs fans sailed off in the eternal glow of hope.”
here knows everybody else, either directly or indirectly. My mother-in-law Cecilia, who has lived here all her life, knows everybody from Sydney Forks to Grand Lake Road and their cousins and their birthdays. And she’s not on Facebook. Facebook schmacebook. Her connections are a million times more complicated and real. I feel sad when I read that so and so, no longer of this world, was a lifelong Leafs fan. And I feel this sadness more keenly now because we’re so close.
I hope they’re all watching from their home in the sky, and they don’t already know who wins the cup this year, for what kind of heaven would that be? (It’s my biggest fear of Heaven, actually. Getting everything you want. You go play hockey and you win every time. Everybody wins, every time. You go for a couple beers after the game and talk about it with breaded shrimp and deep fried zucchinis piled as tall as you are, new tunes from Bob Seger and Led Zeppelin – good stuff like they wrote in their best days. And everybody’s singing your praises, even though they won and you won. No, it’s too complicated. Me, if I get to Heaven, I hope it’s a lot like here. On a nice Tuesday afternoon in the fall. I’m out hiking. I’ve got a couple sandwiches, a bottle of water. My camera. Wreck Cove or Dominion Beach). I hope those departed Leafs fans sailed off in the eternal glow of hope.
If we win, we win. If we lose, then we haven’t not achieved anything. We’ve exceeded our expectations. And like Joey the Lips says in one of my all-time favorite novels and movies “The Commitments,” “this way, it’s poetry.”
I know. There’s no room in hockey for poetry.
But this year…
If it wasn’t poetry, it was something like it.