Double OT In A Game 7 Should Not Be For Human Consumption
If it seems like a lot, you have to understand that I had been on Twitch for over 4 hours straight at that point literally sweating my dick off while being terrified of having my heart ripped out at any single second. The Blues were overwhelming the Stars and at one point were outshooting them something like 27-3 since the first period ended. There are no amount of shots that add up to a goal and ANY SECOND it was on the verge of being over. Look at how close Jamie Benn came to putting the Stars through to the Western Conference Final.
The entire time I just kept trying to block it out of my mind and not think about what it would look like if they lost. Every single rush Dallas had, I was terrified of a stupid bounce to go off of somebody’s foot and trickle in and there to be nothing left to do. No more dances, no more shirts, no more calling my Dad on the morning of games to get excited and talk about what was going to happen. I was confident in this team because they have done it time and time again, but when you are in Game 7 OT, there isn’t always a rhyme or reason to what happens next. Sometimes outshooting a team 50-26 makes you think you’re going to lose in OT even MORE because the “stolen game” meter starts to soar. Ben Bishop was standing on his head and the narrative of him beating his hometown team with a heroic performance seemed like something that was very possibly about to happen.
At the end of the day it is ALL WORTH IT when the puck crosses the line. All of the dread of a potential heartbreak were erased in a single millisecond. That doesn’t mean it was healthy though. I didn’t go to sleep until legitimately 5AM. It was torture the entire time and I won’t engage in revisionist history by calling it “fun” just because the Blues ended up winning. Why did I care so much? Its not just a hockey game, its an entire city coming together in a collective effort to be apart of something historic. Its all the families and fathers and sons that have watched the Blues for 5+ decades now all hoping for the same miracle. As a Blues fan for my entire life, let me tell you that these type of moments don’t come around nonstop every single year. And today, that miracle is still breathing. God bless the Big Rig!
