Islands
Connected
December 2, 2010 Capitals 1 @ Stars 2
December 4, 2010 Thrashers 3 @ Capitals 1
December 6, 2010 Leafs 5 @ Capitals 4 (SO)
December 9, 2010 Panthers 3 @ Capitals 0
December 11, 2010 Avalanche 3 @ Capitals 2
December 12, 2010 Capitals 0 @ Rangers 7
December 15, 2010 Ducks 2 @ Capitals 1(OT)
December 18, 2010 Capitals 2 @ Bruins 3
December 19, 2010 Capitals 3 @ Senators 2
December 21, 2010 Devils 1@ Capitals 5
December 23, 2010 Penguins 3 @ Capitals 2 (SO)
December 26, 2010 Capitals 3 @ Hurricanes 2
December 28, 2010 Canadiens 0 @ Capitals 3
It was the biggest party I’d ever been to. The crowd energy at Heinz Field was absolutely electric. The mini cheering section for Mike and Nicky, specifically, may have been small but the Capitals cheering section wasn’t. There were 70 thousand people in the stands. Red and white jerseys were peppered throughout the stadium with the masses of Penguins fan apparel. The Caps’ friends and family were in several rows spread out across an aisle in the main concourse, near the goal line where they shot twice. Ovi got the first big hit of the game and we cheered obnoxiously loud.
Every hit, every scoring opportunity, every big save was met with a roar from the crowd. I was seated between Lindsay and Stoffe. We were all very much into the game from the start, barely speaking to each other unless there was a stoppage in play or a media timeout. There were no goals scored in the first period, but Mike did take a penalty and there was a fight. All 70 thousand in attendance got up out of their seats to see Erskine and Rupp exchange rights.
During the first intermission, Lindsay and I chatted in our seats while the guys went to get concessions. The lines were outrageously long and they barely made it back in time for the faceoff to begin the second period. We stood as everyone that had vacated our row took their seats again. One of Nicky’s friends, Victor, from across the Atlantic, placed a beer in my hand as he walked down the aisle. Stoffe was holding a whole cup tray of beers as he took his seat beside me. There were tiny droplets of rain sprinkling from the clouds overhead.
“Is the rain bad for the players?” I asked as he handed me my change for my beer. Nicky’s brother was a defenseman who’d just retired from playing hockey in Europe. I figured that out of our group he’d know the most about ice surfaces.
“I think is okay for right now,” Stoffe replied. “Probably it affects how the puck moves more than the players.”
I nodded.
“I’m not absolutely sure,” he added. “I never played an outdoor game like this.”
The second period, of course, was always when the teams’ defensive zone was further from their bench. Our place in the stands gave us a great view of the work Semyon Varlamov did in his crease throughout the period. It wasn’t always clear which players were on the ice because we were further away than we would be at an arena, but there was no way to miss when Nicky’s line was there: Ovi was unmistakable because the way he skated was uniquely his own.
So we knew right away who was on the ice when Evgeni Malkin got on a breakaway off a pass from Kris Letang. He skated in hard toward Varly and put the puck in the net, near post, in one fluid motion. The stadium went wild and I searched for the reaction of #19 in white on the ice. There was no cheering in our section, only groaning and arms folding over chests.
“Fuck you, Geno,” Lindsay said bitterly beside me as the Penguins fans began waving their terrible towels.
It was a reference to one of the HBO episodes, something that one of Malkin’s own teammates said to him in passing. On her other side, Jeff chuckled. He was a Penguins fan even though he was disguised in his Green jersey. He probably wasn’t too disappointed.
“Damn it,” Stoffe muttered. He spoke a few words in Swedish to Victor and took a large swig of his beer.
The stadium announcer announced Malkin’s goal as play resumed. I sighed and shook my head, leaning back in my seat. The Caps had looked like the more dominant team before that unlucky bounce. To add insult to injury, Brooks Laich was called for goaltender interference less than a minute later. A Penguin definitely helped ‘guide’ him into Fleury’s crease, but Brooks sat for two minutes just the same.
The hockey gods and the Caps’ hard work stepped in to even things out when the Penguins were given a penalty for holding. Even after the Malkin goal and through the kill of Brooks’ penalty, the Caps kept their composure. They stuck to their coach’s game plan and were still outplaying the opposition. Bruce Boudreau’s first power play unit went to work. Nicky won the faceoff to his man at the point and their unit began their cycle, everyone moving into position.
Nicky controlled the movement of the puck down low to Fleury’s left. He received a pass from Perrault and surveyed his options, making a decision in no more than a second to make a centering pass as Mike was moving in. Mike fell as he was trying to take a shot on goal and a Penguin fell on top of him. The puck got lost in the pile as bodies crowded around the crease. It looked like all the Caps in front were trying to jam it into the net with their sticks: Nicky and both Mikes—Green and Knuble.
From my vantage point, I never even saw the puck go in. But it did. I saw all the men on the ice in the white jerseys raise their arms and I heard them shout in celebration, even from that far away. They gathered together against the glass and our cheering section was up on its feet. The sound in the stadium was a collective sigh from the home crowd over our celebration. Because we were seated on the opposite end of where the play had happened, we weren’t even sure who the goal scorer was right away. There were high fives all around, not just between friends in our own rows, but those in front and behind us, too.
The stadium announcer was much more monotone as he informed the audience it was Mike Knuble’s goal. A few rows down and across the aisle, I saw and heard kids jumping up and down at the announcement; I assumed he was their dad. Stoffe and I grinned at each other with the announcement of the assists: Nicky got the primary and, not surprisingly, his best friend Greenie picked up the secondary. I shook Stoffe’s shoulder a few times, giggling, then pounded fists with Lindsay and Jeff.
Our section cheered even louder when Fleury made a gaffe. The sliding puck landed in the trapezoid. He went back to retrieve it and leaving his crease would be his biggest regret of the night. Jojo beat him there and quickly made a centering pass to the front of the empty net. All Eric Fehr had to do was tap it in.
In the rows of Caps family and friends, we were up on our feet in a hurry. It was obviously what we hoped for, but it felt surreal once it actually happened. The men we were supporting, the Washington Capitals, the visiting team, were up by a goal in the Winter Classic in Pittsburgh. The goal completely changed the energy in the building.
The home team fans were quiet, and we were quiet too once the puck dropped at the center dot. We were well aware that in hockey no lead—especially a one-goal lead—was a safe lead. Just a few minutes after Fehr’s goal, the puck did end up in the back of the net behind Varly. Mike Rupp’s would-be goal was immediately waved off by the official because of incidental contact with Varly that prevented the Russian tender from being able to make a save. We sighed in relief as the Caps kept their lead.
There was a scary moment on the ice behind the play before the second period ended. David Steckel and Sidney Crosby were both looking in different directions when they collided. As Steckel was trying to go up ice, Crosby ended up taking a blindside hit to the head. He went down hard to the ice and I cringed at the impact of what looked like an unintentional shoulder from Steckel. Thankfully, it wasn’t something that would hinder him and take him out for the rest of the game. He looked a little shaken up but was able to get back to the bench and made his way down the carpet to his team’s locker room of his own accord.
“I like the way the Caps stuck to their game in that period. I think they’re going to take this one,” Jeff spoke to our group during the last intermission. “Your guys’ thoughts?”
“I’m thinking it ends in a nail biter,” Lindsay answered her fiancé first. “Shootout.”
“I like what Varly’s shown, and I think he has the upper hand after Fleury’s mistake,” was my answer. “I say no more goals and Varly squeaks out the ‘W’.”
Jeff leaned forward in his seat. “What about you, Stoffe?”
“I’m with Lindsay. I say shootout,” Stoffe responded. “Sasha will get shootout winner.”
None of us were even close to being right.
In the third period, the sprinkles of rain were a constant downpour. The goalies even had to switch sides an extra time. Both Ovi and Sid ended their nights without points and in the minus column. Varly continued what he’d been doing, keeping his team’s lead. We got to celebrate one more goal when Fehr scored his second of the night. Rachel was sitting in the row in front of me, and everyone was patting her on the shoulder and congratulating her for her husband’s goal. I could only imagine that Pierre McGuire was telling the national television audience where Fehr played his major junior hockey up in Canada as a teenager.
The game ended in dramatic fashion. Ovi had a goal disallowed because he made contact with Fleury in Gretzky’s office. With 0.8 seconds left on the clock, there was pushing and shoving on the ice. None of it mattered. In the stands, in the row of Green and Bäckström support, we were on our feet and arm in arm, looking forward to the after party on a 3-1 win.
I couldn’t see Nicky in the mess of white jerseys that gathered on the ice once the time ran out. But I didn’t have to. I reveled in the shared experience I had with everyone around me. Our support for the team during the game was unwavering from start to finish, and that was what made the victory so much sweeter. On the first day of the year away from home, I felt like I was part of something. I felt like I was connected to the friends and families around me. The team was all of us, not just the rostered players in their throwback jerseys on the ice.
I felt the same two hours later during the after party in one of the banquet halls at the team hotel. It was chaotic. There were kids running around. There were outbursts of loud laughter from different parts of the room. There was a lot of hugging and raising of glasses. The movement in the room was constant. No one ever stayed in one place for too long—everyone celebrating with everyone.
As a result, I had a lot of small conversations with a bunch of different people. But small conversations didn’t mean small talk. The name of my boyfriend wasn’t the end all, be all. They seemed genuinely interested in finding out a bit about me.
At some point during the night, I was sitting at one of the tables adorned in white cloth with Lindsay. She and Jeff had been so nice to me since meeting me at dinner the night before. They were Mike’s friends but they were like my own surrogate friends for grand event in Pittsburgh. Lindsay and I were both on our phones, using the Facebook mobile application to search for each other so we could be virtual friends, too. She and Jeff were headed to the airport much earlier than me so I wouldn’t be seeing them the next day.
“You’ve never been to Calgary, right?” Lindsay wondered.
“Nope.” I found her profile easily and set my phone down on the table once I sent the request. “But I heard it’s a lot like Denver – high altitude and harshly dry.”
“Have you heard of The Stampede?”
“You mean The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth?” I stressed the event’s tagline. “Of course.”
There were a few things Colorado and Alberta had in common besides the Rocky Mountains and thin air. An appreciation for competitive rodeo was certainly one of them.
“Maybe Mike will finally convince Nicky to make it out for the Stampede this summer,” she said. “It would be awesome to see both of you there.”
I opened my mouth to speak but quickly shut it again. The mention of my boyfriend’s name prompted me to look around the room. My eyes searched for him in the large banquet hall, my head still. When I found him, he was already looking at me. He was with his brother and a teammate, standing off to the side a few feet from the fondue stand. Nicky raised his glass ever so slightly in my direction. A grin spread out on my lips as I tipped my glass to him.
In total, Nicky and I had probably spent no more than ten minutes together at the party. He didn’t have to be glued to my side for me to be okay or have a good time. We were both busy mingling with other people. All on my own, I was fitting in.
“Maybe,” I finally answered Lindsay.
My kneejerk reaction would have been to remind Lindsay that my relationship with Nicky had only been official for a couple of days. But that just wasn’t true. We’d been building since the first day we met. Seeing him across the room like that was all I needed for a grand realization. I didn’t worry. I wasn’t even rattled that Lindsay was suggesting something months into the future. I was comfortable in Nicky’s world.
December 4, 2010 Thrashers 3 @ Capitals 1
December 6, 2010 Leafs 5 @ Capitals 4 (SO)
December 9, 2010 Panthers 3 @ Capitals 0
December 11, 2010 Avalanche 3 @ Capitals 2
December 12, 2010 Capitals 0 @ Rangers 7
December 15, 2010 Ducks 2 @ Capitals 1(OT)
December 18, 2010 Capitals 2 @ Bruins 3
December 19, 2010 Capitals 3 @ Senators 2
December 21, 2010 Devils 1@ Capitals 5
December 23, 2010 Penguins 3 @ Capitals 2 (SO)
December 26, 2010 Capitals 3 @ Hurricanes 2
December 28, 2010 Canadiens 0 @ Capitals 3
It was the biggest party I’d ever been to. The crowd energy at Heinz Field was absolutely electric. The mini cheering section for Mike and Nicky, specifically, may have been small but the Capitals cheering section wasn’t. There were 70 thousand people in the stands. Red and white jerseys were peppered throughout the stadium with the masses of Penguins fan apparel. The Caps’ friends and family were in several rows spread out across an aisle in the main concourse, near the goal line where they shot twice. Ovi got the first big hit of the game and we cheered obnoxiously loud.
Every hit, every scoring opportunity, every big save was met with a roar from the crowd. I was seated between Lindsay and Stoffe. We were all very much into the game from the start, barely speaking to each other unless there was a stoppage in play or a media timeout. There were no goals scored in the first period, but Mike did take a penalty and there was a fight. All 70 thousand in attendance got up out of their seats to see Erskine and Rupp exchange rights.
During the first intermission, Lindsay and I chatted in our seats while the guys went to get concessions. The lines were outrageously long and they barely made it back in time for the faceoff to begin the second period. We stood as everyone that had vacated our row took their seats again. One of Nicky’s friends, Victor, from across the Atlantic, placed a beer in my hand as he walked down the aisle. Stoffe was holding a whole cup tray of beers as he took his seat beside me. There were tiny droplets of rain sprinkling from the clouds overhead.
“Is the rain bad for the players?” I asked as he handed me my change for my beer. Nicky’s brother was a defenseman who’d just retired from playing hockey in Europe. I figured that out of our group he’d know the most about ice surfaces.
“I think is okay for right now,” Stoffe replied. “Probably it affects how the puck moves more than the players.”
I nodded.
“I’m not absolutely sure,” he added. “I never played an outdoor game like this.”
The second period, of course, was always when the teams’ defensive zone was further from their bench. Our place in the stands gave us a great view of the work Semyon Varlamov did in his crease throughout the period. It wasn’t always clear which players were on the ice because we were further away than we would be at an arena, but there was no way to miss when Nicky’s line was there: Ovi was unmistakable because the way he skated was uniquely his own.
So we knew right away who was on the ice when Evgeni Malkin got on a breakaway off a pass from Kris Letang. He skated in hard toward Varly and put the puck in the net, near post, in one fluid motion. The stadium went wild and I searched for the reaction of #19 in white on the ice. There was no cheering in our section, only groaning and arms folding over chests.
“Fuck you, Geno,” Lindsay said bitterly beside me as the Penguins fans began waving their terrible towels.
It was a reference to one of the HBO episodes, something that one of Malkin’s own teammates said to him in passing. On her other side, Jeff chuckled. He was a Penguins fan even though he was disguised in his Green jersey. He probably wasn’t too disappointed.
“Damn it,” Stoffe muttered. He spoke a few words in Swedish to Victor and took a large swig of his beer.
The stadium announcer announced Malkin’s goal as play resumed. I sighed and shook my head, leaning back in my seat. The Caps had looked like the more dominant team before that unlucky bounce. To add insult to injury, Brooks Laich was called for goaltender interference less than a minute later. A Penguin definitely helped ‘guide’ him into Fleury’s crease, but Brooks sat for two minutes just the same.
The hockey gods and the Caps’ hard work stepped in to even things out when the Penguins were given a penalty for holding. Even after the Malkin goal and through the kill of Brooks’ penalty, the Caps kept their composure. They stuck to their coach’s game plan and were still outplaying the opposition. Bruce Boudreau’s first power play unit went to work. Nicky won the faceoff to his man at the point and their unit began their cycle, everyone moving into position.
Nicky controlled the movement of the puck down low to Fleury’s left. He received a pass from Perrault and surveyed his options, making a decision in no more than a second to make a centering pass as Mike was moving in. Mike fell as he was trying to take a shot on goal and a Penguin fell on top of him. The puck got lost in the pile as bodies crowded around the crease. It looked like all the Caps in front were trying to jam it into the net with their sticks: Nicky and both Mikes—Green and Knuble.
From my vantage point, I never even saw the puck go in. But it did. I saw all the men on the ice in the white jerseys raise their arms and I heard them shout in celebration, even from that far away. They gathered together against the glass and our cheering section was up on its feet. The sound in the stadium was a collective sigh from the home crowd over our celebration. Because we were seated on the opposite end of where the play had happened, we weren’t even sure who the goal scorer was right away. There were high fives all around, not just between friends in our own rows, but those in front and behind us, too.
The stadium announcer was much more monotone as he informed the audience it was Mike Knuble’s goal. A few rows down and across the aisle, I saw and heard kids jumping up and down at the announcement; I assumed he was their dad. Stoffe and I grinned at each other with the announcement of the assists: Nicky got the primary and, not surprisingly, his best friend Greenie picked up the secondary. I shook Stoffe’s shoulder a few times, giggling, then pounded fists with Lindsay and Jeff.
Our section cheered even louder when Fleury made a gaffe. The sliding puck landed in the trapezoid. He went back to retrieve it and leaving his crease would be his biggest regret of the night. Jojo beat him there and quickly made a centering pass to the front of the empty net. All Eric Fehr had to do was tap it in.
In the rows of Caps family and friends, we were up on our feet in a hurry. It was obviously what we hoped for, but it felt surreal once it actually happened. The men we were supporting, the Washington Capitals, the visiting team, were up by a goal in the Winter Classic in Pittsburgh. The goal completely changed the energy in the building.
The home team fans were quiet, and we were quiet too once the puck dropped at the center dot. We were well aware that in hockey no lead—especially a one-goal lead—was a safe lead. Just a few minutes after Fehr’s goal, the puck did end up in the back of the net behind Varly. Mike Rupp’s would-be goal was immediately waved off by the official because of incidental contact with Varly that prevented the Russian tender from being able to make a save. We sighed in relief as the Caps kept their lead.
There was a scary moment on the ice behind the play before the second period ended. David Steckel and Sidney Crosby were both looking in different directions when they collided. As Steckel was trying to go up ice, Crosby ended up taking a blindside hit to the head. He went down hard to the ice and I cringed at the impact of what looked like an unintentional shoulder from Steckel. Thankfully, it wasn’t something that would hinder him and take him out for the rest of the game. He looked a little shaken up but was able to get back to the bench and made his way down the carpet to his team’s locker room of his own accord.
“I like the way the Caps stuck to their game in that period. I think they’re going to take this one,” Jeff spoke to our group during the last intermission. “Your guys’ thoughts?”
“I’m thinking it ends in a nail biter,” Lindsay answered her fiancé first. “Shootout.”
“I like what Varly’s shown, and I think he has the upper hand after Fleury’s mistake,” was my answer. “I say no more goals and Varly squeaks out the ‘W’.”
Jeff leaned forward in his seat. “What about you, Stoffe?”
“I’m with Lindsay. I say shootout,” Stoffe responded. “Sasha will get shootout winner.”
None of us were even close to being right.
In the third period, the sprinkles of rain were a constant downpour. The goalies even had to switch sides an extra time. Both Ovi and Sid ended their nights without points and in the minus column. Varly continued what he’d been doing, keeping his team’s lead. We got to celebrate one more goal when Fehr scored his second of the night. Rachel was sitting in the row in front of me, and everyone was patting her on the shoulder and congratulating her for her husband’s goal. I could only imagine that Pierre McGuire was telling the national television audience where Fehr played his major junior hockey up in Canada as a teenager.
The game ended in dramatic fashion. Ovi had a goal disallowed because he made contact with Fleury in Gretzky’s office. With 0.8 seconds left on the clock, there was pushing and shoving on the ice. None of it mattered. In the stands, in the row of Green and Bäckström support, we were on our feet and arm in arm, looking forward to the after party on a 3-1 win.
I couldn’t see Nicky in the mess of white jerseys that gathered on the ice once the time ran out. But I didn’t have to. I reveled in the shared experience I had with everyone around me. Our support for the team during the game was unwavering from start to finish, and that was what made the victory so much sweeter. On the first day of the year away from home, I felt like I was part of something. I felt like I was connected to the friends and families around me. The team was all of us, not just the rostered players in their throwback jerseys on the ice.
I felt the same two hours later during the after party in one of the banquet halls at the team hotel. It was chaotic. There were kids running around. There were outbursts of loud laughter from different parts of the room. There was a lot of hugging and raising of glasses. The movement in the room was constant. No one ever stayed in one place for too long—everyone celebrating with everyone.
As a result, I had a lot of small conversations with a bunch of different people. But small conversations didn’t mean small talk. The name of my boyfriend wasn’t the end all, be all. They seemed genuinely interested in finding out a bit about me.
At some point during the night, I was sitting at one of the tables adorned in white cloth with Lindsay. She and Jeff had been so nice to me since meeting me at dinner the night before. They were Mike’s friends but they were like my own surrogate friends for grand event in Pittsburgh. Lindsay and I were both on our phones, using the Facebook mobile application to search for each other so we could be virtual friends, too. She and Jeff were headed to the airport much earlier than me so I wouldn’t be seeing them the next day.
“You’ve never been to Calgary, right?” Lindsay wondered.
“Nope.” I found her profile easily and set my phone down on the table once I sent the request. “But I heard it’s a lot like Denver – high altitude and harshly dry.”
“Have you heard of The Stampede?”
“You mean The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth?” I stressed the event’s tagline. “Of course.”
There were a few things Colorado and Alberta had in common besides the Rocky Mountains and thin air. An appreciation for competitive rodeo was certainly one of them.
“Maybe Mike will finally convince Nicky to make it out for the Stampede this summer,” she said. “It would be awesome to see both of you there.”
I opened my mouth to speak but quickly shut it again. The mention of my boyfriend’s name prompted me to look around the room. My eyes searched for him in the large banquet hall, my head still. When I found him, he was already looking at me. He was with his brother and a teammate, standing off to the side a few feet from the fondue stand. Nicky raised his glass ever so slightly in my direction. A grin spread out on my lips as I tipped my glass to him.
In total, Nicky and I had probably spent no more than ten minutes together at the party. He didn’t have to be glued to my side for me to be okay or have a good time. We were both busy mingling with other people. All on my own, I was fitting in.
“Maybe,” I finally answered Lindsay.
My kneejerk reaction would have been to remind Lindsay that my relationship with Nicky had only been official for a couple of days. But that just wasn’t true. We’d been building since the first day we met. Seeing him across the room like that was all I needed for a grand realization. I didn’t worry. I wasn’t even rattled that Lindsay was suggesting something months into the future. I was comfortable in Nicky’s world.
Notes
I just want to make it very clear that this is Erin--the character's--recount of how the game went, not my own. I didn't want to include the paragraph about the Steckel hit on Crosby since it has no significance to the story, but it is significant to that Winter Classic and to the NHL shortly after. Keeping in mind the way that concussions have been dealt with in the league since then, and keeping in mind Nicky's concussion last season, I thought it would be irresponsible to not even acknowledge it in this chapter. But I could only write it the way I thought Erin would have seen it, in the stadium, from far away. Remember, Crosby did return to finish the Winter Classic and went on to play another game after that before being out for the rest of the season. There's no way Erin could have known how big a deal it was if he was back for the start of the third period.Thank you so much to everyone for your continued reading of the story! I hope that I can convince you to check out the next hockey story that I'll be posting. The link to the summary page is right here if you want to subscribe for when the ball gets rolling. You can click on the info tab to see who the story involves or you can wait for me to post the prologue. It will be up at the same time that I post the next chapter for this one. :)
Great story!
11/16/18