My First Playoffs

Tonight is the opening game for Nashville’s Quarterfinals Series with Chicago.  I’ve managed to keep myself immersed in work today and not really think about it much.  I haven’t yet read the paper.  I haven’t been to TSN.com or NHL.com.  I can’t yet begin to contemplate the game because doing so will completely distract me from everything else around me.  You see, my first Playoff game ever was special to me in many ways.  There’s nothing like the excitement of Playoff hockey.  It can’t be matched by any other sport.  The Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy in all of sports to capture, and the energy and excitement from the payers and the crowd is unbelievable.

My first Playoff game was in 2004.  The Preds had an unlikely slide into 8^th place and drew Detroit.  After losing the first two games, Nashville brought it home to win two and a row here.  Another loss in Detroit sent it back to Nashville for a potential elimination Game 6.  Preds lost.  I remember grabbing the rally towel they gave out to all the fans and bawling my eyes out.  My mom leaned over and asked, “Are you crying?”  What the hell does it look like I’m doing?!?  On the way out, my intoxicated self yelled some nasty and rude things I don’t remember at a female Detroit fan.  She came after me and I ducked into the bathroom and hid in a stall and cried some more.  On the street, I beat the crap out of the side of a cab with my fists, after he tried turning when we were crossing the street, yelling, “Pedestrians have the right of way asshole!!!”  My Mom told me it wasn’t a good idea for me to drink so much.  She was right.

But April 2004 was amazing for many reasons.  That was the end of my first hockey season where I could legally drink—and I probably overindulged a little too much.  I can distinctly remember a few occasions besides that Playoff game.  I was also a few weeks from graduating Belmont, and had finished up my theses and was winding down my four and a half years there.  I was moving to D.C. for work and grad school in just a few months.  At the time I thought I was saying goodbye to Nashville forever.  I was standing right on the verge of becoming an actual "adult."  Little did we know at the time but that would also be our last hockey game for over a year as the following season (2004-2005) was the lockout year.

So much was going on in my life plus it was spring and the weather was great, I was drunk and it was my first Playoff series.  Every time Playoffs come around it takes me back to that time and place in my life, which just adds to the electrifying feeling of it all.  Its sports excitement, coupled with intense emotions, good and bad memories, nostalgia and alcohol that lives in the pit of my stomach until the horn blows on the final game.

Back then I lived and breathed Preds hockey.  I still do, but now I follow the league as a whole and know more about the sport.  Back then I was just a budding hockey fan, but a full-fledged Preds fan.  I had been attending games since their first season and regularly for the previous three years.  My growing interest in and knowledge of hockey hasn’t taken any of the magic out of the Playoffs for me, even though my season doesn’t necessarily end when the Preds’ season does—like it did back then.  But tonight is the opening night of Playoffs (even though it isn’t a home game) and I can feel that energy starting to well up in my gut.