As much as we complain about winter, we always get through it.
But the hopes and dreams of a long hockey season?
Now, that is life and death.
Here in Ottawa, spring has reared its dreary, damp head. Skies are gunmetal grey. Rivers are bursting their banks, chock full of March snowmelt and April rain.
The mighty Ottawa Senators are in the playoffs and a community is awakened.
Hockey fans are dusting off Sens car banners and pulling on game sweaters. Never mind that some of them are outdated enough to have names like Fisher and Heatley.
Working people are laying down dollars for ticket packages to ensure they get playoff tix for the upcoming series with the Carolina Hurricanes. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is set to launch the ‘Red Mile’ on Elgin Street, a playoff party street before, during and after games.
Yes, the Senators survived the strangest season in their history and have come out the other side.
Rumours of their death were greatly exaggerated.
And if Ottawa players think they bear marks from a tumultuous journey from the depths of the Eastern Conference into a top-eight position in April… well, they should check out their fans. They bear scars you can’t see. Scars of emotion and trauma.
The most besotted among them, the hopeless cases, admitted “addicts,” these you will find on social media. Today they’re dancing in the streets. Because all is well that ends well.
For now, they love their team again, the same team they loved to hate a few months back. Fans are nothing if not fickle. Prone to wild swings of mood and verbiage.
Three months ago, the best of them thought the worst about their Sennies.
That Brady Tkachuk would soon be playing elsewhere, looking for a Stanley Cup from some American venue.
That the Sens needed a new goalie. Fast.
That the cause was beyond hopeless. Management, coaching, the penalty kill and missed chances. Everything was ripe to get ripped.
For fun, Senators media czar Ian Mendes and staffers Dan Chisholm and Ben Coles assembled a video collage of exasperated January posts from Sens fans and media, meshed with the NHL East standings at the time.
“Roll the ugliness,” as Steve Martin said in The Jerk, before watching a film of misery designed to win his charitable dollars.
The vid was titled, ‘It’s been a long road.’
The Sens are on “life support,” read one post on X.
“They’re now in second-last place in the Eastern Conference.”
“It’s officially over if they blow this game to the Preds.” (They lost. It wasn’t over.)
Our favourite Martian, one of the edgier voices on the X platform, perhaps put it best about this roller-coaster season.
“Every loss feels like they’re toast and every win feels like they could win the Cup.”
Our prolific and mercurial Sens Talk representative suffered greatly.
“I’m broken mentally and emotionally,” he wrote. It was like dealing with an addiction, he confessed.
“I think I’m out and they lure me back in.”
Isn’t that the essence of sports fandom? When you’re out you’re mad and when you’re in, you’re all in.
As the negativity continued to roll on this short video on the Senators site — “The worst goalie and the worst PK… zero urgency, zero accountability… ” the clip wraps up with a peek at the standings of last week, showing the Senators in the first Wild Card spot. (They would later settle into WC2).
And this message: “X didn’t like us. Now we like X.”
The exercise was a decent summation of the wild swings of sporting passion. Let’s face it. There hasn’t been a wilder ride for a Senators team, except for perhaps the famous Hamburglar run of 2015. That team was further out of a spot, even later in the season, around Feb. 18.
Looking back, that was more of a miracle run, sparked by a goaltender with zero pedigree but a big heart and a streak of luck and fine play.
This season was far more frustrating because the Senators bore expectations and found ways to lose. Unlike 2015 when injuries knocked out Ottawa’s starting two goalies, the Sens had a starter with a pedigree, Linus Ullmark, but with admitted struggles on and off the ice.
In the end, his second-half turnaround mirrored that of his team. Together they enter the post-season on a high.
Rather than 2015, the depth of this team reminds us more of the 2017 club that surged to the Eastern Conference final behind the goaltending of Craig Anderson.
The systems play of this Senators group is reminiscent of the Jacques Martin teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Martin always professed defence first and from that could spring an offensive attack led by Jason Spezza, Daniel Alfredsson and Heatley.
Today, Alfredsson is coaching a power play that is ranked eighth in the league. The penalty kill sits far lower but is vastly improved — sixth best since Mike Yeo took over coaching the unit in late January.
Evidence of how well this team can smother an enemy offence was demonstrated when Ottawa’s defence was racked with injuries and yet still won key games down the stretch.
There was plenty of talk that the Senators out-Caned the Canes with their game.
That notion will be put to the test in this first-round matchup.
The Hurricanes have more playoff experience.
The Senators have more offensive upside.
It isn’t hard to find a pundit willing to call the Senators a “sleeping giant” and the team “no one wants to face.” Or that a clear path exists through Pennsylvania to the Eastern Conference Final.
First, they need to win their first playoff series since 2017.
The proof will play out, beginning in Raleigh in a rink that has not been kind to the visiting Senators over the years.
Then it’s back here for Games 3 and 4, the second year in a row of playoff fever in Ottawa.
In a couple of weeks time, we can check the pulse of the noisiest fans on social media.
The ones who love this team so much they will live and die with the series outcome.
Oh, look. The sun has emerged. Just in time for playoff hockey.