There is a bittersweet truth that is revealed in HBO’s 2001 "Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team," but I can’t put it in a single sentence. I’m not so laconic.
Anyone who has said goodbye to anyone on graduation day, or the last day of summer camp or even when your business closes understands. There is always that final time everyone is in the room.
It’s like a freight train cranking towards a cinder block wall at 150 miles per hour. The wall will always come at it at that speed. The train will hit it. Go through it. And it will fade away at 150 miles per hour.
For the sake of brevity let’s ignore how the Las Vegas Wranglers 2007-08 team of coaches and players all managed to be riders on this train. Let’s save, for another time, the personalities each packed in their luggage. And let’s not try to analyze how this particular mix of baggage combined to offer Las Vegas sports fans a 150- mile-per-hour ride to the ECHL Kelly Cup Championship Series.
The obvious assumption is that this mix was something different and it worked. Winners never say “we didn’t have chemistry.” These guys lived the cliché. With that we can move to the end of the tale.
After a couple million dollars, work, adjustments, injuries, work, call-ups, analysis, adjustments, injuries and another million dollars more the Wranglers dropped Game Six of the Kelly Cup Finals, and thus, their right to physically abuse the Kelly Cup trophy – in the finest of hockey traditions – for the summer of 2008.
Suddenly, 150 miles per hour felt like 250 miles per hour by virtue of the wall -- an inevitable and intractable object -- that lay ahead. It’s the very wall no one looked up to see approaching because their noses were down, working on the “now.”
But it was there, bearing down. A first look came only after a loss in Game Six. And then, quickly, a shower. The hotel room. A night out. A flight to Las Vegas. Packing away the gear. Loading stuff into a car to go wherever home is. Another night out. One last round of golf with the guys. And then ...
Goodbye.
"Do You Believe in Miracles?" reminds us that there is always at least one guy missing at the reunion. It’s the beginning of the next chapter, “Where are they now.” A couple guys sign in Europe. A guy retires. An assistant coach accepts a much- deserved head coaching job in Kansas. But it also reminds us to enjoy the ride, for if a farewell is this significant, then everything that led to it must be irreplaceable.
But these guys, in the waning hours of a mission shared, knew this is the end of more than just a season.
Fans want to say goodbye to their heroes and give them deserving sendoffs. Perhaps the media would like one more media day. Maybe the front office wants to shake their hands and thank them for all they’ve done. But in the end it was their war. True, the fans, media and front office felt every hit. We were fortunate enough to get the punch of adrenaline and emotion by being fans. But we were also afforded a pardon from carrying the bruises that remain. That’s why we’re fans and they play.
A championship would have extended their days in Las Vegas – as a team – a day or two. There would have been the kind of emotion they would want to share with the public, media and front office. That, poetically, comes with winning.
But for those who finish second farewells are quiet and as solitary as 20 guys can be. It’s their exclusive family. Their last round of golf. Their goodbyes. It’s personal. It’s private. It’s forever.
It’s as it should be.
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