The Sudden Departure

The Leftovers is one of the best television dramas of our time.  On this three season HBO journey, adapted from a novel, three percent of the world’s population (140 million people) instantaneously disappears in what is known in a fictional event as The Sudden Departure.

The show never bothers to answer the scientific (or religious implications) of what happens for that is not the point of the show.  Instead it takes you through what happens next to the people who remain.  It grapples with grief, doubt, the everyday insecurities of life through what I feel is the greatest TV drama of our generation. Never has a show made me think and feel the way The Leftovers has.  It is not easy to watch, and certainly not binge worthy (trust me, you can’t handle multiple episodes of this show in a small amount of time).

The point I raise is that a hockey season is not unlike The Leftovers when you understand that at some point you will need to deal with the emotions of its passing.  I liken every season of hockey as a family member.  It is born in October.  You watch it crawl.  It takes its first steps.  It grows.  It learns.  It faces challenges, teachable moments, days of despair, of hope, optimism, doubt, wonder.  It is a life that you watch develop before your eyes.  I say that each opening night is a family reunion with fans, who are the Godparents of each season as a child.  We gain and lose some along the way, but the faithful who always remain are its support.  Always there to catch a fall, while lovingly posting Facebook pictures of their growing family member.

Its finality is certain.  The only question is when.  This, as humans, we face every day.  For some teams, finality is a conclusion you know with certainty approaches with game 76.   Others cheat death two weeks at a time for two months.   We, as a Syracuse Crunch franchise, have cheated death for two week stretches of two months twice.  Some years it is a family member having long since passed their window and you count down their final days and prepare yourself for the inevitable.  Others it is the unexpected. It’s a 3-1 series lead which stumbles leaving nothing but a fatal accident in its path.  A wonder of what happened.  Left with asking yourself why?  It is sudden and gut wrenching.  You leave yourself wishing you just had one more day.  That self-doubt creeps in.  Maybe if I just cheered a little bit louder at home. Would it have been enough?  Could I re-channel my fandom, my energy, my passion, into one more goal?  One more save?  Just one more successful seam pass could have been the difference.

Each time our reaper was known as a Griffin.  A griffin is a fictional creature of legend, known for guarding treasure and priceless possessions.  In our family, there is only one priceless treasure.   It’s eluded us for 23 years. Some have experienced each of those 23 years.  Some a bit less.  Some new to the heartbreak. Others well versed. In each scenario, the pain scales.

Our owner has compounded his heartbreak for each of those seasons.  Other senior management almost as much.  From a personal tale, I’ve worked here since 2003.  Been involved much, much longer.  I covered the team as a writer through the end of high school and all four college years.  My family were season ticket holders before that.  While I cannot say I attended the first game in franchise history, I watched on TV.  Suffered through every playoff game the year after.  From elation over Binghamton and Baltimore, to sitting at my friend’s house listening to the dying seconds of our Conference Finals loss to Rochester. I’ve been emotionally invested ever since.

I’ve seen 22 family members come and go.  Each year of grief different than the last.  I’ve watched our child be born each year while spending the next months a struggle of growing pains it never out grew.  In others I’ve seen it just live its life with an apathetic understanding that a new child would be born again in October while this one suffers an inevitable fate.  This particular child would not attend Harvard or Cornell.  Maybe it would be a community college. Maybe a nice four year school.  This child would grow and learn and develop, and make me proud.  But time waits for no team.  Finality was always a reality.  Sometimes finality would come and with its achievements along the way we would build a memorial hanging so prominently in what is an otherwise empty row of memories.  Twice a bridesmaid banner, never a bride.

But to say never invokes a feeling of unchanging despair.  The beauty of our hockey child is that it always maintains a half full mentality.  Is next year the year?  The optimism that is being a fan of the American Hockey League challenges that of its parent.  NHL teams take time and effort. They are not born overnight.  Winning is a process.  It most often comes from disappointment but grows and takes shape over years.  There is a reason good teams often stay good for stretches. Their core is one to be built and nurtured and added to piece by piece.  Its developmental child, however, is in constant flux.  That is the nature of our league.  Your window of opportunity to establish yourself often times stands in blocks of three years or less.  Your proving ground is finite.  Rosters change. Prospects develop and graduate or they are replaced with the potential of others.  You can be a champion one year (See: Binghamton 2011) and an also-ran the next (last place).

This child seemed different.  At one point it was a Doogie Howser (look that up if you’re young).  At another it was How I Met Your Mother, leaving its audience wondering, speculating, and looking for answers that wouldn’t come until its finale.  Yes, I referenced Neil Patrick Harris twice on purpose.

While what transpired June 13^th is vast (emotionally and professionally), some is public record and other parts will never be shared.

I can say with certainty that our season was summed up in one 60 minute affair of aggression, hope, wonderment and, finally, despair.  Because if you can’t tell me that having a lead, losing it, having it again, losing it again, having it a third time, before finally watching the light flicker out in last desperate attempt to salvage it doesn’t encompass the 2016-2017 season, you would be lying to yourself.

This team was a collection of battlers.  They had a swagger that paralleled (if not surpassed) that of our 2013 child.  When Benoit Groulx said publicly that this is a team the city would never forget earlier this week, his quote wasn’t tied to our outcome.  It was already ingrained, whether he knew it or not.  I thought, if any a team said that they had more to give and this series was far from over, I believe they believed it.

And I still believed it, even in the dying seconds.  Even when Jared Coreau made one more scramble save at the edge of his crease with 20 seconds left.  Even when the puck went behind the net in the final 3 seconds I thought there was a chance.  A quick toss to the front.  An odd bounce.  A well placed one-timer.  A mad scramble with sticks flying as much as hope.

But with a 0.0 and a look of bewilderment, the Sudden Departure became reality once again.  I couldn’t watch the celebration.  Not again.  Perhaps if the loss came at the hands of another, one whose dreams had been crushed by the history of similar Sudden Departures I could reason with myself.  It was their time.  Their first taste of victory, even coming at our hands, could be appreciated.  There is nothing like a first-time win with memories fleeting but captured in photographs long to be admired, remembered, and preserved.  Crunch fans, to much disappointment again, don’t have that feeling and at least won’t for one more calendar year.  But this…this was bitterness… was all too familiar.  Instead, I listened to the roar of a crowd from the bottom stairs of an arena exit, weeping in the arms of my wife, who couldn’t understand how to find the words to console me, while some fans walked past me to empty into the streets of downtown Grand Rapids in search of a post-game victory location.

I wept for our fans, who supported us every step of the way this year.  And those who sacrificed their time to be at the airport when our flight returned at 2am to the sounds of “Let’s Go Crunch!” one more time.  Even mid-season when the team stumbled, endured growing pains we couldn’t find ways to outgrow until much later in the season, they believed.  I wept for my co-workers, as passionate as any I’ve been associated with.  I wept for our players, who gave until they couldn’t give any more and still found more to give.  And I wept for myself.  For 6 and sometimes 7 days a week of work.  Through nights.  Through weekends.  Through holidays.  For 13 hour days.  In the office at 7am.  Leaving at 8pm.  For my puppy who couldn’t comprehend why I was gone for so long but still greeted me with a blistering wagging tail and her favorite rope for tug-a-war when I came through the door.  For a wife who ate more than her share of dinners alone while she supported my passion and understood why I worked so hard for my other true love in life.  I wept because I was emotionally and physically exhausted with nothing left in the tank but another year of emptiness and disappointment.

I wept for another Sudden Departure. 

Thank you to everyone in this organization from the ownership to the worker bees, to the volunteers and the interns, to the coaches, to the players… and to our fans, loyal and emotionally charged.  Passionate and unyielding in their support.

We did not #FIN15H but we are not finished.  A new child will be born again in October.