Well, a lot of wishin’ and hopin’ and a little prayin’ seems to be a working formula as our hockey team advances ever farther down the trail to the ultimate ride’s end — hoisting the Stanley Cup (notice that we never touched that piece of silver Tuesday night)!
It was another nervous night in ranch-house living rooms (in ours, husband changing chairs regularly, trying to find a lucky one); our team wasn’t exactly peppering the San Jose netminder with shots compared to the multitude that Lou was (fortunately) repelling in our end.
It was like a day’s ride, looking for cattle in bush country — continually swatting at mosquitoes; a constant annoyance, but unlikely to cause you any lasting damage other than the frustration of being unable to totally eliminate the pesky things.
Like cowboys (rodeo or ranch) who often ride hurt or slightly damaged (no show, no pay) a multitude of Canucks are gritting their teeth and sticking with it in search of the Holy Grail.
My familial group of fiercely loyal granny Canuck fans was glued to their sets; the two Marys (my mom/North Van and my Fairy Godfather’s’ wife/White Rock) and Joan (my aunt/Williams Lake) deserve the Stanley Cup win! All have been serious fans since the very beginning, not just Johnny-come-lately band-wagon riders who have jumped on recently as the team began to look like contenders — so try to win it for the ladies, eh, guys?
Our cattle dog never twitched as the Esketemc First Nation celebrated Tuesday night’s victory with another boisterous and noisy post-game parade, a hullabaloo which elicited not one single howl. Is it possible for a cattle dog to become so jaded, so used to victory, so quickly?
P.S. Who decided that hockey should last into June? Didn’t it used to be a winter sport? Now it’s considered shameful to be golfing at this time of the year (for a hockey player)!
Liz Twan is a local rancher and freelance columnist for the Tribune.