A non-Blackhawks fan celebrates

I am not a Blackhawks fan. However, my close friend Peter is. Peter introduced me to hockey, and I was lucky to get to watch Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals with him last night. The Hawks won in overtime on an absurd Patrick Kane goal, and it was honestly one of the coolest moments ever for me as a sports fan.

I see a lot of me in Peter's Hawks fandom. Hockey is his favorite sport, baseball is mine. He's been a Blackhawks fan basically from birth, much like I am with the Mets. Before tonight, neither of us had ever seen our favorite team win a championship; however, we'd both seen our second teams win (the Lightning for Peter, the Red Sox for me). And we'd both recently been close: the Hawks lost in the Western Conference Finals last year, and in 2006 the Mets lost the National League Championship Series.

When Kane scored, Peter jumped in my arms (me being the closest person available) and we all screamed and cheered and so on. And in that moment, I could see a possible future. David Wright hitting a walk-off home run to win the World Series. And I could see myself acting exactly the same way. I'm so glad that Peter got to experience that. Now I hope that I will someday as well.

In celebration, here is Blackhawk Dustin Byfuglien getting creeped on by Pierre McGuire. He's not the first, but this is probably the funniest.

WE WANT THE CUP

I still don't know whether I think this is awesome or terrible.

So even though I just ranted about how useless predictions are, I'm going to make some. This is because I find it amusing when I make predictions and through my wrong-ness, prove the point I made earlier.
More stuffThe Stanley Cup Finals start tonight. The Flyers haven't won one since 1975, and the Blackhawks haven't won since 1961. To put that in perspective, the Blackhawks haven't won the Stanley Cup since before my father was born. So these are two hungry (and in the case of Philadelphia, insane) fanbases.

The Blackhawks are definitely the faster and the more talented team. Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are two of the sport's premier stars, and Toews has been playing out of his mind during the playoffs - he's scored at least one point (a goal or assist, for the uninitiated) in thirteen straight playoff games, which is a team record, and he has 26 points in sixteen games. Goalie Antti Niemi has also been playing unreasonably well, shoring up what was a perceived weakness for Chicago during the regular season.

The Flyers are going to have to answer that talent with toughness. They're a powerful team built more on strength than speed, and if they can take the Hawks off their game, they'll have a chance. They're also one of the more resilient teams I've ever seen: they made the playoffs by winning an overtime shootout on the last day of the season, and they became the fourth team in the history of sports to come back from an 0-3 deficit in a seven-game playoff series when they beat the Boston Bruins in the conference semifinals. Not only that, but they came back from behind 0-3 in the first period of Game 7 of that series. So they can deal with pressure. Anyone expecting the Flyers to bend under the pressure of playing in the Finals or expecting the Hawks to be able to break the Flyers' wills with a big win should...stop...expecting that, I guess. It's probably not going to happen.

The biggest variable in this series is the Hawks' Dustin Byfuglien. He's really good, but you have probably never heard of him. He's had four game-winning goals during the playoffs, leading the league. He's big, he plants himself in front of the goal, and he cannot be moved. So if that keeps up, the Flyers are up a creek.

So that's the "analysis." Now for my horrible prediction. I'm pretty new to hockey, so my feeling about this series could be totally off, but I think it's going to be a really good and really close series. I think the Hawks are going to end up winning, because talent usually trumps toughness. On the other hand, I think that the Flyers' resilience is going to help them make this a much closer series that expected. It has, for the most part, gotten them to this point, so I see no reason why they wouldn't be able to grind out a win or two.

My fool-proof prediction: Blackhawks in six games. The Flyers will probably steal one of the first two games in Chicago, and they'll get one of the middle games in Philly. But I don't see the Hawks losing this series, barring some kind of taxicab incident. Taxis are evil.

If you'd like some more analysis, go here. You'll also get some awesome music recommendations, so that's a plus.