If The Season Ends...

... and you weren't around to see it, did it really happen? Isn't this like a tree falling in the woods kind of a thing?

You'd think, given that rehearsals are weekday evening types of occurrences, that a Saturday afternoon game would be one of those very rare instances when I would get to watch. Well, not when the game coincides with work weekend, when I have to spend all afternoon hanging lights for our impending performance. If there's one thing four years of college education has taught me, it's that the theatre department always gets the upper hand.

To be honest, though, I'm not sure I really would have been grasp the game even if I had been able to watch. It's been months since I saw a full Sabres game (to be fair, only mostly because I haven't been trying: last week's Capitals match-up was cut short by a technical failure). Even though it's finally, finally warming up around this place, it seems impossible that the season is over. Now, I'm no dummy. I have the internet, and my regular daily blog rounds, so when all reasonable hope was gone, I knew it, and when all mathematical hope was gone, I certainly knew it. So it's not like I didn't know that this was their last game, but I think it's going to take a while for that to really sink in. I've grown so accustomed to the thought that, even though I can't see them, the Sabres are still playing hockey, that it's hard for me to comprehend a world in which, even though I can't see them, they are done playing hockey. It's sad to see it phrased this way, but I've gotten so used to being hockey-less that the end of the season doesn't really phase me. Not that it should be some big dramatic event, but other than the content of the blogs I read, nothing in my life is going to change. Just like all last month and more, I still won't be watching hockey.

It's hard to remember at this point, but I'm pretty sure last season was different. The two seasons were superficially pretty similar: they both ended with the Sabres just barely on the outside looking in, and they both contained month-long stretches of me not being able to watch. But somehow, last season, even though I was six whole time zones away, I felt something. Maybe it was just my residual affection and expectations for the 2006-2007 squad ultimately ending to disappointment, or maybe it was just my favorite player having one of the best years of his career and getting nothing to show for it from his team, but there was definitely a feeling of loss and lament. This time around, I got the text message telling me the Sabres had won their final and meaningless game 6-1 and all I could do was stare at it blankly, wondering what it could possibly mean. 

Only one bit of information in the text solicited any kind of response in me: Thomas Vanek made it to 40 goals. Initially, I took this as a very small victory in a mostly painfully unremarkable season. Last season, even though it saw Sabres hockey and Sabres fans come crashing back to earth, there were still a number of positives to take away. I think back to my upgrade/downgrade ratings of last spring, and how I gushed about Pominville, Hecht and Spacek, and it seems all so foreign. Now, either I've grown bitter or the team has grown insufferable, but either way, I'm sure if (maybe when?) I replicate that exercise for this season there won't be half as many upgrade labels. And as I pondered the text message further, even Thomas Vanek, who was one of the brightest spots from the very beginning of the season, getting 40 goals isn't that great. Sure, he probably would have made more if he hadn't been injured, but as it stands that's only four more than his total last year, when he was downright brutal until the All-Star Game. Not meaning that I'm at all unhappy with his performance this season (hell, I didn't even see half of it), but I think it really puts this season into perspective that these are the types of positives that we have to hang on to.

By the way, as I'm typing this, it's 11:53 PM, so I totally made my resolution this week.

Uh oh. It's Saturday, isn't it?

End of the week! Quick, post something!

Uh... the last time I got to watch a full Sabres game (stupid theatre), Tim Connolly was still injured. So when I heard the news that he'd re-signed for 2 years $9 mil, I almost spewed Kix all over my keyboard. But apparently he's worth this money? Go figure.

Well. I'm pretty sure that's all I got. 

Until next week!

Blacked Out

I may have mentioned this before, but I'm currently studying to get degrees in both German Studies and Theatre at a small college in Saint Paul, MN, and in case you were wondering, the life of a German and Theatre double major is a largely hockeyless one. 

It's like they've deliberately teamed up in order to deprive me of my favorite hobby and second-favorite hobby (watching and blogging about hockey, in case that wasn't clear), two seasons in a row. Last year it was my German major that forced me out of the country, forced me to rely on fickle internet connections and a weakened sleep schedule in order to even get a glimpse of my team. If you'll remember, the long months of separation eventually drove me into the arms of another sport. This year the Theatre major is picking up on that slack. I've just been cast in a show set to open at the end of the semester, and it's going to be eating up all of my prime hockey time. Between now and mid-March I'll need to attend two rehearsals a week, and from then until the beginning of May it will be four nights a week. Add in the fact that I have a night class, and that's 3 to 5 nights a week spent not watching hockey until at least mid-playoffs. Ouch. Since I don't have a TiVo (hell, I don't even have a TV set), I have no recourse but to sit back and let the hockey happen around me, deaf and blind to it all.

The timing pretty much tells the whole story of my relationship to my two majors. Whereas my German major turned out to be trying to save me (as it tries to save me in a lot of situations, mostly from going insane) from watching the end of an eventual 10-game losing streak and an unspectacular push to almost make the playoffs, my Theatre major is (as per usual) trying to ruin my life. The Sabres look like they're finally pulling their shit together, and all of the sudden my Theatre major needs my undivided attention? That can't be a coincidence. Sure, for a while there we were a heartbeat away from starting a traffic cone on defense, and the situation hasn't gotten that much brighter, but Ryan Miller has been, in the words of Marshawn Lynch, "too solid... way too solid," Thomas Vanek has continued to dazzle, and even Drew Stafford, for God's sake, has woken up and started devouring brains like it's going out of style. This team, for the first time since the beginning of the season, seems capable of (and maybe even destined to?) make the playoffs, and this is when I have to stop watching? I call bullshit, Theatre major.

I'd love to say more, and hell, maybe even watch some of the game that's starting right now, but--you guessed it--I have to get to the theater.

P.S. Just to be clear, this isn't to say that I plan on slacking on my resolution to post at least once a week, but perhaps you'll understand if my posts start to contain little more than hearsay and speculation, mixed with a large portion of complaining?