May 21, 2017: Validation

Your team gets knocked out of the playoffs.  First reaction may be to hope they lose in the next round.  They beat your team, you want to see them get beat.  Easy right?  Well, there’s more to it I think.  What is the history with that team?  What type of series/game was it?  How much animosity was built up towards each other?  All questions to ponder when considering your rooting interest once your team gets knocked out.

Maybe you really don’t care.  Maybe if it’s not your team, who cares who wins it.  There’s a little bit of that in me, but I still usually have an opinion…a feeling towards one team over the other.  We didn’t have to worry about that with the Cubs this past year…how about that?  The Bears haven’t sniffed the playoffs in years, so in the NFL, it’s mostly rooting for teams that have had a lot of success.  I was not happy with the Super Bowl outcome.  In the NBA, it’s easy; anybody but Lebron.  In the NHL, not so much.

We all thought the Hawks had a good chance this year; we were all wrong.  I have to get back to that analysis of the  season and action plan for the offseason sooner or later.  The Hawks were swept out of the first round by the Nashville Predators.  Were you rooting for or against them the rest of the way out?

In this particular case, I was and still am, rooting for them.  It’s not like there was much of a rivalry before hand. They were our bitches.  They whined about our anthem.  They tried to block our fans from coming into their stadium.  They are a small town team that doesn’t hold a candle to Chicago.  All of that didn’t make me hate them.

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Maybe, just maybe they were playing their best hockey at the right time.  Maybe they were finally living up to their lofty pre season expectations.  Maybe the Hawks just ran into a buzz saw, the way teams did when they faced the Hawks in their Cup years.  Maybe it was just their turn.

And now, the Preds are in the Stanley Cup.  For me, still trying to digest the Hawks exit, it helps.  It serves as some sort of validation, that it wasn’t all about the Hawks blowing it.  That maybe it was more about the Preds than it was about us.  That maybe it was just their year.

The story is not over, but I think we’ve seen enough to stop blaming ourselves so much.  We’ve seen enough to know what we need to do next year.  We’ve been watching a potential new rival.  Did they pass us, or just have their time this year?  Maybe we’ll meet them for a fourth time in the playoffs.  Maybe they’ll beat us again.  Maybe then I’ll hate them, and root against them at every turn.  Or, maybe we beat them on our way to that long awaited 4th cup this decade.  Or maybe we’ll never meet again in the playoffs.  Man I miss watching the Hawks in the playoffs.