Columbus day? ❌
Indigenous People’s Day? ✅
Canadian Thanksgiving Day? ✅
Blackhawks destroyed by Leafs Day? ✅✅✅✅✅
Let me start off by saying that I don’t like the Blackhawks. If you haven’t heard the second episode of the podcast yet, this might be news to you, but I really, really don’t like them. I still like individuals on the team, just not the team itself because they still employ assholes and have that fucking logo…but I digress. Doesn’t it just feel so, so organic and pure for them to have lost today of all days?
It didn’t start out that way, of course.
I always have this nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach when we play the Hawks, because it’s the only team I genuinely need us to win against. It has that added level of rivalry to it, and as someone who didn’t grow up with the Battles of Ontario or Alberta, I found myself creating my own. And this was it. Add to that the fact that the Leafs haven’t won against them since November of 2014 and oh, it was on!
Until…
Three and half minutes into the game Rutta scores, because the Leafs hate me. Yes, me personally. Marner, in an attempt to block a shot, deflects the puck into their own net and the Hawks are up 1 – 0. But it’s fine, the Leafs are an offensive team, no matter what some of them think (Mo, buddy, seriously? That is what you took away from last year?), and we’d be sure to get it back soon, right? Right!?!?!?
Well, someone scores alright. The Blackhawks captain. Jonathan Toews. Harbinger of broken dreams. 2 – 0 Hawks.
And the only offense the Leafs seem capable of throughout the rest of the first and half of the second period is their thorough determination to offend ME.
Half-way through the second though, the tide turns. We have some good chances, but Forsberg holds us off (because Toronto is where backups come to turn into starters)…until…the Leafs make a little passing play in the offensive zone, Brown to Rosén to Brown to Zaitsev and IN! 2 – 1 Leafs. I won’t lie, I was almost tuned out at this point, their passes weren’t connecting, they were playing in the defensive zone way too much for my liking and they just did not look like the team that played the Jets, or the Rangers. But goddammit, they always find a way to pull me in, to make me hope.
And then immediately after they do that, they find a way to crush my hopes and dreams. Because this is the Leafs, and because there was an ex-Leaf on the Hawks, it was almost inevitable that Panik would score. 3 – 1 Hawks and at the utmost bottom pit of hell, me.
Then the savior, the ginger angel, California Chrome, Downtown Connor Brown, throws one on net off a pass by Zaitsev and we’re back in the running.
We would end up typing the game with five minutes left in regulation off of a shot by Bozak that went in off of JvR’s skate and WE ARE TIED!
Which is all well and good, but I can see the crash we are headed towards. Overtime, against the Hawks. We all know how this ends, right? We watched this movie twice already.
But hey, they apparently decided the previous two endings were shit, because Auston Matthews, the man I am most thankful for on this holiday I do not even celebrate, scores a beautiful, beautiful wrist shot goal and wins the game for us!
And the best part of this entire game, and no, it wasn’t the comeback, is the absolutely amazingly petty celly he does after (how’s them apples, 🚮?)
Maybe I was too hasty in my dissing of the Leafs. Maybe the true gift of tonight is the Leafs reverse-Leafing and making the Hawks lose a 3 – 1 lead, to win me the game in Overtime. Maybe they had my back all along.
I’m sorry, buds. Buds really are all day. 💖
– Ridz. M
PS: Don’t forget to check out the actually insane numbers behind this game in Stats Station by Aaron. And as always, the fun Sonnet by M rounding up this game. I have a feeling she’ll have a lot to say. Well…as much as one can say in 14 lines.
the no happiness league 