I'll write up a fuller reflection on the game tomorrow, but for now, just let me say that after standing on the plaza outside the St. Pete Times Forum with the thousands of other fans who couldn't get tickets but who just wanted to be there for the game (I don't know just how many people there were, I heard estimates ranging from 10 to 20 thousand people, enough that they had to stop letting people in), and watching the game projected on the adjacent parking garage, squeezed into the plaza like sardines, all I have to say is that if there was doubt about the Tampa Bay area being a real hockey town, it should be gone now. No, we don't have the Red Mile--Tampa doesn't have the sort of downtown that Calgary has. And no, Tampa doesn't have the sort of rioting that other cities have when they win championships or the sort of public nudity that Calgary fans have displayed earlier in the playoffs, but that's because Tampa has a police force that actually knows how to handle crowd control. What we did have was nearly as many fans outside the building as there were inside, and still more who had to be content with finding a sports bar to watch the game because they couldn't fit any more people into the space they had on the plaza, and a building with an official capacity of 19,758 that they somehow managed to squeeze 22,710 people into, and that with an entire section of seats lost to the extra press boxes.
It was so cool to celebrate winning the Cup with so many thousands of people. When the clock hit zero and the game was over, people threw their beer all over the place in celebration and we ended up getting quite drenched, not that we cared because we were too busy jumping up and down and screaming.
Posted by kathryn at Junio 8, 2004 04:18 AM | TrackBackStanley Cup's over already? I must have been busy staring at the wall or something.
Posted by: Strow at Junio 8, 2004 02:04 PMStanley cup does not equal hockey town, cold winters, crazy fans that stick by the team for 40 years, and a city that bleeds hockey thats a hockey town. Congratulations Expos of hockey you won the cup, may the sport now die of humiliation.
Posted by: holton at Junio 8, 2004 09:55 PMI won't say they didn't deserve to win but for God's sake, what the hell is going on when a team from Florida, FLORIDA, win's the Stanley Cup?
Posted by: rob at Junio 8, 2004 10:45 PMi didn't say they couldn't win or wouldn't win. i said that they shouldn't win, and apparently others agree with me. it'd be like moving the expos to monterrey, mexico (it is a possibility) and then having the monterrey mexicans win the world series. but i'm glad you had fun.
Posted by: dp at Junio 8, 2004 11:23 PMMake fun all you want, but your teams couldn't make it out of the first round. And DP, at least Tampa didn't rob another city to get it's team, which Colorado, Dallas and Calgary all did.
You know what, I don't give a flip about what you all think, because it doesn't change the fact that the Tampa Bay Lightning are the Stanley Cup Champions! And the fact that we spent their entire history as the league laughingstock makes their victory even sweeter.
Posted by: kathryn at Junio 8, 2004 11:41 PMYeah but Calgary robbed, atlanta, which face it, atlanta doesn't deserve any sports teams... talk about band wagons. They invented the crazy wagon!
Also I'm a firm believer if your name is Martin St. Louis that you should be required by law to play in St. Louis, just like that guy names Satan, should be required to play for the Devils, its just pure simple Holton Logic.
Posted by: holton at Junio 9, 2004 10:35 PMOk, here's the deal on Marty St. Louis. The Blues could have had him, heck, every team in the league could have had him, but nobody wanted him. The Flames ended up signing him as an undrafted free agent, but they dumped him after two seasons where he spent most of his time in the minors because they didn't think he would ever be much of a player, and the only team that decided to take a gamble on him was the Lightning and their gamble paid off in a big way.
Posted by: kathryn at Junio 10, 2004 12:37 AMOh yeah, and he tells the story that when he was 5 or 6, one of his aunts asked him if he wanted to play for the Blues when he grew up, and he told her "no, I don't think my wife would like that very much, she would want me to play for a good team." So, there you have it, even at a very young age he was declaring that he did not want to play for your city.
Posted by: kathryn at Junio 10, 2004 12:41 AMTHE LIGHTNING DON'T DESERVE THE CUP, A TEAM FROM CANA...oh wait, no one "deserves" the Cup, you have to EARN it. Everytime some idiot says a team from Canada "deserves" it, I have to ask them why a Canadian team hasn't got it since '93? Hockey "purists" are even worse than baseball "purists", if that's even possible.
Posted by: kastofsna at Junio 12, 2004 02:06 PM