Sad end to Moose fairy tale

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2009 (5971 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a night for stories, the ones you hear on special nights when there’s excitement running though the rink.

In particular, playoff stories.

This one, as told by longtime NHL agent Don Baizley, struck a chord. It was about a Montreal Canadiens rookie standing at the blue-line before a playoff game at the old, notoriously loud Chicago Stadium.

The kid turned to Canadiens legend Dick Duff and fretted.

“I can’t hear anything,” he said, “and I can’t feel my legs.”

The old veteran, who lifted Stanley six times in 18 years, just shrugged.

“We’ll get two quick ones,” Duff counselled, “and it’ll be like playing in a church.”

How fitting, on a summer evening when 15,003 settled into the pews at the MTS Centre in anticipation of Game 6. They started with one of those on-ice presentations. I’m not sure what it was about. Couldn’t hear the announcer over the restless roar.

Stacy Natress even let the fans sing part of O Canada a capella.

But then the ghost of Dick Duff must have been summoned.

Just 3:56 into game, on only the Bears’ second shot, Kyle Wilson made it 1-0 Hershey, with Moose netminder Cory Schneider at his mercy. Just over two minutes later, a floater by Ray Bourque’s little boy, Chris, found the back of the Moose net. It was a wrister that Schneider never saw. That was the Bears’ fifth shot.

By the time Bears sniper Alex Giroux scored his 75th of the season — why is this guy not in the NHL? — midway through the first, the sermon was tanking. Moose defencemen couldn’t handle the Bears’ forecheck, and were coughing up pucks at an alarming rate not seen since the California Golden Seals’ expansion season.

The Moose took a penalty. And the shots on goal were 14-5 for the visitors.

A song came to mind that a band had been playing on Portage Avenue prior to the game. “New Orleans is sinking,” the singer wailed, “but I don’t want to swim.” Not tragic, perhaps, but not hip, either.

A big lad, must have been from Boston judging by the accent, turned to me in the press box and said to no one in particular of the Moose, “They’ve gotta get out of this period bad.”

It was Keith Tkachuk. Used to play here, in another arena, for another team.

And when Tkachuk’s team left, a lot of fans who crammed into the MTS Centre last night mourned for a long time. It has only taken many of them 13 years to warm to the Moose, and never has that bonding relationship been more evident than in the last few weeks of the AHL playoffs.

No, the Moose didn’t win it all. Face it, the Bears were a better team.

And, no question, last night’s Game 6 will be a bitter disappointment for a franchise that took more than a decade to get to its first Calder Cup final. This is the AHL, after all, and next year the Moose will have to start again from scratch.

A number of the players who got them to the brink will be in Vancouver next year. And they won’t be coming back.

At least the fans got to vent once, when Manitoba’s Mario Bliznak converted a one-timer from rookie Cody Hodgson midway through the second period.

And they cheered every time Pittsburgh scored.

After all, there were only two hockey games being played in the world last night. One was in Winnipeg. And in the end, the Moose, after 102 games played, came up two short.

No once upon a time. No happily ever after.

Just another dead quiet locker-room, filled with long faces and aching bodies. Just like there must have been for the Red Wings in Detroit.

It had to hurt. You never know how long it will be, if ever, that the Moose get this close again.

Or, better yet, how long will it be before Manitoba hockey fans get this close to the Moose again?

It was supposed to be special, as the locals showed up pumped to force a Game 7. My, that would have been something.

Instead, it was a night the Hershey Bears won their 10th Calder Cup, and the Moose lost their first.

Then the service ended, the pews emptied, and 15,003 parishioners went home.

Quiet as church Moose.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca