Last Saturday was a very, very strange day in Rangersland. So many of us were either angry, or in denial, or still numb to the incredulous feeling of losing a Game 7 at the Garden. I thought for sure one thing would be true, with 2012 as a good indicator: the 2014-15 NHL season was over.

Laying out beside a pool with two of my diehard Ranger fan friends, we went through most of the motions of grieving. There was anger, questioning, bargaining, heck I think I got choked up once or twice… but then something strange happened. We remembered that there was a Game 7 that night, and we made plans to head out that night to watch it.

How could that be? We’re Rangers fans, man, this was our year. We can’t watch anymore. The only benefit of losing in the 2014 Stanley Cup Final is that after that, it was over, there was no worrying about who you wanted to win the Cup. Sadly, last year also taught us that the offseason is very, very long. When you get excited to watch a replayed TOR-ANA game live in a bar in Toronto, you know the withdrawal is real.

To backtrack, I became a fan a short time ago in the beginning of the 2008 season. Maybe I’m just in the honeymoon phase with hockey and that’s why I miss it so damn much. I wasn’t born into a Rangers-loving legacy, watching the ’94 Finals as a kid begging her parents to let her stay up past bedtime to watch history unfold. The only sport I was born into was New York Mets baseball, and I’ll spare you the heartache that comes with only knowing championship victory from within the womb. Maybe watching the 2015 Finals, along with several teams throughout the season (Center Ice, best investment ever) is my way of retaining as much hockey as possible in an effort to catch up with the diehards since birth.

Though that hypothesis is possible, it’s much more likely that this just happens to be a damn good series. The fun part of deciding your fandom is that you get to watch yourself fall in love with the sport. It’s slow at first, with interest here and there that lends itself into pure love for your team. I remember the exact day it happened for me, ironically thanks to Nikolai Zherdev who wound up — to this day — being the most frustrating player I have ever seen. It was October 25, 2008, my first game at Madison Square Garden, and the Rangers beat the Penguins in the shootout after Zherdev tied it with 9 seconds to go. I fell madly in love with the atmosphere and could not imagine myself connecting with a team so deeply, even those Mets that I knew inside and out for twenty or so years.

My reasoning was simple: hockey is a beautiful sport. The players are freaks of nature by any standard, men with both physical and mental gifts who train their bodies obsessively to be the best in their class. Atop their physical fitness, the players are skating on a huge sheet of ice. It takes a type of grace that has to come naturally, because if it doesn’t, the best hands in the league won’t mean a thing if they can’t get near a net. Watching a 6’3, 220 pound human being skate past you in a flash is hypnotizing. It’s strangely peaceful, despite the fact that that same human could very well be en route to crushing another huge, graceful human.

So let’s circle back to those girls hanging by a pool, confused by their desire to watch two teams duke it out to play the (expletive) Lightning for all the glory. Why would they want to watch? Who cares, right? Well, as a hockey fan, you should care. Game 7s are actually really, really fun, because everything is on the line, and watching desperation when it isn’t your team is fantastic.

I understand people not watching the Stanley Cup Final series, but these are two immensely talented teams. Watching the best in the league battle it out should appeal to the hockey fan at your core, the one that loves the sport. Watching the Finals as a Ranger fan who blindly likes the team and then only mindlessly repeats what they’ve read on any verified sportswriters’ Twitter page may be miserable, but we should strive to get away from that person. Besides, where else could there be legitimate speculation that a goalie was pulled temporarily due to gastrointestinal issues?

See you tonight in Chicago, hockey fans.

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