NASHVILLE — “Holy ****! There’s only a minute thirty-five left!”
(Editor’s note: This story is written by Knox native, Keystone and Clarion University graduate Jonathan Shaffer, a co-founder of D9Sports.com, who now lives and works in Nashville and attended Game Six of the Stanley Cup Finals to watch his beloved Penguins raise the Cup)
That was the inner thought of this 35-year-old Knox native (and 12-plus-year Nashville resident), who was sitting (and often standing) three rows from the top of Bridgestone Arena during Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.
That inner thought was just mere moments after I had high-fived and hugged two Pittsburgh Penguins fans who were seated in front of me — two guys who looked like Officer Michaels (Seth Rogen) and McLovin from Superbad — who had become my best friends in the span of three hours.
Yep, just 95 seconds left before the Pens won their fifth title; 95 seconds remaining before I lived out a childhood dream of watching my hometown team lift the Cup IN PERSON.
Ninety-five … excruciating … anxious … headache-inducing … life-altering seconds.
But, it didn’t feel like 95 seconds. It felt like nearly 25 years.
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Wednesday, October 14, 1992.
I was 11-years-old and a sports fanatic, with mountains of self-penned diaries of standings and stats. (Magazine and newspapers were my lifeline, pre-Internet). A born and raised Pittsburgh sports fan who loved the triumvirate of black and gold-clad teams. I had already witnessed two(!) Stanley Cups courtesy of Mario and crew — though I was not old enough to truly understand their significance.
Baseball, though, was my passion. I had already attended my first two Pirates games at Three Rivers Stadium (a doubleheader sweep, no less), and was enthralled by “The Killer B’s” of Bonds, Bonilla and Bell, Jim Leyland and Andy Van Slyke. I was a little too young to recall the NLCS loss in 1990 and hazily remember the 1991 defeat.
But, this was THE YEAR! The Bucs were gonna do it! They had destiny on their side! They had rallied from being down three-game-to-one to those dastardly Atlanta Braves with Game 7 coming up at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. I was pumped, and so was my mother, Lynda, who had instilled in me her unbridled love of sports.
Well, my father, Chet, had kinda gotten into the act.
“You know, if they win, you’re gonna go to the World Series,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I didn’t believe him for a second, though I really wanted to.
Firstly, he has a good sense of humor and would good-naturedly tease me. And since he is not a sports fan, I basically dismissed his declaration out of hand, not giving it much thought.
Now, I can’t honestly tell you any distinct memories of that game before I was put to bed, other than that the Bucs were winning – which was all that mattered, frankly. But it was a close game. I went to bed hopeful they could finally do it; that I would wake up in the morning and Mom would have left me a note on my bedroom door or told me at breakfast while getting ready for school that the Bucs won!
That didn’t happen, of course. No triumphant note, no celebration during Cheerios, nothing.
I still can’t hear the names of Sid Bream, Francisco Cabrera or listen to Skip Caray’s “Braves Win!” call without having a physical, muscle-clenching reaction.
When I learned that they had lost, I was confused and dumbfounded. How? How did they LOSE? What HAPPENED? My beloved Bucs had fallen short, and I was crushed. They were beaten, again. My raw 11-year-old emotions collided.
I felt numb, but, for some reason, I could tell Mom felt worse. I didn’t quite understand until I was told why SHE was so heartbroken.
We were going to the World Series, thanks to my Uncle Terry, a Delta employee based in Atlanta, who was also the man who took us to my first games at Three Rivers Stadium.
My poor mother had suffered a bottom of the ninth collapse I still to this day can’t imagine. She was a lifelong Pirates fan of her own, who got home from school just in time to see Bill Mazeroski hit the home run to win the 1960 World Series. For 26 outs on this fateful October night, she thought maybe – just maybe – she was going to the World Series and living out her own dream.
But, she wasn’t, and she had to tell her young son that he wasn’t either.
“If the Predators and the Pens make it to the Stanley Cup Final, I’m gonna go broke.”
I first uttered that phrase last season, as the Pens swiftly – and seemingly effortlessly – marched through the playoffs to win the Cup. Nashville had a pretty good team, a team on the rise, but fell to the San Jose Sharks in seven games in the second round.
As this postseason approached, I knew the Pens had a good chance to repeat, even with the injuries and fatigue. Nashville, though, had struggled throughout the season but safely slid into the playoffs as the eighth seed.
Then the Predators swept the Blackhawks. Actually, they crushed them. Chicago hadn’t been beaten THAT bad since the eighth-grade picnic.
I began to dream. Maybe this really COULD happen, maybe Pekka Rinne could stay hot and guide this team to the Final (even though the Preds had never even been to a conference final in their nearly two-decade history).
The Predators then went on a run similar to the Pens from the previous season, using speed, intensity and goaltending to get to the Final. Meanwhile, the Pens survived what may have been two of the toughest early-round matchups in recent history, while it took a double-overtime effort in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final to eliminate the pesky Senators.
The Pens, the team of my youth, against the Preds, my adopted home team of nearly 13 years — I moved to Nashville in July 2004 – that I had previously covered on a daily basis at the local ESPN Radio affiliate.
Don’t get me wrong, I have friends within the Predators organization and in the local media. There was a small part of me (which I kept suppressing) that wanted my friends and my adopted home to win.
But…you can take a boy out of Da ‘Burgh, but you can’t take Da ‘Burgh out of the boy.
My earliest recollections of the Pens go back to the 1989-1990 season, just before Super Mario brought the Cup to the City of Champions.
My fondest memories are of taping the few games that were on local TV at that time, setting my tape recorder underneath the speaker of our massive, wooden console TV. (We had an antenna!) I would tape Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald calling the game, then play those tapes back in the solace of my bedroom for hours and days on end, as Lange filled my adolescent ears with joy.
“Oh, Eddie Spaghetti!”
“The Wrecking Ball, Mark Recchi!”
“Buy Sam a Drink and Get His Dog One, Too!”
“HEEEEEEEEE SHOOTS AND SCOOOOOOOOOOORES!”
“Ladies and gentlemen … Elvis has just left the building.”
I still tear up when I reminisce on those moments in which many of them were with my Mom; through the years of Mario, Jagr and Francis, the Cups and David FREAKING Volek, Lalime and “The Moose”, Kovalev, Straka and Nedved’s four-overtime goal, the “Murphy Dump” and the “Ol’ Two-Niner”, bankruptcy and Rico Fata, Lemieux’s return and Kasparaitis’ playoff goal against Hasek, Crosby, Malkin and Talbot’s Cup winner, Gary Roberts and “The Save”.
I could go on forever and a day.
Sorry, Nashville, I love you, too; the music, the honky tonks, the festivals, the food, the Opry and the Ryman. Even the (thrown) catfish, Tim McGraw’s goal song, the chants and standing ovations.
But you’re not Pittsburgh in my heart.
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I had already decided that somehow, someway I was making it into a game in Nashville. I put my money – literally – on Game 6, knowing that, mathematically, someone could be hoisting the Cup at Bridgestone Arena.
As Game 1 in Pittsburgh approached, my younger sister, Kristin, a devoted Pens fan of her own, secured tickets to the game. She rightfully went for herself. She also took our Mom. For Lynda, she had never been to a game in person until this season. Now, she was going to a game in the Stanley Cup Final. The Pens won 5-3.
It wasn’t easy being a Pens fan in Nashville during the Final. For a couple weeks, Music City USA had become Hockey City USA, with tens of thousands of fans downtown OUTSIDE the arena during games to help stake its claim. Everywhere I would go, it would be a sea of gold shirts, signs and “Let’s Go Preds” chants.
It was a lot of fun. And, if you see pictures on the Internet of me wearing Predators gear during this time, please remember that YOU don’t sign my checks.
In the blink of an eye, it was Sunday. Game 6.
I spent most of the day in an anxious haze. Puck-drop could not arrive soon enough. Downtown Nashville pulsated with the yellow fever of Predators madness AND thousands of additional people in town for the city’s biggest party of the year, the CMA Music Festival.
It was a Mid-South Mardi Gras.
Upon entering the arena and buying the requisite merchandise, it finally started to hit me. I’m in the building for a Stanley Cup Final. Not bad for Chet and Lynda’s kid from Knox.
It was a little difficult being a Pens fans in the arena that night, with only a few hundred other Pens fans in attendance. We were flightless birds amongst Predators, thought I was comforted by my Superbad proxies in front of me.
The first period came and went.
The second period started and suddenly, the premature whistle. We Pens fans in attendance were happy, though not necessarily relieved. We didn’t want to win with a controversial call looming over the game.
Then second intermission and an approaching sense of overtime. “Damn”, I thought. “Maybe I should proactively text my boss and tell him I might not make it to work tomorrow.”
Then the third period commenced, as I sat in only the front half of my chair, nervous and tense, my shoulders and neck were very tight. Four minutes became three, then two, then…
“SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!”
I never saw it go in, though it was right in front of me. I just saw the red light. I didn’t even know who scored until my ESPN alert said it was Hornqvist. How appropriate.
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“Holy ****! There’s only a minute thirty-five left!”
THAT is when everything got real for this Pens fan. My team, MY TEAM was just 95 seconds away from WINNING THE CUP! I’M GONNA WATCH THEM RAISE THE CUP! My lifelong fandom was racing through my head.
“We need one more. WE NEED ONE MORE!”, I said to no one in particular.
Moments later, it was Hagelin, like he was shot out of a cannon, as if Paul Coffey was on the ice, with the empty netter. Because someone has to score them.
Game.
Cup.
Tears.
And 25 years.
Jonathan Shaffer’s view of the final seconds of Sunday’s game.
