Last week, someone directed my attention to the April 4 article in The Citizen: "Playoff flop will be a lasting memory."
My immediate reaction: gut punched, confirmation I really do live in a far different universe than some.
The article's closing statement, "No Prince George Cougars fan will be able to look at that banner without thinking about how this star-studded team fell short of expectations in a colossal way" contained a grievous error: I'm a fan of the Prince George Cougars and this season's "star-studded team" did not fall short of my expectations.
In fact, 2016-17, will live in my memory as a banner-season, the absolute best season ever.
Clearly, this statement invokes a different ideal of Cougars' success than I do. My point of reference is Sept. 16, 2005, when, having just moved from a community that was mad about its team, I couldn't wait to join the throng of hockey hungry fans anxious to burst through the arena doors for the season's first exhibition game.
It was a colossal disappointment.
There were maybe 800 fans and, aside from the most welcome sounds of late summer - skate blades cutting ice, the puck clacking from stick-to-stick-to-stick - the atmosphere inside CN Centre felt crypt-like.
The people of Prince George, I thought, completely took the gift of WHL hockey for granted.
That season, the average attendance was 3,311, and the midpoint of a steady decline from the sellouts of the 1990s to an all-time low of 1,693 in 2013-14 - a shameful travesty on Jan. 7, 2014, when 1,254 fans spread out in CN Centre to watched Seattle take the Cougars 9 -7.
As expected, with diminishing support, the team's position in the standings plummeted. The tenth place finish of 2005 would take 11 seasons to improve upon. (Let's not forget 2009-10 when an average crowd of 2,164 kept the team company in the league's basement, 22nd place overall.)
I can't imagine how it was for the players in those lean years. With so little fan support, how did they find the motivation to improve upon their skills, realize their dreams, compete? Some days I wondered how they got out of bed.
Sure, there were individual successes, with some players drafted and others signing entry level contracts, some even making it to the NHL - a testament to extraordinary talent, perseverance and the ability to overcome adversity.
Then something happened: things got louder. The building got prouder.
Mediocrity was not acceptable to the new group of owners who sought to rescue a sinking ship.
"Winning is not enough for our organization. We're never satisfied, never will be...," Cougars VP of business, Andy Beesley, said in a recent interview. "We're on a constant quest for improvement, to make every aspect of this organization excellent."
Flash forward to this season, when for the first time in the Cougars' 24-year history, they enjoyed a meteoric rise, finishing the season in fifth place overall, with an extraordinary 96-points. Unprecedented.
B.C. Division Champions - unprecedented.
Seven players continuing their season with AHL clubs - unprecedented.
Jansen Harkins and Ty Edmonds claimed franchise records: all-time points leader (242 points) and winningest goalie (100 wins), respectively - unprecedented.
A 214 per cent increase in attendance over three short years - unprecedented.
The Western Conference nomination for WHL Business of the Year - unprecedented.
Upwards of $700,000 raised through 50/50 jackpots this season, shared between 20-some local charities and 39 lucky fans - unprecedented.
Perhaps most important, Cougar players connected with more than 4,000 elementary school children this season through their Spirit of Healthy Kids initiative, a two-week comprehensive and interactive program that encourages young people to make healthy and positive choices in their lives.
The reach and importance of this program, to both the kids and the players - unprecedented.
I could go on, but my point is this: it's the greatest feeling to win, to achieve a goal, to be the very best. To some winning is everything, but it's not everything to me.
Except for one team in any league, whose many fortunes align to achieve that ultimate victory, we're all losers if being number one is our only measure of success.
And we're not losers.
For me, the final outcome of this season ceased to matter in the moments prior to the puck drop on April 1, Game 5 of the first-round match-up between the Cougars and Portland. I was out of town, and the second I turned on my iPad to watch the game, I was overwhelmed by the thunderous madness of 5,805 Cougar-strong, loud and proud fans, at home in CN Centre.
This was the moment.
In my 12 seasons as a fan of this team, I'd waited, been awfully close, but was yet to see or hear anything like this - the love, the support, the pride.
And, as the players took to the ice, I didn't see a star-studded team, I saw a brotherhood of 23 individual young men who'd made a pact: they would stand united, would rise above and meld their individual strengths together for the benefit of all.
There were no superstars; together they were a meteor, and the fans who wouldn't, couldn't, stop cheering their galaxy.
It was magic - everything a fan, like me, could dream of.
We lost, but here's the consolation, the highlight of my season, really: last Saturday night, five days after the team was eliminated from the playoffs and their season came to its "bitter ending," in an arena in Stockton, Calif., 2,184 kilometres from Prince George, at 9:44 into the second period of an AHL game between the San Jose Barracudas and the Stockton Heat, Colby McAuley recorded his first professional point.
That was a moment, sure to soon be equalled by others, so fantastic it will long eclipse the brief tinge of disappointment I may have felt in that painful moment of elimination: a true-blue grinder, a player whose shift-by-shift effort we, Cougars fans, witnessed for three seasons to be relentless, had his little-boy-dream came true, and now he's on his way, which is the goal, the mission, of junior hockey.
This season wasn't a flop, nor did it fall short in a colossal way.
It was actually an unprecedented success, and, in this fan's opinion, the absolute best season ever.
-- Linda Glover
