Will it be tonight? Sunjai Sharma certainly hopes so. The Prince George youngster and Brett Connolly fan for most of his young life (sorry, Keelan Moxley, you have to share) will be tuning in tonight to see if Connolly and his Washington Capitals can win Game 5 of their Stanley Cup final series against the Las Vegas Golden Knights and capture the greatest trophy in professional sports.
If Connolly gets to lift the Cup tonight, he will be only the second local resident to do so (the first was Turner Stevenson in 2003 with the New Jersey Devils) and just the third alumnus of the Prince George Cougars (Dustin Byfuglien and Zdeno Chara are the others).
Connolly's roots run deep in Prince George. He was raised here, he played for the Cariboo Cougars major midget team before moving up to the big Cougars, where he was eventually named captain after winning rookie of the year honours from both the Western Hockey League and the Canadian Hockey League in his breakout 2008-09 season.
In 2010, his NHL draft year, Connolly was chosen sixth overall by the Tampa Bay Lightning, the highest ever for both a Cougar and a Prince George player.
On a side note, the Capitals got the steal of that draft, taking Evgeny Kuznetsov, the Stanley Cup points leader and possible Conn Smythe Trophy winner for most valuable player in the playoffs, with their first pick, 26th overall. Gritty Capitals forward Devante Smith-Pelly was chosen by Anaheim in the second round, 42nd overall.
Like Smith-Pelly, Connolly has faced plenty of adversity in his NHL career for not living up to early expectations and has bounced around the league (the Capitals are Smith-Pelly's fourth team and Connolly's third). Both players were picked up for nothing by the Capitals. Both players have six goals in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Both players have scored twice in the final series. Both of them are averaging about 10 minutes of playing time each game.
Both of them have used their time to pester opposing teams with their hustle, their scoring ability around the net and their ability to come back and defend. The photo of Connolly that appeared in Tuesday's Citizen showed him tying up Knights forward Cody Eakin in front of Caps goalie Braden Holtby. That single image shows the evolution of Connolly into a responsible two-way player, in stark contrast to the strictly offensive-minded kid local hockey fans saw.
That maturity was also reflected in an interview with The Citizen's Ted Clarke before the start of the Cup final.
"You have to have a thick skin and believe in yourself and I'm happy I stuck with it and kept grinding away at it," he said. "I focused on being more physical and playing harder and these last two years I've found a way to score a little bit and consistently score with the bottom-six role I've had on this team. I still have more in me, I know that, and I'm on the right path, I just have to stick with it."
And Connolly made it clear he dreams of coming back to Prince George with the Stanley Cup.
"The whole city and all my friends from when I was growing up - the teachers and coaches - are in my corner and I think about it a lot," he said. "Once we beat Tampa you start thinking about the what-ifs and how much fun it would be if I could make that happen for the city of Prince George."
For both himself and his young fans, in Washington and in Prince George, tonight could be a night when dreams come true.
The puck drops at 5 p.m.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
