You Know

Who I am.

Night after night, I stand at the ice, holding some sign.  Some funny, some just simply state:

"I Believe" ...

I do. Really, I do, guys.

Almost 30 years ago - yes some of you weren't born yet - 30 years ago, I buried my first son.  He was 6 months old, a SIDS baby... I buried him with a University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs hockey stick signed by Hully, Watson, Kurvers, Sprenger, Mason x 2, and a few others.  My son was the son of the 'Dogs... my roommates married those guys (or some of them) and helped me get the stick signed. I've always been a "hockey mom" :)

Ya'll are like sons to me though we may never meet in person.  I feel like the Bolts Mom, cheering you on as if... he'd lived.

So, I continue to believe in you.  I continue to stand in the stands and cheer, and wave my thunder clapper, and hold dumb signs.

I continue to believe in you because...

1. you're really, really good men ON the ice and more so, OFF the ice... you're men I'd believe were good people no matter what; you're men who, I'd have hoped my son would be like had he lived... strong, fierce, honest

2.  you're really beaten up; no one in their right mind thinks it is okay to come back from adversity time after time after time after time at the highest levels of a very competitive sport with refs (let's face it, O'Hell should be fired and fined)... but you guys do.  It's one thing to come back once or even twice.  But 3x or 4x or 5x?  My blog is filled with the adversity I've struggled with to become a doc, in the hidden alcoves of my home. Can't imagine having to do so in the press and the (bandwagon) fan pages of Tampa.

3.  you're really great fathers, husbands, boyfriends, teammates, and friends - no doubt those who really know you see that as well.  I do.. from the 5th row in 117, each and every home game.

And hopefully, on Feb 10th, I'll see you in MY hometown, St. Paul to cheer the guys I believe in, at my home arena, in front of my friends who own the team, in my white / blue Bolt emboldened jersey (with Boyle on the back of course) sitting behind MY Bolt's bench...

Because I really do believe in you guys.  And as a mom, I'm so stinking proud of you for enduring this horrific, injury laden season.

You go be the Bolts, I'll hopefully get to be your Thunder in Minnesota...

I'll drive 1600 miles cuz

Martin St. Louis - Retired Jersey Night

On a non-trad premed site, makes you wonder how the heck that's even relevant.  Right?

The organization retired MSL's jersey number on Friday night in a ceremony full of gloried videos showing the Lightning winning the coveted Stanley Cup in 2004, MSL hitting the backside of the net in double overtime against Calgary in Game 6 (in Calgary) to force a Game 7 back at home in Tampa.

When Tampa won the Cup, I was living in Minnesota, with an "individual" that's devoid of the term human.  He was from Calgary and in that vein, he was particularly angry with me when I cheered for the Bolts (always been a fan of underdogs - aren't we all?) and was forced to cheer for Calgary lest I feel his wrath.  Literally.

Fast forward 12 years, now a full season ticket holder for that club that beat the Flames, sitting close the ice, the memories for the fans were displayed.

The honors and accolades for this Martin St. Louis (Mar-Tawn Saint Louie) flooded everywhere.

People spoke, some joked, Stammer got a standing ovation (he's on long term injured reserve due to a torn meniscus and dear God of all things, please get him ready on time!).

Marty took the podium.  Chants from the rafters came loud, proud, and consistently:

"MARTY!"

"MARTY!"

He thanked the crowd and then thanked a plethora of individuals who'd impacted his career.

Then he got into his life.

How he made it to the NHL.  How he THRIVED and greatly succeeded in a league where smallish men are the water boys, not the Captains.

In talking about his late mother, this grown man openly wept.  19,092 people wept with him.  The raw emotion of what his mother meant to him not lost on anyone in the arena.

He laughed a little more, told a funny story and somewhat ended with this:

If you have a dream, don't let anyone tell you, you can't.  Because I'm telling you, you can with hard work, perseverance, determination and heart.

My eyes watered up again and my son put his arm around me, whispered, "See?  Even the great ones tell you the same thing. Don't stop, Mom, just don't stop."

At a hockey game, in my new home town, retiring the jersey number for a man whom I really never saw play, the message was clear.

Do. Not. Give. Up.

Thank you, Marty.

Not for the cup but for the wisdom, for your life's story about ignoring the haters and naysayers and showing them.

You showed them, Marty, you showed them!

----
To MY Bolts:

I have no idea what it's like to play in front of 19,000 people with the expectation that that silver trophy will come back to Tampa.

I have no idea what it's like to have people rant about you, your teammates, your coach online in forums, tweets, and newspaper pages. I do know they are wrong about all of that.

I have no idea what it's like to not know who will be playing next to you in the next game, or next shift and clearly, no idea how that lack of consistent chemistry relays into the game.

What I do know is this:

Life will ALWAYS give you a poopy hand at some point.  You guys have been decimated by injuries, penalties (deserved or often not).

Life will ALWAYS make you question yourselves and your path.

Marty didn't give up on his 2004 team, don't give up on yourselves.

WE, YOUR THUNDER, we believe. We believe even when things are shaky, uncertain, inconsistent.

Just like I believe in my path and my future, I believe in you.

Go out there and start the path to bringing that silver cup back into Amalie.

It looked pretty amazing on that platform, didn't it?

Those Professors of Mine

I'm blessed.  2016 is in the rear view mirror and like some bridges that need to be torched, 2016 as the 2nd worst year of my life, is in ashes.

Starting the new year off appropriately, I logged onto my local university's email system to find lots of spam from the bookstore AND...

an email from one of my professors.  Dr. E.

For those wandering and pondering the course through premed as a non-trad, I can only say, let the little things keep you afloat, the little emails that let you know people who've taught you, and walked with you, believe in you.  It's never the big things in life, it's always the little things.

Like an email.  :)

2017 is going to be great!

Tampa IS A Hockey Town

Growing up in Minnesota there is no question whether or not you will learn to skate it's a matter of when.  Not speaking of 1 or 2 years old but 6 months? 7 months?

We learn to skate before we talk.  We learn to put on pads, and helmets by age 1.  We learn what hockey sticks are for and that nets are just necessary to keep from having to chase the puck at backside of pond.

We learn to make ice in our yards after Nov 1, we learn... and some of us go onto Hall of Fame.  Obviously, I'm not that person but friends of mine are.

Several years ago, Minnesota moved the North Stars to Dallas.  Norm Greed(n) was being sued for sexual harassment and he threatened to leave if the lawsuit(s) didn't stop.  They didn't, he moved the team.

I quit really caring that much about the NHL because for the State of Hockey to not have a team would be like the Florida Gators dismantling their football program.

Fast forward, the Wild were built in Minnesota, I moved to FL 4.5 years ago.

I'd catch hockey games here and there; loved the Rangers and the NJ Devils.  Specifically, certain players on those teams whom I either know or players that I have an utmost respect for.

Last spring when things were so bad for my son and I, when we didn't know when we'd eat, or if; when we didn't know how to make the rent payment or when / where we'd live, someone offered up tickets for a playoff game to a friend of mine.  She couldn't go and offered them to me.  Thinking we'd be sitting in the nosebleed seats, we weren't.

Section 117, against the suite.  We cheered... and for 3 hours we got to forget about the drama unfolding in our lives.

Jobs offered and then rescinded because the client was bought by a Chinese company and all contracts were thrown out.  Jobs offered and because vendor IDs for agency couldn't be used, I didn't get that either.  Money dwindling, time running out, I got a 3 hour reprieve.

Then more tickets came.  The same individual kept sending my son and I to games.  Again, the seats were unbelievable and the Lightning, quickly became "my" team.

Sure, I'd watched the playoffs for the past few years but now, like I was a Vikings fan until 1998, I was fully converted to Bolt Fan For Life.

Coincidentally, one of my favorite players from the Rangers noted above, now plays for the Bolts.

He's the quiet, unsung hero of this team.  Quietly going about his job, gutting out bad situations, enforcing ... "better behavior" on the part of other teams (Detroit's Abdel... for one); he's funny, he's solid, and to boot, he's a great husband and father.  How could one not support that player?

The year started off with a bang.  Our team was back together.  Stammer, Heddy, Kuch signed for less to stay put; Bish was healthy, Vasy signed for 3 years, Nesty signed for 1... essentially our entire team was back... to put Lord Stanley in Tampa (again - something Minnesota has NEVER had).

Then... Strals got hurt, Stammer went down and out for 4 months; Cally was still recovering for labrum surgery over the summer and still out, Drouin took a nasty hit to the head (the opposing player should have been suspended, by the way).  Boyle went down... Bish lost his front 2 teeth when his goalie mask nailed backwards and into his face (he never left the ice).  Palat got hurt, Paquette got hurt; JT got suspended... it was bad.

But as I have seen my entire life and anyone who's followed or read this blog knows:

When crap goes bad, really bad, you have two choices:

1.  RISE!
2.  Submit

I've always chosen to rise.  I tweeted that to the certain player for the Bolts - LEAD, I told him.  YOUR time, your team... step up, lead and rise...

We were 8 losses in 9 games at that point; Stanley Cup expectancy to bottom dwellers (yes, without 1/2 our team).  We were sinking.  You could see it in the guys' faces during interviews, you could feel it in their postures and faces pre-game and during games.

I believe, however.

And that player, well, he rose.  He leads that team.  He normally plays center or wing.  However, with our defense sounding like a drain being emptied of water, he also got put back against the goalie to help on D.  And there was that one play...

Goalie out of net, wide  open net and there was that player, sliding on his knees into the net at an angle to cut off a large part of the shooting area.

He's a dog (defense, offense, goalie).

I tweeted all of that.  Multiple times to the Lightning, sports writers, NHL, and fans.

They put the "A" on his jersey :)

I might have forgotten, I do dumb signs for the pregame warmups.  "Kitties B Bish Slapped" was one, "COD? Call Of Daughter" for JT and his wife Lexi.

Always one of the first to stand for goals (generally, I'm already on my feet)... and if #11 scores, I'm already proudly wearing the player's jerseys (no matter the jersey color night - they alternate in Tampa).

100+ tweets to the guys, to our team, to our sports writers and truthfully, I never know if they see them or care.

Last night, I found out.

#11 was awarded 2 stars for his play in the game meaning he gets a game puck to sign and finds a fan to give it to.

My seats are directly across from the bench on the blue line, about 5 rows up from the ice.

As he came out on the ice, he waved it up for fans to cheer and then beelined.

Down the blue line, looking.

At me.

Gently tossing it up for me (there is no doubt in anyone's mind it was meant for me; everyone knows how much I appreciate the player as a player and as a citizen of this town), the guy in front of me snatched it up (then asked me who it was).

For me, last night, meant the world.  As much as I acknowledge their play, their leadership; as much as I love this team, these Bolts...

Apparently, they must sort of like the support they get from the fans.  And me.

I didn't get the signed puck, I got something greater.  Acknowledgement of what I do as little as it is.

No one can take that from me.  As this year closes out (thank God), I'm so thankful for the individual who bought those tickets for me, supported me through the dark times in more ways than one, and this town.

Tampa is a hockey town.  #11 just showed yet another reason why we are Bolt Fans 4 Life - we all are.

#GoBolts #11GotTheA

Die Hard... Bolts Fan

Guess my anonymity just got a little less so.  The Lightning became my cathartic escape from reality or at least my reality for a few months.  Somehow through a myriad of wonky circumstances, I ended up with full season tickets to the Bolts.  My adopted hometown team (anonymity just depleted to near zero now).

The joke often told is that Minnesotans are born without skates but after leaving the womb, and instead of learning to walk, we skate.

That's mostly true.  I skated before I walked, as did my son and his father as well.  We skate, we check, we chase a little round rubber thing on the ice... and then we grow up and forget that passion.

Until we find a team.

Jeff Vinik bought the Tampa Bay Lightning in the late 2000s.  I didn't know who he was then, not sure anyone really did.  Then he landed a big fish, a general manager with a 20 year history with one of the storied teams in the NHL - Steve Yzerman of the Detroit Red Wings.

The rest, they say, is history.

With Ben Bishop in net, Stamkos at center, add in Palat, Boyle, Filpula, Heddy, Nesty, Vladdy, Vasy (OI OI OI), DROUINNNN, Brown (hometown Bulldogger), Garrison (another hometown Bulldogger), and that Point guy (seriously, 1 NHL game, 1 goal in sudden death)... this team is a joy to watch.  And forget about reality.

Jeff Vinik didn't stop with the Bolts.  He reinvigorated a dead town.  People born and raised here, having never lived anywhere else, don't get it (much like Minnesotans that never leave either). Culturally, Tampa IS different.  Big companies won't come here because of the work ethic, or lack thereof despite that salaries are lower here, big companies want to pay less for more work, or threaten to move to other countries (hello Mexico!)

Mr. Vinik, however, put all those thoughts to shame and started building infrastructure and revitalized a decaying downtown.  He pulled in the powers of Bill Gates, the USF Medical School among others and Tampa is growing.  Growing up!

Tampa is no longer just a beach town, a town where people winter and drive poorly (they will always do that, blinkers matter!)... Tampa is a growing corporate community, I believe, largely due to Vinik.

And he's humble.  And kind.  And when he was announced at the fan fest, he received a standing ovation.  From us, the fans and citizens of this great town (I said that... I really did... thanks to the Bolts).

Vinik should run for office.  He crossed boundaries, barriers, and created a great place to cheer for a team, earn decent pay, and maybe, forget about reality for a bit.