64, 65 or 66 Days!

Dear Reader, this blog is about numbers but I hope that you will find it more interesting than that. I recently read In a British Newspaper that the 20^th Century lasted 36,525 days. Apart from the shock that 100 years is merely that number and the implications that that has on our own mortality, I found this interesting in the much wider context of several centuries. It occurs to me that we are not really that far removed from so many of the people who made history at what we thought was an age ago but, apparently, is not. Sometimes what happens in an instant has an impact for a long, long time.

During my recent visit to Scotland I took the opportunity yet again to visit the battlefield of Culloden.  It took place in 1746 and was the last land battle fought on British soil. The implications of the defeat of the Jacobites were major. There are still repercussions to this day with depopulation and on the Gaelic language. With every repeat visit to a place one learns something new. This time I learned for the first time that the actual battle lasted less than an hour! It really struck home to me that something that lasted less than many sporting events should have such long lasting implications.

Back to the number of days in the century.  I won’t  go into what the Daily Express considered the most important day of the 20^th Century otherwise I will test the patience of you, the reader, too much. And I would never get to the point.  But it did set me thinking about how split seconds can impact lives; and, indeed, how seemingly interminable events progress for years with very little consequence.

At the time of writing I have been back home from my 5 week sojourn in the UK for over a month.  During my time away I moved around a great deal, sometimes to familiar places, sometimes not. I did not have a roving plan on my phone so had to wait until I was ensconced for the night or in a place that offered Free Wi-Fi to check my messages. In the cities, I walked a great deal, travelled by bus or train a large amount. In my hired cars I visited hills and moors, bays and lochs, villages and glens, people I knew, people I didn’t know. I listened to the car radio on local stations, I became fascinated by the politics, re-immersed in the humour of my birthright. I soaked up the cultures which were mine for the first 39 years of my life. In the evenings I reflected on my day and checked my phone for messages.

Of course there were messages from friends and family in the UK and, of course, messages from Irene and Grant back in North Vancouver. And when I had satisfied myself that I had read them all and replied where I needed and shared photos and videos that I had taken, I would always return to the same place. That place was the Stanley Cup play-offs which this year lasted for something between 64 and 66 days. The Stanley Cup represents the pinnacle of ice hockey. Not every team reaches the play offs. Those that do, step into a competition that requires a team to play 4 rounds of the best of 7 games in each round. The winner has to grind and grasp 16 victories to lift the cup. The National Hockey League boasts that it is the hardest trophy in professional sports to win. Like every such competition there have been some truly great players who have never won it, as there have been some journeyman players who have somehow been in the right place at the right time. Everything has to come together in an amazing feat of synchronicity for the Cup to be won.  To get one’s name on the Stanley Cup represents the pinnacle of a player’s career. Individual sports have the Olympics, the Tour de France and tennis for example. There are World Cups out there for the likes of football, rugby and cricket. There is the Superbowl for the NFL, the NBA championship in basketball. I have never played ice hockey but find it hard to disagree that the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win.

During our 30+ years living in North Vancouver. our local team, the Canucks, have been in two finals but have never won it. The Canucks were in the play-offs this year so I was eager to catch the highlights of their games on my phone while I was travelling. (Brother George was appalled because he knew that I couldn’t see the puck on a screen so small but, I explained, there is always a slow motion replay!)  I also was keen to follow the Florida Panthers. OK, Dear Reader, you are not alone in wondering what an ice hockey team is doing in the hot, sweaty climate of Florida where snow is a novelty and ice an alien from another world. But set aside your amazement and just accept that it is so and that this ancient blogger was very interested in their team.

Approximately two decades ago, give or take a year, I was managing my Grade IV classroom. You, who know children, understand that 9 and 10 year olds have a joy and enthusiastic energy which is infectious. I used to enter my classroom sometimes with a ‘morning mood’ which was less than upbeat and verged on grumpiness. But I prided myself that I pocketed such selfishness and mustered my professional face before the wee takkers came through the door. It was not difficult to be carried into their joyous world when the first little character appeared, hung up a coat, rummaged in their locker and stood at my desk with an early morning tale to tell. Of course, amongst 20 children I taught all sorts. There were extroverts and introverts, timidity and bravado, clumsiness and athleticism, organisation and disorganisation, bantering humour and reticent nerviness. Those many years ago, there was a little boy in my class. He was the youngest brother of three, the eldest of whom my close friend had taught. The middle boy had also been in my class. The youngest lad was unassuming but confident. He was not demonstrative in any way. He seemed to prefer the hinterland of the room, the background of being. Yet he was popular with his classmates. He was well balanced and personable. From his early days in the classroom one could tell that he was the product of loving, down to earth parents as, of course, were his two brothers.

It is, Dear Reader, Monday June 24^th. The Florida Panthers have led the Edmonton Oilers by winning the first 3 games in the best of 7 Stanley Cup Final. Since 1942 and the Toronto Maple Leafs no team has come back to win this championship after being 3 games down. But, Connor McDavid, the best player in the world, puts the Oilers on his shoulders and drags them back into the series so that they tie it up 3-3-. Jamie, an ex-colleague and friend of mine, and I sit glued to TV for the final game 7 of the tournament. We are both naturalised Canadians. We know that we should be supporting the Oilers, after all a Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup for 30 years; it would be the patriotic, nay jingoistic, thing to do. But we don’t. Instead we are firmly in the Panther camp. After the 1^st Period the game is tied. The Panthers have taken the lead but the Oilers have come back almost immediately. It is rare for a team to come back and win in the final after the other team has scored first. Then late in the 2^nd period, the Panthers score their second goal. The third period is tense. But the Panthers hang on. History is made. The Florida Panthers win their first Stanley Cup. Jamie and I hoot and holler. A 28 year old called Sam Reinhart scored the winning goal, his 67^th of the season. It has taken 64 days of play-off hockey, playing every other day, flying colossal distances, to get to that point.

As a teacher of young children one should never discourage them. If they are kind enough to share their dreams, one should never say how difficult it is to become an actor or there is no money in art or it is many years before you will qualify to become a doctor. Shaking one’s head at a child’s dreams is a terrible thing to do. So, Friends, I can’t remember if quiet reserved Samson Reinhart ever came up to me in class all those 20 years ago and told me that he wanted to be an hockey player. And, if he had, I would probably not have remembered and if I had remembered, I would have probably smiled, nodded and moved onto the task of explaining the improper fraction or the use of the semi-colon.

Congratulations, Samson Reinhart, Collingwood Alumnus and Stanley Cup Winner.