Ryan's Ramblings: Game 7 - Nothing Else Matters

Jun 14, 2022

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Growing up, my father always had an expression he would reiterate whenever I was nervous as a sports fan watching one of my favorite teams play an elimination game. He did not take credit for it, but rather he “borrowed” it from a local sports radio talk show host.

“If you’re nervous, get a dog.”

For many years, I thought he was just using it to push my buttons. After all, when big games ended up going in our teams’ favor, he would just say “See, never a doubt!”

And yes, while Monday’s Game 6 loss for the Thunderbirds did not end in the fashion anyone in this city would have liked, Drew Bannister has reiterated time and time again that nobody is in a state of panic with Game 7 on tap on Wednesday, even in spite of Cayden Primeau’s continued goaltending excellence for the Rocket.

“All series, (Primeau) has played extremely well and made timely saves,” Bannister said. “I would be more worried if the (scoring) chances weren’t there, but we’re getting the chances, and I think with the group in (our locker room), eventually it’s going to start going in.”

Primeau’s outstanding performance in Game 6, coupled with former Thunderbird Danick Martel’s two-goal, three-point night, has now pushed these intense Conference Finals to its absolute limit.

It has, in turn, set up the ultimate mano-a-mano in professional sports: Game 7. The mere words elicit all you need to know.

In Springfield’s case, 76 regular-season games and 12 Calder Cup playoff games that came before Wednesday’s tilt have, in essence, been rendered null and void. The same can be said for Laval, whose equalizing of the series on Monday provided a jolt of energy, but that same energy will mean nothing if they end up on the wrong end of Wednesday’s final score.

All of this takes me back to my father’s words. One look at these two teams’ rosters and staff will tell you that experience is there in torrents, and nervousness or fear is nowhere to be found. Springfield’s James Neal and Laval’s Cedric Paquette alone have combined to play in more than 200 Stanley Cup playoff contests at the NHL level. Each has felt the jubilation of Game 7 victory and tasted the bitterness of a season-ending defeat in the identical scenario.

Devante Smith-Pelly of Laval (WSH, 2018) and MacKenzie MacEachern (STL, 2019) of Springfield both have lifted the Stanley Cup, as has Paquette. Smith-Pelly’s Capitals team needed to survive a Game 7 on the road in Tampa (against Paquette’s Lightning), and the Blues needed to escape with two separate Game 7 victories on their magical run at the Cup in 2019.

I mention all of those examples to reiterate a tired cliché: it is not meant to be easy to capture championships. That has what has made it so hard for teams to reach hallowed “dynasty” status across all sports and at all levels. Bannister – himself a Calder Cup champion who had to endure series-deciding games twice during Hartford’s run to the 2000 AHL championship – emphasized just this at the start of the playoffs.

“Bad things are going to happen in the playoffs. There are some things you can control as a coach and as a player. It’s about minimizing the negative aspects in the game that we can control, while not getting caught up in the things that we can’t control.”

Both teams can certainly attest to that sentiment in this Eastern Conference Finals. Bannister and the T-Birds felt a Game 4 goal by Jean-Sebastien Dea at the tail end of period one may have come after the period had expired. The goal counted, and the Rocket ended up winning Game 4, 3-2 in overtime.

As if the “Hockey Gods” had been watching, the very next night, in Game 5, with Laval less than five minutes away from taking a 3-2 series lead, Dakota Joshua took a shot in a sea of traffic that was routinely blocked by Tobie Bisson. Instead of the puck careening toward center or toward the boards, it somehow ticked up, over, and eventually through Primeau to tie the score and force overtime.

Puck luck followed the T-Birds into overtime as well, with Martel fanning on what might have been an open-net chance in the extra period. Minutes later, by a sliver, Matthew Peca got a pass to barely squeak through a defender’s stick and onto the tape of Neal, who gave the T-Birds the series lead, 3-2.

As has been the case in countless seven-game series before this one, the bounces, bad breaks, bouts of luck, and most notably, the wins, have evened out.

And now, in the blink of an eye, it’s as if all that has transpired over the course of the marathon season and roller-coaster series has been rendered completely irrelevant.

Wednesday night’s events between the Thunderbirds and Rocket – no more, and no less – will be the only minutes, the only goals, the only results that will matter in sending one of these two young franchises to its first Calder Cup Finals.

Thunderbirds captain Tommy Cross will be playing in his 64^th career Calder Cup playoff game in Wednesday’s Game 7, but in his eighth playoff run in the AHL, he has still yet to reach the finals. The 32-year-old, who grew up a 30-mile drive south in Simsbury, Connecticut, is well in touch with the history and meaning that this particular game will hold in the City of Homes.

“Our group has an appreciation and an understanding of the hockey tradition here in Springfield,” Cross said. “It makes you realize it’s more than just the 2022 Thunderbirds. There’s more that goes into it. The fans have supported us all season long, and that’s a huge motivating factor to us.”

Perhaps one part of the “nothing else matters” mantra is inaccurate. Springfield’s regular-season success earned them the right to host this particular Game 7 in a building where they have now walked away winners 31 times during the 2021-22 regular season and playoffs.

Yet, on the contrary, the ability or inability to get win #32 is all that will matter once the clock hits 0:00 or the winning goal is scored on Wednesday night. No matter the outcome, though, it will not change the amazing comeback story the 2021-22 Thunderbirds possess.

587 days passed between March 8, 2020 – the final game the Thunderbirds would ever play as the Florida Panthers’ AHL affiliates – and October 16, 2021, when the T-Birds finally made their triumphant return after losing the full 2020-21 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2021-22 Thunderbirds have already reached heights not seen in Springfield AHL hockey since 1997 with their trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.

But this story is one that is still not completed. Wednesday night will determine if another chapter gets added to the lineage of Springfield hockey. So enjoy it, Thunderbirds fans, be loud, show your love for this franchise, and if you’re nervous – only if you so choose – honor my father’s adage and get yourself a dog!