It's somewhat on topic, so I thought I'd post a post I wrote for my blog about the Championship game. Find the post on my blog plus a panoramic photo from the game at
http://ericjorgensen.me
After three periods and two overtimes, the Minnesota high school hockey season ended on a balls-out, hustle play by Minnesota’s Mr. Hockey, Kyle Rau. His teammate put a heavy shot on net; Duluth
East’s netminder JoJo Jeanetta got most of it, but not all, as the puck squirted behind him. For a moment, it glided slowly in front of the open net. The closest East defenseman moved to play the puck to safety, and, nine times out of ten, he would have done so without a problem. The game would have continued.
But Kyle Rau didn’t give up. The game was three overtimes long by that point — maybe he should have, if only to save some energy to forecheck the puck in the corner once the defenseman cleared it.
The defenseman whiffed. Perhaps the Hockey Gods decided that it wasn’t time for East to take home another championship. Or, more likely, the East player was just exhausted and misplayed the puck as a result. Either way, the puck stayed put right there in front of the open net. Rau dove, stick outstretched, and made contact with the puck. With the help of his stick and the Duluth East defenseman’s skate, it skittered into the back of the net.
Game over.
After three days of games, goals, overtimes, hard hits, disappointment (for those knocked out of the tournament), and joy (for those who remained), the championship proved the “game of inches” cliché correct; the result came down to mere inches. It was only inches that separated the puck from the post as it entered the net, and it was less than one inch that separated the Duluth East defenseman’s stick from the puck as he tried to make a play that he had probably made hundreds of times in his career.
What followed was what has happened every year at the tournament: The winning squad jubilantly flung off its equipment to celebrate with one another and the losers fell to their knees, immobile, seemingly as frozen the ice beneath their bodies.
But somehow, despite the fact that this same scene has become an unsurprising yearly ritual, it still felt fresh and exciting. The spectators present at the X (and probably those watching at home as well) bathed in Eden Prairie’s joy and cringed at Duluth East’s pain, whether they had ever laced up a pair of hockey skates or not. When tens of thousands of people can relate to the experiences of 17- and 18-year old kids like that, you’ve got something special on your hands. The event isn’t in any way elitist; the seats at the Xcel Energy Center were filled with all types. Young, old, middle-aged. Hockey Dads, Hockey Moms, high school students, and, the case of many near me, average Minnesotans who had come year after year to watch the best young hockey players battle for the ultimate prize in high school hockey.
As I left my seat — drained by the drama that overtime always creates but happy at the incredible game I had just witnessed — I heard lots of bitching about how the game ended. “Ya hate to see it end that way,” one guy said. “Yeah, Duluth East deserved better,” replied another. Maybe. But maybe there’s another way to look at it.
I’m not often one to grant sports much in the way of applicability to life generally, but maybe, just maybe, this game served as a kind of metaphor. Consider the question: How often do life’s events come down to mere inches? Mere seconds?
All. The. Time.
Whether it’s the time you left for work five minutes later than usual and had a serious car accident or the job offer you landed because you knocked on just one more office door, often, the difference between winning and losing isn’t all that great. Hard work puts you in a position to succeed — good fortune, luck, circumstance or whatever you want to call it — is what allows you to end up on the winning side of the equation.
This is an uncomfortable truth. It’s much simpler, I think, to look at winners (in all situations, work, school, sports, whatever) as being somehow different. Special. “Oh, he was just smarter than I was,” is a lot easier to stomach than “I was so so close.” But, often, the winners aren’t all that different from the losers.
So it went for Duluth East and Eden Prairie.
In the end, this particular game probably came down to less than half an inch. If the Duluth East defenseman had lowered his stick that additional half-inch, the puck would have ended up in the corner.
But he didn’t.
And if Kyle Rau hadn’t busted his ass to put himself in a position to dive, the puck wouldn’t have ended up in the net at all.
But he did.
A mere half-inch separated the two teams. That’s it. Considering the fact that the game went on for over 80 minutes without either team pulling away — a regulation high school game lasts for 51 minutes — what end would have been more fitting? A thundering slapshot from the point? A snipe from the face-off dot?
No, I think that a mere half-inch was the most fitting end possible in what was an incredible tournament.
by Eric Jorgensen
