Early January, 2010, is the moment I had my greatest experience at school, not even being on campus, I was 12 hours away, in Fairbault, Minnesota, home of the powerhouse hockey program and our biggest rivals. It had been 7 years without a victory, continually falling short. Today was our last chance to keep the streak from going to 8, as we had already lost the first 3 games of the year against them. Losing to them the night before we were being outplayed all game, yet we scored early, when Drew, redirected the puck past the net minder. Staying up 1-0 and watching Nick save our asses, time after time we slowly started to believe that we could win.
As we went into the 3rd period time slowly went down as I looked up and saw 5 minutes left in the game. As I noticed this, I thought to myself and chuckled “Holy s***…we are still winning” but deep in the back of my head was, “how are they going to come back and win this time” as they always find a way to win in the last seconds. It was my next shift that would change our team’s fortunes. The Gold line had been dominating all period; we constantly had pressure on the other team and kept the puck in their end the whole time. As my shift was continuing on, I was starting to go for a change, as the end of the game fatigue was only increasing, yet I decided not to give up on the play and see what happens in the next few seconds. Somehow we kept the puck in the zone, as Pierre dumped it back down low; as he shot it down, it was misplayed by their top defenseman, who spit the puck right onto my stick at the top of the left circle. As I grabbed the puck and stick handled by him I decided to just let ‘er rip. As the puck left my freshly taped stick, I knew immediately it had gone in, as it beat the goalie over his glove, top ched. I suddenly took off up the boards, skating full speed and celeying harder than I ever had, jumping into Connor’s arms as we both looked at each other, shocked.
The last 1:50 of the game took forever as we killed off a 5 on 3. The sound of the buzzer was a relief, a feeling of surviving a war. Yet as we jumped on top of Nick, our emotions took over as we acted as if we had won the Stanley Cup, we had, this was our Stanley Cup. The next 12 hours were spent on the bus driving back to school, never has 12 hours seemed so short.
Looking back, this was the peak moment of my year, something that can never be duplicated, I feel lucky to have played a huge part in the victory. Being able to say we beat them is something not many of my school's teams can say. I still think about it and watch the video occasionally, remembering the great moments. As I get to my goal, I begin to get the shivers and nearly cry as I watch us pour onto the ice and realizing we will never be all together as a team again is sad, but something that always happens. As some of us graduate and some come back, we all share a similar bond, something no one else can feel as we beat the powerhouse.