It’s been an exhausting, turbulent season for the Ottawa Senators. For those who follow them. For those who work for them.
Now, for the man that owns them.
So many highs, so much intrigue, such unsettling sadness. It must now be hoped that the latter comes in threes, for one can only imagine how much one professional hockey franchise can take, at least in an emotional sense.
Or maybe beyond that.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers NHL GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
You could argue the Senators would not exist in the nation’s capital if not for Eugene Melnyk, perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea but an affable, engaging and utterly devoted hockey person, a sporting rabble-rouser from another age. For years, he’s been among Bob McCown’s favourite guests on Sportsnet 590 The Fan because The Bobcat knew he could always count on Melnyk to say something on the airwaves he shouldn’t.
When it looked like the Sens had breathed their last 12 years ago as they lay writhing in bankruptcy, it was Melnyk who had the requisite passion for the game combined with the money and the sense of opportunity to ensure that the hockey club survived.
Whether it has, since then, provided its supporters with more joy or suffering, well, that’s up to those folks to tell you.
This year, the team delivered a spectacular story, if not the perfect conclusion. That story had wonderful, surprising heroes like Andrew (The Hamburglar) Hammond and Mark Stone, and provided Ottawa with one of the most compelling sports stories it has experienced in a long time, at least since the 2007 run to the Stanley Cup final.
Melnyk was oddly absent for all of it, including the first round playoff setback to the Montreal Canadiens, and now we learn he is desperately ill, and desperately in need of a liver, either through a living donor or a deceased donor. The fact that he has a rare blood type makes a deceased donor less likely, so now a public plea has been issued for a living donor.
In that procedure, the right lobe of the donor’s liver is removed and implanted in the person in need, with the old liver removed. Both livers, the donor’s and the recipient’s, grow back to normal size in a matter of weeks if all goes well. And they don’t have to be matching blood types. Amazing.
So along with desperation there must be hope, the same hope that the hockey world has carried for months as Ottawa general manager Bryan Murray has battled with Stage 4 colon cancer. What a remarkable, courageous man Murray is, refusing to step back from the spotlight while he fights, choosing instead to push the cause of early detection of his disease to others.
That same hope, however, was lost on April 14 when Senators assistant coach Mark Reeds, yet another devoted hockey man, succumbed to cancer.
Seems a bit much for one team to take, yes? But if we look for fairness or a sense of proportion in life we are often left with a feeling of emptiness. Perhaps this hits the sporting world differently for it is there we go to escape the latest news from Nepal or Iraq. We want to feel, maybe, that because the people in sport seem so immortal and untouchable, that maybe we can somehow share in that.
But, of course, that’s not how this works. We know Steve Montador died this winter, and hopefully we understand that matters in a way Deflategate really doesn’t.
For the Senators, there is reason to worry about Melnyk and Murray as people, as individuals many of us have come to know personally. There is also reason to worry about how that might impact the future of the team, yet to say so would seem callous in some way and make it appear that we care less about their lives. Similarly, even talking about this in the context of hockey as the playoffs swirl around us seems to trivialize their personal challenges, but at the same time, both men would urge everyone to go ahead and watch those playoffs because they love the game, my goodness they love the game.
So what to say about all of this, then?
Well, we must hope and pray for Murray and Melynk, We must hope for minor miracles, and imagine that five years from now Murray will still be answering hockey queries with that dry, dry sense of humour, and that five years from now Melnyk will still be championing the cause of NHL hockey in Ottawa and perhaps realizing his dream of a new downtown arena.
Not much else to do, really. So much triumph, and so much tragedy, has been served up to hockey-loving people in Bytown over the past months, and this becomes their story, and we necessarily become bystanders to some degree, onlookers from afar.
The Senators matter in Ottawa in a different way than is the case in many NHL cities. There is ancient history to this team, and there is modern history, and much of that isn’t pretty or admirable. That the NHL came back to Ottawa at all was a bit of card trick, a bit of a sleight of hand by Bruce Firestone, and to have experienced all that, then Alexei Yashin wanting out, then the ’07 Cup final, then Daniel Alfredsson’s departure, then Paul MacLean’s dismissal and now this sadness that has arrived in three separate servings.
Well, that’s more experience that many hockey fans will feel in a hockey lifetime.