AJ McMinn thought she had witnessed her first live NHL goal just 13 minutes into the first Vancouver Canucks game she attended.
Brock Boeser had just wristed one into the net as her favourite player, J.T. Miller, provided the screen in front of Arizona Coyotes goaltender Connor Ingram. And though fans were cheering and the horn was blaring, the on-ice official was emphatically signalling ‘no goal.'
That screen in front of the net was actually deemed goaltender interference, and thus the scoreless deadlock continued.
Three days later, McMinn and her boyfriend Jake Harrison still shake their heads in disbelief at the call.
“Should have been a goal,” Harrison said.
Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait much longer for that first goal. From their seats, 18 rows above the goal line, they were first to watch Elias Pettersson’s power play snipe go in.
After many years of watching the Canucks — at ungodly hours, more often than not — and 7,300 kilometres of travel later, McMinn was finally able to celebrate in person with Canucks faithful in a 2-1 win last Thursday.
As satisfying as that first win was, the true piece de resistance was Saturday evening, when the two ventured to Rogers Arena on Hockey Day in Canada to watch, arguably, the game of the year: Vancouver against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“I had the ‘bokes’ the whole day,” McMinn recounted about the hours leading up to that game. The "bokes," McMinn explained, is that nervous feeling you get in your stomach before a big event. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be sick, I’m so nervous.’”
McMinn and Harrison traveled from Manchester, England — though McMinn originally called Belfast home — to Vancouver to see the Canucks, and while they knew each game was going to be special, Saturday was the marquee matchup they had circled on their calendar.
“That Leafs game. ... We had to do that, being a hockey fan myself,” Harrison explained. “If the Canucks get battered, AJ would be really disappointed but we’d have seen some of the greatest players in the NHL playing live. On reflection, we’ll look back one day and say we got to see Auston [Matthews] play live, we got to see [William] Nylander play live.
“As it turns out, we got that experience and we got to batter the Leafs all in one night, so that was brilliant!”
That win was never a foregone conclusion. The Canucks surrendered a three-goal lead in the second period and, as superstitious as she was, McMinn was reluctant to leave her seat at all, even as she was asked to crank the Canucks’ siren ahead of the third period.
“I probably seemed really ungrateful because we just went up 4-3, and I was like, I can’t leave my seat. I’m too superstitious, they’re going to score on us,” McMinn recalled. “They [the Maple Leafs] scored on the walk back to my seat, but then [J.T.] Miller scored the minute I got into my seat, so I think that was my good luck.”
She joked that, now 2-0 in person, she may not be able to leave the arena for fear of disrupting the win streak.
“If we win [Monday] and then go on to lose later this week, I may have flights posted to me!”
Even as McMinn reflects on her whirlwind week, she admits that being here and watching her favourite team play live hasn’t sunk in yet.
She became a Canucks fan by accident — a supporter of the Belfast Giants in the Elite Ice Hockey League, McMinn didn’t have a North American team on her radar. That is, until her grandmother gave her a Canucks hoodie with the traditional orca logo. A marine mammal lover, she was instantly hooked.
Then came the tough part.
Not only did she, much like the rest of Canucks Nation, suffer through dark years of seemingly endless mediocrity, she did so in the wee hours of the morning. It was commonplace for her to wake up at about 3 a.m., watch the Canucks game, sleep for another two hours, then head to work.
Dedication, to say the least.
Then the Canucks started getting better. Something shifted for the team and all of a sudden, the tides had turned — it was fun to be a fan in Vancouver again, and McMinn was itching to experience it firsthand. Just over a month ago, her boyfriend made that dream a reality by planning a three-game trip to British Columbia.
“He had to spend an hour and a half convincing me it wasn’t a joke, he wasn’t pranking me,” McMinn said, laughing. “He had to get the flights up to be like, ‘We’re going, I promise we’re going.”
The trip she’s had thus far has gone beyond her expectations.
“I feel like I’m in a dream, like I’m going to wake up and I’m going to be in my bed in Manchester.”
It started before their plane even touched down in Vancouver, when she opened her X account, formerly known as Twitter, to see that the Canucks had sent her a direct message inviting her to attend morning skate ahead of her first game. Then, she was asked to crank the ceremonial siren ahead of the third period to a near-packed house of Canucks and Leafs fans, all the while receiving nothing but support from her fellow fans.
“So many people found where I was sitting and came up to me, gave me a hug and have been like, ‘Welcome, we’re so excited to have you,” McMinn said. “It feels like we’ve been friends forever and maybe only spoke on Twitter on Christmas Day. I feel like I’ve made a little group of friends.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Never meet people off the internet!’ But the people I’ve met off the internet have been some of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my life.”
The first time she stepped foot in Rogers Arena felt like “coming home” for her, but now the city is starting to feel a bit like home as well.
In just a short period of time, McMinn and Harrison have managed to cultivate a community in a city thousands of kilometres away from their home — whether through meeting up with fellow Canucks fans before the game, chatting up a Leafs fan sitting next to them, or parsing through the dozens of messages welcoming her to the city. They’ve seen the best that the Canucks and the city of Vancouver has to offer.
“It’s going to be strange going back home to the 3 a.m. watching, but I know the friends I’ve made here. ... It’s going to be a matter of, ‘I’m at the game, here’s a picture!’” McMinn said. “The people we’ve met, the friends that I’ve made, the food, the city. This feels like home itself.”
Added Harrison: “This place is special, Vancouver is special.”
Their trip is coming to a close now, with just one more game on the docket as the Blackhawks come to town Monday night, before they return to their shared home in Manchester. Their plan as they enter Rogers Arena for the final time on this trip across the pond? Just enjoy the game.
All the pomp and circumstance aside, McMinn’s reason to be in Vancouver has always been quite simple.
“I’m just here watching my team. I just happened to travel 4,000 miles to do it.”
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