Soon the final puck will drop on all our memories, and the roar will fall silent forever. It’s time to say goodbye to an old friend, one we’ve shared so much with, good and bad. Perhaps it is so hard to say goodbye because the memories are as much of the building as the ice itself, entwined in the rafters with the pipes of the organ that accompanied so many of them.
Three
generations of my family have crossed through those doors, and it saddens me
that I will be the last. The Stadium has always made the game so much more than
that for me. It’s given me the feeling of spending time with the grandfather I
never got the chance to know, and it’s been the sight of many important
moments in my life (my first two serious relationships began there.) I grew up
there.
As for
the game, I never saw the legends like Gardiner, The Bentleys and Hall, and I
just missed the Golden Jet; yet I feel as if I were there. I have
seen the likes of Mikita, Esposito, Doug Wilson, Savard and Secord, and remember
them fondly. I remember being part of the standing ovation at the end of the
Stanley Cup Finals in 1992. Most of all I remember the anthems; the sparklers and the laryngitis; who says a building can’t come to life. The
Stadium has housed them all, their shadows still linger there watching, waiting
for the next part of history to join them, if you listen you can hear them, each
wanting to tell their story.
Soon the
house of memories, our old friend, will be gone. When the roar is silenced for
the last time, we will have our memories to take with us, and our
stories to tell. So goodbye old friend, there are many of us who will miss you.
I’ll be one of the many shedding a tear in the second balcony on April 14th.
-Thanks for the memories!
And so it is time to create new memories, to welcome a new friend, and perhaps someday we will tell those stories, but we will always remember the roar.