Do Sports Fans Enjoy Order Over Chaos?

On Monday, I felt a new sports-viewing sensation.

As someone whose accustomed to tried and true methods of watching sports, I’m familiar with recurring sets and settings that my physical and emotional body intake a game.

For set, aka my mindset, I watch games for finite reasons. I’m either invested emotionally (my team is playing), financially (making a wager), professionally (writing about the game for work), or socially (watching as an activity to do with friends). The setting of my spectatorship can vary from a sports bar, a friends’ place, in the stands, or - back in the day - in the press box. 

I rarely ever watch a game by myself in my apartment and even more rare when the game features two teams I don’t have any of the afore mentioned involvements.  

But that’s how it was drawn up Monday night for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers. 

I was anxiously anticipating this game, monitoring the minutes wasting away before puck drop. My spectatorship to this game was going to be of isolation - one of those games where I pre-order a pizza, shut the shades, turn off the phone, and groove myself into the couch for the next three hours.  

I believe sports are inherently a social spectacle and meant to be watched with others, so channeling my witness protection persona was not my modus operandi.

Especially for hockey. 

The NHL is fun to watch, but it falls in my fifth tier of leagues behind the NFL, NBA, MLB, and even the English Premier League. 

As an Islanders fan, I’ve reserved the “don’t talk to me” approach for Islanders playoff games in the past, but never for a matchup between two teams I didn’t have any allegiance towards. 

So how was this night different from all other nights? (If you’re counting, that’s two straight articles with a Passover reference.)

I was irrationally locked into this game, because the game’s implications felt too real. For once, the cliches and hot take questions thrown at us by the Stephen A’s and Skips of the world seemed genuinely consequential and in proportion to the moment. 

I thought I had heard all the Game 7 narratives before. But the ones for this game didn’t feel contrived or massaged. 

Here were the narratives hinging on the game’s result:

1. Panthers win their first Stanley Cup

2. Canada wins its first Stanley Cup in 31 years and Connor McDavid gets a Cup needed for his legacy. 

One of those options was happening. Guaranteed. 

These storylines not only transcend game and season, but also transform legacies…. of players, franchises, and the sport. 

Here’s what I wrote three hours before the game…

The Florida Panthers, who have never won a Stanley Cup, have failed to make an enduring etching on NHL history. For much of their own history, the Panthers have been a threat to relocate and if they had relocated, they would’ve suffered the same fate as the Atlanta Thrashers - a team into oblivion, nary a positive imprint on the sport. 

In the last few seasons, Florida has been building a solid foundation of players, improving one postseason at a time. They’ve been a poster child for the maxim postseason experience matters as each of the last five seasons saw them apparently “learn from their mistake”, advancing further than the year prior.  

This gradual ascendancy towards a championship has galvanized their fanbase, one that’s grown from an influx of pandemic-inspired Northeast and Canadian transplants. Whether relatively new Panthers supporters or OGs, fans are creating a buzz throughout Southern Florida, pining for their first Stanley Cup.

Yet with hours to spare, that buzz swarms with apprehension.

One week ago the Cup appeared a lock, but now…. what if the Panthers blow a 3-0 lead?

With millions of people watching tonight, the outcome of this game will ripple through the collective consciousness of the sports world. 

If the Panthers lose, it won't just be a blown 3-0 lead like the other four in NHL history. 

It will be a blown lead on a stage larger than any of those four combined. 

Although the Red Wings once blew a Stanley Cup up 3-0, that was 1942 - ten years before television would replace radio as the main household medium. 

The magnitude of a collapse tonight could be the largest in North American sports history.

Considering the Red Sox comeback over the Yankees was regional and occurred in the penultimate postseason series, this Oilers comeback would hold more gravitas - spanning multiple countries and being the series that crowns them as champions.

A newly minted metaphor would be created tonight, seamlessly embedding itself into American and Canadian jargon. To collapse, choke, or meltdown would be “to pull a Panthers”. 

If the Oilers win, it wouldn’t just tame the allure of the 3-0 comeback, it would destroy naysayers against Connor McDavid. 

McDavid, the best offensive player since Wayne Gretzky, is in his ninth season. His offensive numbers are representative of his talent, but his reputation pivots on becoming a champion. NHL superstars mimic those of the NBA - to be considered among the greats, you have to win a title. The NHL’s all time scorers have won around 3-6 Cups and if McDavid doesn’t win tonight, he will start to mimic the Alexander Ovechkin trajectory of being content with just one.

If the Oilers win a Stanley Cup, it won’t just be McDavid’s first, but Canada’s first since 1993.

The void in Canada’s trophy case is impressively humiliating considering the country features a quarter of the league’s teams and the drought’s duration is longer than the Panthers’ existence. 

If the “Canada winning a Cup” narrative can’t stand on its head alone, then compare it with “Miami winning a Cup before Canada”. This Canadian drought would become more asymmetrical as regions featuring sunshine and beaches continue to reign supreme over hockey’s chillier motherland. 

The last five Stanley Cup Finals have featured a Florida-based team. With Tampa Bay’s recent two titles, a Panthers victory tonight would be Florida’s third Stanley Cup in five years. 

It’s a tough look for Canada when the Cup is being paraded in a state that has about a dozen ice rinks. 

Tonight is Canada vs. USA, but also Canada vs. Florida. A country where hockey is its birthright vs a state whose fans once needed a glow up puck to follow on television. 

This could be the Panthers’ first Stanley Cup Championship. As seen with baseball’s Rangers, Nationals, and Astros (or Blues, if we stick to hockey) winning their first championships in recent memory, one championship season can rewrite a franchise’s history from an embarrassment of riches to the envy of the sport. 

Here’s what I wrote three hours after the game…

The shades have been opened, the pizza box emptied, and phone turned on.

I walk around my apartment, transitioning from my sports-induced fugue state and regaining self-awareness.

Game 7 lived up to the hype. A back-and-forth, let-the-boys-play battle of attrition. In the final minutes, you could see how exhausted the Oilers were as the Panthers were literally the last ones standing. 

Florida outlasted Edmonton 2-1, sealing their franchise’s first Stanley Cup. 

Canada’s drought would continue and there would be no monumental rift in the sports landscape from a 3-0 comeback. 

After watching the Stanley Cup presentation, admiring the Panthers players hoisting and skating with the Stanley Cup, I kept the broadcast on for additional half hour. I wanted to be glued in on the energy of the champs as their family, friends, and fans maintained their ebulliency, savoring this moment in time for Panthers history. 

As the broadcast wound down, ESPN’s emcee for the evening Steve Levy signed off with a brief yet eloquent soliloquey.

In paraphrasing, Levy said:

“Everyone got what they wanted. The Panthers got their first Championship, the Oilers showed their valiance by forcing a Game 7, and Connor McDavid added to his legacy with a Conn Smythe Trophy.”

It was a thought that wasn’t meant to be overthought, just some poetry in motion. But for someone who overthinks everything about sports fandom, I’ve stayed up thinking about what he means Everyone got what they wanted.

For Oilers fans, the loss stings and McDavid merely received a consolation prize; But perhaps what Levy was alluding to was that in the end, unbiased sports fans received a greater prize in the end - entertainment that ends in normalcy. 

Tonight’s 60 minutes of on-ice action captivated millions watching, but ultimately the final horn sounded and there was no chaos to shatter the sports fan ecosystem. The team that led the Finals 3-0 won, reassuring the validity of what fans know to be secure and true. 

Levy’s remarks may also pertain to the soul of the sports fan being one of compassion. If we’re devoid of ulterior motives and rather rife with concern for justice, then no non-partisan fan would've wanted to see the Panthers collapse. 

Is it order or chaos which nourishes the sports fan? We watch sports expecting a fairness via a game’s rules and its enforcement. But is that lawful fairness the same as aesthetic fairness, in how a team that appears dominant should maintain an entitlement to victory.

There will be another time for McDavid and his Oilers or another Canadian team to win a Stanley Cup, cementing a legacy, returning to glory, and breaking a drought. But tonight, it wasn’t meant to occur at the embarrassment of another franchise. 

It’s as if staying the course was the best result for the psyche of the fan.