Folks, it is time for my hat trick.
Call it silly. Call it stupid. But I have a superstitious hat.
I have worn a Vancouver Canucks hat pretty much every day since grade 8 (except that year after they traded Trevor Linden and I wore New York Islanders in protest). Grade 8 was a long time ago folks. Every year I would get a new hat, but somehow never found a hat that seemed to bring any luck to the team itself.
That all changed in 2010. For the two previous seasons the Vancouver Canucks have had incredibly good fortune with me wearing the hat, culminating with the Stanley Cup finals against the Boston Bruins. The hat was there for the first President’s Trophy. It was key in the development of the Sedin twins into superstars, and Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows into warriors. So I kept wearing the hat, carrying it over from one season to the next.
The hat is greyish/khaki, or at least it once was. Now it is sort of multi-coloured due to sweat and weathering. It has a crest in the centre with a very discreet Canucks logo. The words “Canucks Hockey” above and below the emblem. The stitching on the front brim is all but gone, exposing the cardboard beneath the many fraying threads. Towards the end a few strands actually were beginning to obstruct my view. But I wore it every day for two years. I took it hiking up Sleeping Beauty and Gunsight and Bornite Mountains, among many more. I took it on my many runs. I took it on vacation. I wore it at my brother’s wedding. Imagine this tattered old hat on top of a tuxedo-clad best man!
I had to retire the hat last summer. No, it had nothing to do with Boston’s win in game 7 to take away the Stanley Cup. My girlfriend made me. It was so dirty. It smelled so very bad. You see, I had a rule – the hat was never to be washed as long as the good luck continued.
Soon after the Bruins victory my girlfriend informed me the hat had to go, and I did not have much of an argument after the debacle against the Bruins. I carried on with it for a while, but while in a Vancouver shopping mall she made me buy a new one. I was not allowed to leave Jersey City until I picked out a new one. I was never to wear that disgusting old head piece ever again. She was serious.
I ended up with a much more traditional Canucks blue hat with the simple logo on top. It is a fine hat. I wore it all of the 2011-12 season. And it seemed to do okay.
But now that the Los Angeles Kings have the Canucks on the ropes in the first round of the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, desperate situations call for desperate measures I say. By game time I will have to unveil a little secret to my girlfriend. I still have the hat. It still is not washed. And I will be wearing it for tonight’s game.
Go Canucks Go!
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