I remember sitting in a mostly empty Jobing.com arena my first Coyotes game several years ago and thinking to myself... "I can't believe no one is here... Why is no one here? This is AWESOME!!! I better go get season tickets now. Pretty soon they will be hard to come by!"
That was the innocent, uninformed rookie Heather. The Heather that had no idea what was coming a few years down the road. The Heather that was shocked when people laughed and looked at me crazy when I said I was a Phoenix Coyotes fan.
Those next few years brought many wonderful people into my life. The people I now refer to as my Hockey Family. You'll see some of them in the first video. Those were also the people I sat surrounded by as my team made history and advanced to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history last night. They were the people I cried with as the final buzzer sounded. We'd cried together before - but not for happy reasons.
Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion...
Please excuse the shakiness you see when that final buzzer went off. It's hard to scream, clap, cry, high 5 and cheer all while attempting to capture the moment on video.
Now the below song may seem strange - but it's an accurate representation and proper salute to those Coyotes fans who have stuck through it with this franchise through the good times we're now having - and the mostly bad times the team went through since they moved here.
To Monique & Heather S. who never made me sit in the back of bankruptcy court alone - you'll get why I chose this song. We sat there huddled together all alone sometimes - the only Coyotes fans there - as the talking heads ripped our team apart. It wasn't fun. It wasn't easy. It wasn't convenient. But we were there.
To those of you who follow my twitter feed and offered me support and convinced me not to throw a shoe at Jim Balsillie and his lawyers... You'll get why I chose this song.
To my hockey family, who sat with me year after year as we watched our seasons end long before the Stanley Cup was awarded. You'll get why I chose this song.
Because we didn't give up - even when the skies got rough. We gave 'em all we had - because we knew they were worth it. And they are... they always have been.
If this is as good as it gets this season - I'm ok with that. We're going to the Western Conference Finals!
But I have a feeling these boys are not giving up either... And just like the injured soldier in the video below...
I don't wanna be someone who walks away so easily
I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make
Our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use
The tools and gifts we got yeah, we got a lot at stake...
