Stanley Cup Playoffs

Our family roots for the Islanders.  I grew up in the New York area, but no one in my family watched hockey. My dad watched baseball and taught me about it. My mom watched golf and put football on in the background on Sundays. I didn’t have any older brothers or sisters who taught me about sports.  Then, when I got to high school, the Rangers played the Devils in the Stanley Cup Finals.  My friends were all on one side or the other and it was the most fun! We watched all the games on TV and I was hooked, but didn’t fall in love with either team.

Then, I went off to college and started rooting for our school’s hockey team. I basically forgot about professional hockey altogether. After school, in my mid-twenties, I lived in Boston for a bit and tried to become a Bruins fan, but it didn’t stick.  They just weren’t my team.

I didn’t follow any team during the regular season, but sometimes we’d tune in for the playoffs.  My nieces and nephews root for the Rangers so we watched this playoff game because I thought maybe some of Mikey’s buddies might be watching it.  I didn’t realize how much he would love it!

My husband grew up an Islander fan.  The year after this journal entry, when he heard that Nassau Coliseum was closing for a major renovation and the team would not be playing there in the coming seasons, he wanted to go back for one more game.

I’m not sure he realized that he’d be creating three die-hard Islander fans in the process, but here we are. We loved it so much, we went back less than a month later and we haven’t missed an Islanders season since!

The Rangers and the Islanders are historic rivals. Looking back now, it seems funny to me that the Rangers made it into Mikey’s journal, but hey, life is a journey. LOL.