Affirmed.

Affirm - (verb) to confirm, to establish or strengthen through fact. To agree, verify, or concure. To answer positively.

My favourite racehorse of all time is Affirmed, winner of the Triple Crown in 1978.  Even though the chestnut was the last horse to complete the near-impossible sweep, ridden by an eighteen year old wonder by the name of Steve Cauthen, he is largely hardly remembered for himself.  He came in the same decade as the immortal Secretariat and the exceptional Seattle Slew, also winners of the Triple Crown.  It was the same decade as Ruffian and Forego and Spectacular Bid.  And he came onto the scene ten years after Dr. Fager's spectacular season.   He was a brilliant animal appreciated only because of his rival, the horse who had dogged him from the beginning: the infamous Alydar.  Some days when the two horses faced one another, Affirmed won.  On other days it was Alydar.   When the Triple Crown season rolled in, there were no other horses but Affirmed and Alydar and no one quite knew who it was who would come out on top.

It's very interesting to me now as someone who writes and photographs for both sports that horseracing's Triple Crown season and hockey's playoff seasons coincide so spectacularly.  As the field for the Kentucky Derby begins to take shape so do the playoff brackets and the rosters of the teams who have made it thus far. People who don't usually watch horseracing tune in to see the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and the Belmont.  People who don't usually watch ice hockey are surprised to find the road to the Stanley Cup on regular channels.  

As the Utah Grizzlies prepared to face the Victoria Salmon Kings on the same weekend as some of the final major Kentucky Derby preps, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Only four months earlier,  JP Lamoureux and the rest of the Grizzlies had bent the fish over the knee and given them a sound spanking in the form of a double shut-out during the New Year.  In March however....with the Grizzlies badly depleted, discouraged, and hurting it was the experienced Kings turn to hit the Grizzlies over the backside with a switch.    Some weekends we dominated. Other weekends they did.  They looked at us and remembered the New Year.  We looked at them and remembered March.

Friday night, with minutes remaining to the puck drop, both teams cautiously surveyed the other.  Nick Tuzzolino swung wide around the net,  large shoulders squared like a battering ram.  Matt Clarke, swift and smooth, made large sweeping ovals.  Brett Parnham, Kevin Deeth, and Simon Ferguson shared the same expression; eyes turned down to the ice, deep in thought, the lines of their face pinched.  Tonight the Salmon Kings were aware that they were getting the team that had shut them out with a few new interesting additions in Matt Reber, Shea Guthrie and Paul McIlveen.  Pacing on the shoreline of the creek, the Grizzlies observed the nemesis that had just beaten the Pacific champs...driving the entire division out of the finals.  There was an obvious wariness to the posture of both camps as they eyed one another, the way race horses do in the post parade; one eye on the competition, the other on the starting gate before walking in...a nervous sweaty lather already building up. 

When the black disk hit the ice and the sticks clacked together with a loud resonant crack, it was like a gunshot from the old days announcing the start of the race.  There was the bang of the sticks and the sudden rush of team colors and the bodies wearing them. 

Kevin Deeth will not give this one up easily.

The Salmon Kings burst out of the water with speed and with a surprising amount of physicality to their game.  They wasted no time accosting star players and were quick to spring upon the puck wherever it went, forcing many of the Grizzlies to skate faster and more aggressively than has been required in quite some time. 

The fast and aggressive Salmon Kings challenge Matt Clarke...and my camera.

And it seemed the Grizzlies had a game plan which was, aside from winning, to serve as few penalties as possible (thus, aiding the whole winning thing). On our side, it was the cleanest bit of hard work I'd seen since the Sunday overtime game back in March that saw Giffen Nyren land a game-winning goal.

Giffen Nyren (55) seeks to repeat earlier success.

On the other side....

The most uncool thing I've seen on the ice all month.  Seriously, Victoria?

There was Adam Taylor (21, Salmon Kings) holding Brett Parnham (28, Grizzlies) down on the ice by his head.   No, this wasn't a fight that Adam "won", this was a collision from which Taylor refused to budge from, effectively pinning Brett Parnham under his chest and shoulders as he laughed (Oh, I heard him laughing through that little hole in the glass as he muffled Brett's obvious curses and demands to get off of him) and watched and waited for his team to succeed while he kept Brett "occupied."   It has to be one of the lowest dirtiest things I've seen this year, compounded only by his completely bogus display of "I've fallen and I can't get up and Brett Parnham just happens to be underneath me" and equally bogus concern over Brett's condition when the linesmen finally noticed what was going on.

No one was fooled.  Except the ref. Go figure.

If only the officials had done more to Adam other than saying, "Get off of him."

Now, it's true I love myself a good villain and so do a lot of people.  Darth Vader is a prime example. My favourite player, Simon Ferguson, has more penalty minutes than anyone else, I adore Riley Emmerson (though he plays for us now), I have an admitted soft spot for Garet Hunt of the Stockton Thunder, and my very first hockey love was Maxim Lapierre of all people, but I can't say I feel any sort of merry love of darkness concerning Adam Taylor for this.   This which was compounded even further by the lack of a penalty.  The guy got away with it, leaving myself and everyone else reeling back in anger.  And it wasn't only Brett Parnham at the receiving end of this sort of game. In the end, it was one of those nights where our team played hard and clean and we still got beat.

Wishing them goodnight after the game, I considered the possibility that Saturday night would see a different outcome.  After all, here were the Grizzlies walking out with smiles and confidence in every step.  There was none of the disappointed feet dragging or mumbled "goodnight, see ya tomorrows"  I sometimes get after a bruising loss. Even Brendan Milnamow with a stitched up lip still had a sparkle in his eye and a pleasant smile.  Tomorrow is another night, they seemed to say, with every relaxed bound up the steps and out the door.

When we scored the first goal of the night on Saturday and I got to take pictures of it with my new replacement lens (long story that, but already posted about it),  I felt like jumping up and clicking my heels together.   And then we had a stroke-inducing "barely" moment in which several Utah players collided and collapsed to the ice leaving the net wide open, those players still up, however, managed to shove the Salmon Kings far away just in the nick of time.

Nick Tuzzolino and Matt Clarke collide and barely escape the Salmon King's scoring against them.

The gasp in the arena became like a great vacuum, a collective sucking in of the breath, and then a collective exhale of relief that transformed into rapturous shouts....the entire lot of us not sure whether to curse or cheer and the vast majority doing both simultaneously.  For a period of time it seemed like the hockey gods were on our side and when I saw Simon Ferguson charging down the ice in the second period...I could feel the energy level shifting in our favour.  Something good was coming.

Simon Ferguson is seconds away from making another beautiful assist.

He was coming around behind the net and I figured he was going to do his classic wraparound, the shot he does so well, but off it went for Nick to finish and the moment the lights went up, he turned, his posture proud but also relieved, and he looked in my direction as if to say, "Did you see that one coming, my dear? Good. Now take my victory shot. I'm waiting."   But before I could the boys collided together in celebration and I turned to the big boss behind me and said, "That's my boy, you know."

With a pleased smile, he nodded to the number three I always wear and said, "I know."

Little did either of us know that less than a minute later the entire momentum of the game would shift in the other direction as Chris Donovan took a stick/elbow to the face not three feet in front of a linesman who did...absolutely...nothing.   I shouldn't have been surprised.  The team shouldn't have been surprised.  But we were.  And as Chris Donovan recovered, pushing himself back up to his feet, the Salmon Kings were already celebrating their third goal, the boos from the slight against Chris swelling to an ever greater crescendo:  "Ref you suck! Ref you suck!" 

Utah Grizzlies Coach Kevin Colley disputes the goal and the overlooked penalty as player Shea Guthrie looks on.

The lesson that would come out of the second straight loss for the Grizzlies in this series was, in my opinion, that we cannot expect justice from the officials....nor can we really demand it from the other team during playoffs, but despite this realization that there really was nothing we could do to make them see the obvious...I was left feeling affirmed that our team is the better team.

And let me tell you why.

If you spend just a few minutes every game night with each one of them as I do, looking through the lens, or chatting after the game, you see something that makes all the difference.  They are humble. Humility is not timidity, it is not a lack of confidence...it is a grounding in humanity.  It is accepting fallibility and learning from it. It is an appreciation for others and an acknowledgment of their roles in our success.  It is key to the success of any individual, and it is absolutely indispensable in a team.

Nick Tuzzolino reassures Simon Ferguson.

The same night they lost that second game I watched as they came and signed a poster I had brought for a young boy who was undergoing chemotherapy having just learned he has leukemia days ago.  The moment I mentioned who the poster was for and what he and his family were going through the entire countenance of each player changed...a brief shift in perspective that made the loss seem temporarily insignificant to everyone signing that poster glaringly apparent.  Their overwhelmingly enthusiastic response affirmed my belief in them.  When the captain of a professional hockey team stops on his way out the door to record a video wishing that young man the strength to endure what's coming, you can't help but feel you've got the best captain and the best team in the ECHL.

I also believe in this team because I know they're hungry.  When you're already humble, it's easy to simply be boys who love to play hockey...and the boys who love to play hockey are the boys who win.  It's not about the desperation I saw in Victoria.  That's not the right kind of hunger.

The reason I love the racehorse Affirmed more than any other horse is this:  when he ran the Belmont, the final jewel in the Triple Crown, Affirmed who was always in front and never behind, was suddenly passed by his arch nemesis Alydar in the stretch with only a furlong to go.  Many people in the stands at Belmont park including the track announcer thought it was over, Alydar had passed Affirmed.  And then something remarkable occurred.  Affirmed switched leads and came back and passed Alydar with only seconds to go.   It's one thing to win a race.  It's another to win a race when you've been in front and are suddenly passed.  Some horses?  It breaks them, it breaks their heart when they get bumped or jostled and passed in the stretch.  But a great horse.  An Affirmed?  He comes back.