Final-night reflections from Edmonton

EDMONTON, ALBERTA – Damn. I was sooooo close to pushing the button on a two-week extension to this stay here in Edmonton, which as of Friday entered its 48th straight day. There was a huge part of me that thought the Avalanche would win this Game 7, because why wouldn’t they on this, on Sept. 4, on the Day of our Lord, 2020?

I was absolutely ready to stay another couple weeks, costs be damned, everything else be damned. If you think I would have come all the way to Edmonton and done a two-week quarantine in a place full of bed bugs and been there for every single playoff game and then gone home after a second-round victory? No effing way. My wife, the saintly Heidi, would have understood and so would have my 6-foot-7 inch, 16-year-old son, Tommy.