Cheers and echoes

Of course you thought of the man, as the horn sounded and the sticks and gloves littered the ice. As the boys formed their happy scrum against the glass and the orange thunder rolled down on them from the stuffed house, an echo of the Before Time when there was no Bastard Plague to turn the world inside out.

Of course you thought of Bob Chase, as the handshake line formed and the Fort Wayne Komets paraded the Kelly Cup around the ice for the best fan base in minor league hockey.  How could you not?

He always said he'd surrender the mic when the Komets won a Kelly Cup, but then the years got too heavy and finally he laid down his burden, as all of us must. That happened the week of Thanksgiving five years ago, and still you hear him every hockey night in Fort Wayne. A man defines a game and a town and a team for 63 winters, these things will happen.

And so as I watched the video of the celebration from the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum last night, I kept hearing and seeing Chase. I kept hearing him bark "Look out!" into the mic, and seeing the grin that always seemed to sprawl ear to ear across his cheerful Yooper mug.

I also imagine that, like a lot of us, he's out there in the cosmos somewhere shaking his head and saying, "What a crazy year."

Because there's never been one crazier.

The Bastard Plague turned the ECHL upside down and gave it a good shake, and what fell out was something that only vaguely resembled a hockey season. Half the teams decided not to play at all. The rest didn't start playing until December. And the Komets agonized over whether to play in front of restricted crowds or just say to hell with it, finally opting to begin play in February.

That meant they played 20 or so games fewer than everyone else, but it also meant their season was more compacted. Players, especially goaltenders, came and went with dizzying regularity. 

So, of course, they somehow formed a bond anyway. And somehow won 29 of their 51 games and knocked out Wichita in five games in the first round of the playoffs. And went on to eliminate the Western Conference top seed, Allen, in four games after going down 1-0 in the best-of-five and trailing by three goals halfway through Game 2.

Then they took one of two in South Carolina in the finals, playing both games in a practice rink. And then a 4-2 win in Game 3, and a 2-1 win in front of that throwback Jungle to finish it.

Craziness. Sheer craziness.

And now I see Chase again, thinking about that.

I see him one night an indeterminate number of nights ago, breezing down the corridor after a Komets victory. He was headed back up to radio rinkside, moving far more briskly than a man then in his 80s had any right to. 

"Heeeyyy," he said as we passed, busting out the wall-to-wall grin. "That was somethin', eh?"

Sure was.