Dallas Stars Confessions: Fan Out of Water

The Dallas Stars have had their ups and downs, but when your team is your team, you love ’em all the same- a lesson I recently learned in the least likely of places.

So, last night’s loss to Chicago on home ice- definite downer. The fact that the Dallas Stars’ game had been looking up since leaving January in the dust and now the same old issues are back to haunt them- definite downer. The fact that Antti Niemi, the Stars’ recent go-to-guy, had to be relieved by Kari Lehtonen, the Stars’ recent benchwarmer- another definite downer.

But, in the midst of all that awfulness, I experienced a sublime moment of magic. As you’re probably needing a pick-me-up, I’ll share it with you.

A set of pleasantly unavoidable circumstances put me in New York City last night. Don’t ask, the story’s kind of long. I had only a handful of hours to traipse around a city that would take weeks, perhaps months, to take in fully. Needless to say, my head was swarming with ideas of places I wanted to go, experiences I wanted to document for posterity and also (mostly) Instagram.

My grand schemes were dashed to pieces when my phone died barely minutes after forsaking the subterranean world of Penn Station. So many pictures untaken, so many opportunities missed. Only, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

In the midst of my wandering around the city and bemoaning the fact that I was no longer receiving game notifications on my phone (a long distance fan’s worst nightmare), I stumbled into heaven, an unexpected oasis in the figurative Sahara.

I found the NHL Store. And by that, I mean the NHL Store found me. I’d forgotten it even existed, and it was nowhere on my list of sights to see. But my forced and fateful cutting of the cord put me right in its path.

As a Dallas Stars fan in New York, I wasn’t expecting much. Except perhaps to have my car (which, bearing its Stars sticker on the rear window, sat in a parking lot miles and miles away) vandalized by Devils and Rangers fans. But my expectations were far exceeded.

Upon walking into the store, the first thing I heard (aside from the angels singing) was Jamie Benn’s name blasting from the speakers. I went insane. More than I am proud of.

I found the flat screen that was showing the Stars and Hawks game and parked myself in front of it for a few minutes, taking in the glory and my good luck at catching this game in New York when I wouldn’t even be able to see it on television at home. Pleasant surprise number one.

Pleasant surprise number two came when I pulled myself away from the screen (because perhaps my several phone-less hours left an impression on me) and started exploring. I found real, honest-to-goodness Dallas Stars gear in New York, y’all.

I affectionately cradled the Benn and Seguin and Lehtonen jerseys momentarily, and only momentarily because a nice-looking family with a little boy in a baby-sized Toews jersey were starting to stare.

Pleasant surprise number three, and my favorite moment of the night, came when one of the sales associates noticed me caressing another piece of Stars merchandise, like I was embracing my long-lost BFF.

But there was absolutely no judgment. In his very northern accent, he laughed at me and asked me, a bit incredulously, if I was a Stars fan. I answered in the most exuberant affirmative. He proceeded to direct my attention to the screen playing the game and we bantered for a minute or so about the Stars’ comeback abilities (the score was only 2-1 at that point), which I unwittingly praised, and am still not ashamed of doing.

Then came the kicker. The sales associate nodded slightly as that conversation came to a close (all while I was still covetously eyeing the Stars gear), and he smiled, the kind that shows even in your eyes, and asked me, “So, what’s your story?”

A pretty vague question, but I immediately knew what he meant. He meant my hockey story. The story of how in the world I came to be a Stars fan. I started to tell him it was a long story and I intended to leave it at that, but maybe something about hearing the names Benn and Seguin and Fiddler and Sceviour and Niemi all over the loudspeakers and seeing more Stars jerseys in one place than I’d ever seen in my life- in New York, of all places- something made me tell him the story.

More stars: Jamie Benn's Shot At Art Ross Repeat

Which is indeed long. Readers’ digest version: knowing nothing about the team, I pretended to be a bandwagon Stars fan to annoy a friend, and well, I ended up the punchline of my own joke. And the rest is history.

The sales associate did find this story entertaining, as most do, and I tried to engage in some self-deprecating humor to acknowledge that maybe the way I came to love my team isn’t quite as valid as everyone else’s.

But this guy stopped me in my tracks. “No way, your team is your team. Doesn’t matter how, you love ‘em all the same.” With his accent, he sounded a little bit like Rocky, which was super motivational, but the words he said hit me, too.

Because your team is your team. After they start the season like champs and play January like they’re what you’ve scraped up off the very bottom of the barrel, they’re still your team. They delight and disappoint you, you love ‘em all the same.

And sometimes I get so wrapped up in all the technical stuff that I can sometimes forget that. Winning is a special, warm fuzzy feeling as well, no doubt about it. But last night in the NHL store, talking to another crazy hockey fan who probably couldn’t care less about the Stars (I mean, we were blocks away from MSG), I had a different kind of warm fuzzy feeling.

That great feeling of community that you get every once in a blue moon in this league, if it’s All Star weekend or if you’re out of the playoffs and you need your rival to beat your bigger rival.

That reason we all love hockey to begin with, that reason we all have our own story.

That feeling of, this team is my team, and it doesn’t matter how because I love ‘em all the same. That feeling that Stars fans and Avalanche fans and- bless their little hearts- Blackhawks fans alike all have.

That feeling that keeps us going when we’re not entirely sure whether February will turn out to be another January, but we’re going to keep hoping.

Next: Dallas Stars Suffer Abysmal Loss To Chicago, 5-1

And that’s what I learned in New York City last night.

Also a thing or two about real pizza. But that’s another thing entirely.