It is all heavy sighs and mopey faces in camp JAHL for now. The end of the Avs season, the end of an amazing comeback that nobody expected, the final puck will be dropped tonight in Le Can, and there will be no more live hockey in Tapelegsville for the year. It doesn’t feel good. It is probably magnified by the fact that I was blogging about the Avs, and following closer than ever before. And truth be told, I’m a little sadder than I thought I would be.

But it won’t last.

Here, it’s all about the hockey love. The Avs are done, but there is still hockey left to play. Playoff hockey at that, the best kind of hockey. Regardless of how the broadcasts can be on Versus, there is national coverage, so I get to see more hockey. By the time that starts, I’ll be happy as hell. Playoffs baby, yeah.

At this point, I feel worse for other fans and bloggers than myself. Like E at Theory of Ice. This post just breaks my heart. Or how about the Oiler fans, who saw their franchise traded away, and hope went with it. How about the Bruins fans who expected more from Chara than they got. Or the minor league fans who don’t get to watch their teams on TV, or the Blue Jackets fans who are still waiting for their shot.

I feel pretty bad for the Avs themselves as well. Peter Budaj, in his post game interview, was ready to hide in a corner and do what real men do when no one is looking. (no, not that. sicko) Coach Q showed more humanity than I have seen before. Paul Stastny has to feel bad, as though there was more he could have done (he couldn’t, he did so much already), and Milan Hejduk, who has been talking about how fun the locker room has been lately, can’t be a happy man right now. Or how about Joe Sakic, who carried this team from day one, who had an outstanding year, who got better as the season went on (at age 37), and will miss the playoffs for the first time since the 1993-94 season. He, who is one of the most respected and best players in the NHL, and who is one of the most diplomatic of players, can not be feeling very good right about now.

Even Peter Forsberg seemed kind of down about the game. From Adrian Dater and the Denver Post:

“It was tough to play today,” he said. “Sometimes, you don’t know what you have until you leave. We’ll see what happens if I continue to play in the future. But I’ve got nothing else to say but good words about this place.”

All I can say about that is wow. Money, for those who should be paying attention, isn’t everything.

How about this (same source):

In a deserted dressing room, Avs veteran Ian Laperriere – who was robbed by Predators goalie Tomas Vokoun on a doorstep chance in the third – verged on teary emotion when discussing a great run that fell short.

“It’s not all positive, obviously. We didn’t make the playoffs. But there’s a lot of positives about this (run),” Laperriere said. “A lot of teams would have given up. Everybody picked up their game, but it was too late. It’s disappointing, don’t know what else to say.”

What do you say to that? How does how I feel compare? I cheered and hoped and yelled and wrote, but in the end, it wasn’t me who didn’t make it to the playoffs. I didn’t lose the big one, and have to watch the playoffs from the couch when I could be skating in them. If this team had finished the season as they started it, they wouldn’t have earned this kind of feeling, this emotion. After the run they had, after picking up the pace and showing the quality play they should have known they possessed, they earned it.

My sadness won’t last long. I’m going to turn may attention to the playoffs, and pick someone to root for. Probably the team with the best story behind it, maybe someone who hasn’t won the Cup before. A team not in the Trifecta of Evil.

I mean, there’s still hockey to play. And hockey day is always a good day.

(By the way, did I forget to mention that goals against Theodore didn’t count this season? Oops. Sorry.)

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