Find Me Serenity

The oddest things happen when your hockey team wins the championship trophy.

You get to hear the words “Stanley Cup Champion” in front of your team’s name for the entire year. It’s the craziest thing, hearing the sentence “Your Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings” out loud and not in some fantasy dream you had 20 years ago when the Gretzky era was meant to bring us shiny hardware. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t).

Your summer break gets a whole lot shorter. This year seemed to go on forever, and the off season seemed to be over before it began. With this being an Olympic year, and with the Kings pushing every series but the finals to game 7, the season ended in mid-June rather than mid-May.

You get really interested in the draft and free agency. This summer I spent my time paying close attention to the chaos that is the free agency signing period, and the boring as hell NHL Entry Draft. Not because my team was going to pick up some phenom that will take over the league or sign the veteran superstar who will bring them a cup. But because every team who had faced and will face the Kings in their conference and division scrambled to pick the next big thing, and sign the best of the best free agents, to beat us. That’s a lot of fun.

Preseason hockey cannot come soon enough, but, it isn’t very exciting when your team doesn’t make any moves on the roster. While every other team spent their off time worrying about how to beat the Kings, our team spent their time partying with Lord Stanley. I know, because I followed them, on social media, don’t get creepy folks.

And that is how I spent my summer vacation. If it’s OK with everyone else, I’d like to do it again next year and every year after that. So. Let’s Go Kings!