I literally had to force myself to leave the RBC center tonight….Scott Walker collapsing onto the ice at the sound of the buzzer pretty much summed up my feelings.

The feeling that all the time, money, emotion I have spent this season as a hockey fan is probably done……well…really I just never thought it would be this hard.

I know a lot of people cheer against the Canes, everyone wants to see Alex Ovenchicken in the playoffs. I get it. But I think a lot of people don’t really understand why this team deserves a better fate than this.

300+ man games lost: Justin Williams, David Tanabe, Matt Cullen, Rod Brind’amour, Chad Larose…the list includes EVERYONE one of our players except for Eric Staal…..all injured at some time or another. We went for 2 months without our Captain…..

The “Rat pack”: Keith Aucoin, Ryan Bayda, Wade Brookbank, and Tim Conboy. I can’t say enough about these 4 guys. They were our heart and soul when we were sitting in the slumps. They really filled in for guys…who they probably shouldn’t have been able to fill in for. Brookbank went out and dropped the gloves with guys he KNEW were going to beat the crap out of him. What says “I want to be here” more than that?

Ruutu, Samsonov and Corvo: Guys who were on their last leg with their former teams and seemed to find their touch here. Here is to hoping Tuomo AND Samsonov stick around for a while. Joe is stuck with us for a couple years so no worries about him!

Everyone doubted this team…especially when Rod Brind’amour went down. This team has fought like crazy and they really deserved better than this. All of them. They work together as a team and took the blame for every loss instead of pinning it on the other team like some teams do (See: Washington Capitals and Florida Panthers)

So to my team…thank you for all the memories this year. It was a hard road, but I wouldn’t trade it for any other team.