Earlier tonight, the Chicago Blackhawks played the Phoenix Coyotes in Game 3 of round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Also earlier tonight, Raffi Torres of the Coyotes took out Marian Hossa of the Blackhawks.
If you know me at all, you know this bastard here is my absolute favourite player.
So just imagine how I felt watching him be taken off the ice on a stretcher after this disgusting hit:
A hit that is disgustingly similar to a hit on Brent Seabrook last season:
No, you're not mistaken. That's Raffi Torres from exactly one year ago making a similarly dirty hit on Seabrook. The main difference is that the hit on Hossa was dirtier and much more brutal than the hit on Seabs.
The hit he wasn't punished for.
I'm having a lot of trouble here finding the right words to express my anger, rage, and turmoil over this situation.
Let me explain.
Hossa is my favourite player. Absolutely, positively. I get upset when we play Pittsburgh and Detroit and I hear the fans booing him, but then I remember his reaction to such actions. How can you hate a guy who takes these hits without complaint, who never seems to get angry, and who plays his heart out every game?
But let me clear something up: I love Marian Hossa.
"But Cat!" You're probably saying. "Cat, how can you possibly love this guy? Doesn't that seem a little crazy and stalkerish?"
My answer: Yeah, kinda. But it was essentially love at first sight.
In November of 2009, I watched my first Blackhawks game. I had just gotten back into hockey after a long drought. Growing up in St. Louis as I did, I desperately wanted to go to St. Louis Blues games with my dad and brother, but I never got to go. After being denied several times, I turned my attention elsewhere.
And then everything changed.
My boyfriend attends a school where they have no football team; instead, they have a hockey team. He invited me out for a game one evening and the rest is history. It got into my blood. Knowing that Chicago had a team, I knew I had to start watching hockey and learning everything I could about the game. My cousins played hockey growing up, and I'd begged my mother to let me play, but it was like the Universe refused to let me in on it.
Until 2009.
That game, I watched Hossa and the Hawks get into a scuffle on the ice. I was shocked by the passion and tenacity of a player with 81 sprawled on his back. Talking to a friend, a Bruins fan, I told him about number 81, some guy named Hossa, beating up another player. My friend reacted strongly, not believing me. I immediately became intrigued as to why he had such a strong reaction to this player getting into a fight, so I started paying more and more attention to him.
And I will admit, that it makes me giggle that he's a blonde. I expected him to be a brunette, for whatever reason, so the first time I saw him without a helmet, I burst out laughing.
And it just escalated from there.
Whenever Hossa is on the ice, I know it. I can pick him out on the bench without seeing his name or number. I can find him on the ice at any time because I can recognize his body outline (and you thought you were creeped out before). Why is this?
Because I absolutely adore the Slovakian bastard.
Marian Hossa is a strong player with talent in nearly every area of the ice. He's offensive and defensive and a threat to the opposing team whenever he steps off the bench. He's one of the top players on our team, if not the top player (but, then again, I'm biased).
Also, he's ridiculously good looking (to me, anyway).
So as I sat there, watching the game tonight, and stared in horror as Raffi-fucking-Torres unleashed the most disgusting hit I've seen in three years on my absolute favourite player, whom I freak out over if he even gets a hangnail (only barely exaggerating there)....
I just can't.
It was sickening. All my focus was on the screen as I watched trainers and medics surround him, checking on him and trying to determine his status. When I saw them putting him on the stretcher, I nearly lost it. It took a lot of control to keep myself together, and I didn't entirely succeed. The rest of the game I spent on tumblr, twitter, and Facebook trying to figure out if he was okay, waiting for updates from the tumblr community and official Blackhawks twitter accounts.
And damnit, it did not help that they continued playing the hit. After the fifteenth airing, I had to turn away for fear of sobbing in the middle of the bar. That is how painful this whole experience is for me.
And now, I'm sitting in my living room, writing this, having traded my Hossa t-shirt for my Hossa jersey and too drained to cry or scream.
So tell me I'm obsessed.
Tell me I'm being dramatic.
Tell me I'm overreacting.
I don't give a damn. My favourite player is hurt.
And there's nothing I can do about it.
