You ever been to Calgary? Chances are, you haven't. It is a beautiful, modern city with wide boulevards and ample evidence of active urban planning. A small cluster of suburbs surrounds the city before giving way to rolling foothills, and visible from most vantage points in the city is the towering grandeur of the Canadian Rockies.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, is a sprawling megalopolis of almost 10 million people set on the Pacific Coast (as if you didn't know that already), where any natural vista is obscured by the ever-present smog.
The cities have very little in common, but one thing they do share is that they both have representatives striving towards championships in their respective sports, the Lakers in basketball and the Flames in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The two teams resemble one another about as much as you can say Calgary and L.A. are interchangeable, and I for one, know who I will be rooting for and whose demise couldn't come fast enough.
The Flames appear in the playoffs this year for the first time in seven years as the No. 6 seed in the West. Seven years? That is an eternity in a world of instant gratification.
For a team that has very little big game experience, few jitters can be noticed. A few hiccups here and there, such as a 5-4 triple overtime loss to Vancouver that forced a game seven and a 5-2 shellacking at Joe Louis Arena that evened the series at two apiece, but they have yet to be de-railed. You'd expect such a dramatic turnaround from habitual bottom-feeder to contender would be fueled by the addition of a veteran or the emergence of a young star.
The truth is much more remarkable. The team traded away one of its stars, in Chris Drury, before the season started, and over the course of the year has added role players to fill the void.
The result has been better than anyone could have predicted. With the emergence of Miikka Kiprusoff as an elite goaltender, the team has dispatched the top three seeds in the West: Detroit, San Jose and Vancouver, in workmanlike fashion. No one player has dominated headlines; at times it is Kiprusoff, or Jarome Iginla, but just as frequently it has been unheralded players like Chuck Kobasew and Dave Lowry.
The Flames have embraced the team unity and desire that has arisen among the motley assemblage. Rather than exalt stars like Iginla, they present a hardhat award to "the hard-working guy who does the little things and makes sacrifices for the team," according to Craig Conroy who has been a Flame for two and a half years.
Winners can simply be people who outskate icing calls or sacrifice their body to block shots, but this team recognizes that to be a champion, you have to play like one: hard, clean and most importantly, together.
I wish I could say the same for the Lakers, but their trials (literally) are well documented. The talented team of superstars is hardly a picture of team unity, self-sacrifice or modesty. Shaq and Kobe hardly acknowledge each other after wins and Phil Jackson struggles to keep the rest of his players in line. Even the addition of two surefire Hall of Famers in Malone and Payton has done little to calm the rancor between his two biggest stars.
I feel for Phil Jackson, I really do. Malone and Payton are mercenaries hoping to latch onto a proven winner and Kobe has, well, other things on his mind. That leaves Shaq, and as dominant a force as he is, Shaq is only in it for Shaq.
The Zen that is Phil couldn't hand out a reading list long enough to get through to this cast of characters. This team hasn't imploded yet, but I'll try to keep my gloating in check when it happens, hopefully in front of a national audience.
As for the Flames, they now stand three games away from their first Stanley Cup since 1989 after a typically team-oriented win in Game One. They played hard, they played clean and they played together; something I doubt the Lakers will do in this lifetime.
Things I'd Like to See Before Commencement:
1.Calgary winning the Stanley Cup " Hockey is Canada's sport. As much as I hate to admit this as a Bruins fan and as an American, I would much rather see the Cinderella Flames knock off the Tampa Bay Lightening. I mean, how many Tampa residents have ever seen ice outside of St Pete Times Forum?
2.KG silencing his critics " Garnett has already broken the stigma of first round playoff loser, but as the number one seed in the West anything less than a NBA Championship will be read as a choke-artist performance. No one is less deserving of this tag, and I hope he rids himself of it.
3.BALCO " Least likely to happen, I would like to see Bonds, Giambi and all the rest indicted by Attorney General Ashcroft, one of the few productive things the current administration is taking part in. Enough about "everyone does it, so let it go," these athletes cheated and their lives and livelihoods should suffer because of it.
4.ThunderStix " Should be banned from all major sporting events. If you really care, yell, boo, whistle or clap; noisemakers have long been forbidden, I don't know why these are any different.
5.Boys of Summer " Where are Nomar, Trot and Mark Prior? These three had huge roles in guiding their respective teams to the ALCS and the NLCS and have yet to play this year. All three also represent all that is right in baseball: they play hard every day, don't cheat, don't break the law and realize that their number one loyalty is to the fans and not their checkbooks. Despite being slighted by the Red Sox all off season, Nomar even recently said he would like to finish his career in Boston.
