UPDATE: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!

When I moved 3,000 miles to Boston (more than a year ago now, though that seems impossible — time doesn’t fly, it beams itself around like Captain Kirk) I was excited about a number of things:

Being with Gradon
Hanging with Ethan and Devon
Working at Sametz Blackstone
Seeing my friends in Boston
Eating at all the fantastic restaurants in Boston
Going to the beaches outside the city
Shopping in American stores (you have no idea how much more selection you have)
Walking around and exploring
Living in a city with a NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL franchise (I’d been a Patriots fan for more than a decade, and a Celtics fan for half of a decade, too!)

That last one was actually a big deal — I grew up with a major sports fan dad (and grandfather, for that matter), and had only lived in cities with hockey teams. Vancouver flirted with the NBA for a few years, but our team soon fled for the bright lights of Memphis (!), and we were back to being a hockey-only town.

(I mean, I guess Vancouver has “football”, but the CFL has never done much for me.)

So. The Canucks. I ended up in their territory in middle school.

I went to regular season games, and sat everywhere from the nosebleeds to the reserved boxes, sometimes for a mint, and sometimes for free. Off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure I spent thousands on tickets over the years — and that’s not even including how much it costs to eat or drink anything at GM Place.

I remember sitting through tons of playoff games (various rounds, various years) in living rooms; we’d be jumping up and down when it was amazing, and using some inappropriate language when it wasn’t.

Who can forget the pain of the last game of the Finals in ’94… and how embarrassed we were by our fellow “fans” when they chose to riot over our Game Seven loss to the Rangers. Really? Breaking windows because your hockey team lost? I think that’s in the dictionary under “lack of perspective.”

And I remember my birthday party in 2004 turning into an emotional rollercoaster when the Canucks tied the Flames in Game 7 with 5.7 seconds left in regulation… and then lost only a few seconds into overtime. Everyone left early.

I remember going to Trevor Linden’s last game, and crying. Everyone did. Well, not everyone was lucky enough to go, like we were… but all of us cried.

In the end, my game viewing waned a bit by the time ’09 rolled around. I was spending most of my evenings when the games were on either working, or talking on IM/over the phone with some guy in Boston. That, and I’d had my gut punched by the Canucks a little too often (the last straw: the disrespectful way they treated Trev in his last season vs. the amount of money we flung at Matthias Ohlund when he wasn’t DOING anything anymore…)

Then I moved to Boston, and I knew I could watch pretty much ANY sport (well, sports that I enjoyed… ) and hockey stopped being the “only game in town.”

I inadvertently took a year off watching hockey, because… well, I kinda got used to life without it.

And as far as the Canucks went, I couldn’t see any of their games here, and most of my friends didn’t even talk about the Canucks until it was time to jump back on the bandwagon every spring (NOT all of you, so don’t take that personally.) I could follow the numbers, but that wasn’t terribly exciting.

So I enjoyed the Patriots, I enjoyed the Red Sox, and I enjoyed the Celtics.

Then the Bruins got into the NHL playoffs this year and no one would stop TALKING about it (because this is a sports city), so I turned on a game, and like that famous line from The Godfather… I was pulled right back in.

Because, at the core, I wasn’t strictly a Canucks fan, I was a fan of HOCKEY.

Good hockey.

Played by teams with heart (including the Canucks — and the Bruins.)

Played by teams loved by their communities (including the Canucks — and the Bruins.)

And I didn’t have to choose between the Bruins and the Canucks because I could only see one team actually play… and they weren’t playing one another, anyway.

Until (NO JINX! NO JINX!) perhaps… now.

Now I’ve got friends in Vancouver threatening to disown me if I cheer for the Bruins if/when we meet up in the Stanley Cup Finals… and friends in Boston asking me if I’m REALLY a part of this city if I hang on to the Canucks.

So here’s the deal, so people will stop leaving vaguely threatening posts on my Facebook wall (family members included):

I chose to become a part of this city. Not reluctantly, not hesitantly.

I’ll be here for no short while, because there is a short person who lives here, and here his dad should be. With this city, I chose a family of a father and son, both of whom love their Boston teams.

I could sit in the living room, cheering for the other side, but I’m not sure that’s how you endear yourself to a kid, mmm?

And even if he didn’t care — which he actually doesn’t, he’s more interested in my iPad — I guess I could pine for Vancouver endlessly by talking about how much better things are there than here, and how much I love everything from there, and how much I miss it (well, I do say that about the sushi.)

But I’m not sure that’s how you jump in with both feet, and grow where you’re planted.

Besides — I lived in BC for 21 years of my life, and spent 16 of them elsewhere (including where I was born.) When that balance flips (which it will in five years), does that mean my allegiances should, too? Or do you only get to cheer for one team your whole life, and it’s the first one in your first city?

Because we didn’t have one in Nipawin, SK, where I was born. Or Whitehorse, YK, where I lived next. The first city I lived in with a team was… Edmonton.

(And everyone has their limits.)

So I’ll cheer for who I feel like cheering for, when I feel like it. Because mostly? What I really love in the world of hockey?

Is hockey.