Top Ten Signs You’re a Little Over-Invested in the NHL Playoffs

1. You would turn off a recently uncovered John Cusack-as-Lloyd-Dobler sex tape to watch hockey, maybe not even a game played by your team of choice. Or you would at least seriously consider it.

2. You remind people without prompting even though they do not care that you were a Washington Capitals fan when you were a CHILD, when they played in the crappy concrete hole that was the since blown-up Capital Centre in Maryland, a building you once saw your uncle ejected from for fighting with a New York Islanders fan, true story. And that you would pay $8 to sit in the nosebleeds to watch them lose for years throughout college, so this is no Great 8 bandwagoning here, no way, suckers.  Also haters, haters who, uh, did not ask or care, but still. You will tell them. And they will hear – and largely ignore – your cries.

3. You ponder buying a Game One playoff ticket for a week, even though no one’s schedule is clear to go who would normally accompany you to this expensive, nervewracking, completely awesome event. After you spend way too much time trolling Craigslist you finally decide not to go, that it is too expensive, who do you think you are? Go get some wings and pretend you still live in a flyover state and sit on your ass and watch this unfold at home like a normal person.

4. On game day in some kind of red haze you buy a ticket two hours before the puck drops and you go anyway, alone. And you do not care that you are alone because you are there, dammit, you are there. And you awkwardly dance to Welcome to the Jungle with the girl next to you who is also there alone and who appears to be approximately 18 years old which makes her solitude even stranger but such is the power of hockey. And you laugh when she texts her friend (in great big letters that you can clearly see) that “there is like gormet food here it smells so good lol.”

5. And when they lose in one of the most pitifully played games in memory you tell yourself it is because you went and now you don’t have to go to any more games. At least in this series.

6. You contemplate making a Facebook fan page for this picture.

Well-oiled Russian Machine, indeed.

And then you change your mind.

7. You know that (realistically) (and also thank God) you cannot grow a playoff beard or mullet (I mean you could probably swing the mullet but you won’t, having dated someone with one for almost assuredly the final time) but it still perversely crosses your mind anyway.

Whoever “you” are. Weirdo.

8. You cycle through the four traditional stages of grief every day as regards your team’s chances of winning, losing, going into overtime, sustaining injuries, slumping, rebounding, destroying the dreams of a legion of fans  but mostly you, etc. You ricochet mostly between bargaining and anger, and discover that both go better with beer.

9. You spend almost an hour looking for a photo for a post about being over-invested in the NHL playoffs that you know you had saved but you can’t find it so, again: bargaining, anger, beer.

Again, whomever “you” are? You really have a problem.

10. And finally, hockey drives you completely crazy all the time and you know that you will live and die loving it anyway. And you won’t know why, but you know very well that the fourth stage of grief is acceptance and some things are what they are, as crazy as they are.

*The possible “you” addressed herein made dinner plans this evening, knowing full well that they would take place during the third – and first away – and therefore most excessively nervewracking thus far- game of the Washington Capitals first playoff series against the Montréal Canadiens.  At a restaurant with a few televisions. And beer.

**And if you’re wondering why they call this all of a sudden annoyingly scrappy team the Habs and don’t want to tell anyone you don’t know why? About.com is here for you.

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