Since I’ve been either too busy fending off the beer-loving minors at Stop-n-Rob or flat on my back and doped up on Flexeril, I pretty much missed a lot of stuff–like, for example, Cory Stillman’s shoulder needing surgery and Frankie Kaberle’s shoulder not needing surgery (thank Eir for that). Props to d-lee and CasonBlog for keeping the Caniac end up.

Anyway. Back around the Ides of March, Eric McErlain (who has his own set of medical woes to deal with–get well soon, bubba) about the All Blacks and their pre-game ritual: the haka. One of the clips he posted was one from a New Zealand/South Africa Tri-Nations match:

Kapa O Pango

The day of Game 3 against the Habs, I started a thread on teh LGC entitled “If this doesn’t get people fired up, nothing will”–and I posted that link. The Hurricanes won that night and the next seven games afterward. Even when the streak was broken, watching the haka (and my bumping the thread) became a game-day ritual–win or lose. It got a little silly toward the end when certain posters were told that they couldn’t post in the thread anymore because the ‘Canes lost a game, and much of the thread is just me saying “bttt” (back to the top), but it was all in good fun.

What, me superstitious? Perish the thought!

The day of Game Seven, the thread (which sadly almost got lost in the Great Board Migration of 2006 along with so many other Hall of Fame threads) became a sort of bonding ritual, as fans down here watched it along with fans in Brazil and Poland and Canada and even the Middle East (Thor keep you safe, Joe and Kevin). I still can’t watch it without a shiver going down my spine, and it’ll always be known to be as The Haka That Won The Cup.

Because if something like that doesn’t fire people up, then nothing else will.

(caveat: the duplication of many posts in that LGC.com thread came as a result of a db error when migrating the board from phpBB to vBulletin. Trust me, it wasn’t intentional.)