NHL can continue to learn from these spirited finals
RALEIGH, N.C. -- It was nearly 1 in the morning.
More police and security officers than fans remained in the RBC Center parking lot, perhaps signifying better-safe-than-sorry caution in the wake of the Hurricanes' Game 7 victory over the Oilers.
But maybe everyone was simply spent.
Or waiting for the Tuesday evening parade and celebration outside the arena.
Again, as in Edmonton, a full house Monday night sang both national anthems, this time with many Carolina fans perhaps being so jealous that Canada has one that conducive to being part of a 19,000-voice chorus that they were tempted to learn the French words, too.
And then, all night, it was as if the Hurricanes' Eric Staal was streaking in on a breakaway and was about to get off a shot and ...
Because everyone was standing.
If you wanted the beer guy in the aisle to notice you, you'd have been better off sitting down.
It was the NHL's fourth finals Game 7 in five seasons, and all four have ended with the home team hoisting the Stanley Cup, so this should have been familiar. But there just seemed to be something a little different about it this time, including the strangely convivial atmosphere among the tailgating before the game. The many Edmonton fans -- advertising their loyalties on their backs -- were far more likely to end up being offered a Carolina Pale Ale out of a cooler than to hear taunts, whether from the folks whose kids attend school with Rod Brind'Amour's children at the Montessori School of Raleigh or anyone else.
One of the things missing in the finals, given the other-planet nature of the conferences, and now more than ever, is a bitter rivalry. In that sense, the conference finals or even the first two rounds can be more testy, and I'm talking about the fans, too.
But by the time the finals got to a seventh game, and with the Oilers guaranteed to be characterized as failures after getting this far as an No. 8 seed that lost its goaltender in Game 1 of the finals, the positive of that was fans of both teams, at least those in attendance, could feel as if it was a party.
And so the NHL's renaissance season came to an end, with Brind'Amour passing the Cup to Glen Wesley, who passed it to Bret Hedican, who gave it to former Oilers stick boy Ray Whitney, whose visceral exclamation perhaps made executives at the network(s) wish there were a delay-and-delete switch on the audio.
With veterans finally getting their chance to hoist the Cup. With Carolina fans, both those who followed the sport since childhood in other areas before moving to the Triangle and the many natives who came to love the game in unapologetically climbing aboard a bandwagon, celebrating and taking pictures with cell phones and digital cameras.
Small markets? So what?
In this case, it was energizing. The enthusiasm in Edmonton oozed from the screens, even in, say Baton Rouge.
The NHL still has problems, and I'm among the many who aren't shy about pointing out what I believe them to be.
• The league was too hard to find on television this season and lost the chance to draw in fans who stumbled across a game on a familiar network.
• The NHL still doesn't promote its stars sufficiently, bowing to the entrenched culture of the sport rather than entering the 21st century, a step that wouldn't necessarily have to embrace the "me, me, me" attitude more common to other sports.
• The lockout never should have happened because it was a monument to mutual intransigence, and the fallout -- primarily involving a setback in the fight to gain inroads in the consciousness of the general sports fan in non-NHL markets -- has been underestimated. That parroting of the view that the NHL stepped back during the lockout contributed to newsroom rationalizations at an amazing number of major U.S. newspapers -- including those in Detroit, Dallas and Chicago -- for not sending any writers to the finals. (Wouldn't you think "Hockeytown" might find the finals worth covering with a staff writer or two?)
• There still is a wing clinging to archaic standards that can make the NHL occasionally come off as having all the class of a tractor pull.
But all that said, when commissioner Gary Bettman took the microphone after Game 7 and congratulated the teams and fans in both markets and barely was able to get his hand on the Cup as Brind'Amour lifted it, he had every right to feel as if his regime has overseen a rejuvenation of the league. The anti-obstruction enforcement held up to a degree most of us thought impossible; the rules tweaks worked for the most part; and the players and coaches even acted as if they finally understood an adjustment of their mind-set was necessary, as well.
Ultimately, it wasn't a great finals as much as it was an intriguing one, with swings of momentum, with side stories that added to the enjoyment. Erik Cole's stunning return from fractured vertebrae in the final two games. Cam Ward, the fourth rookie goalie to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, frustrating the team he worshipped while being raised in Sherwood Park, Alberta. The ultimate first raising of the Cup by the Hurricanes' veterans.
Those who missed it?
It was their loss.
Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He is the author of "Third Down and a War to Go" and "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming."
