The Frozen Flashback, April 3, 2010, Morristown, New Jersey

They called it The Greatest Game Never Played and for 21 years any one with any knowledge of the original event would have agreed with the description. The 1989 New Jersey State Championship game was never played because one of the participating schools, Delbarton School, was quarantined by state officials because of a measles outbreak. Interestingly enough, that was the only measles outbreak in North America in the last 21 years as well. St. Joe's of Montavle, New Jersey was left without and opponent and both teams were named co-champions. A solution that satisfied no one.

After a newspaper article appearing last March commemorating the 20th anniversary of the cancellation, the idea of actually playing the game picked up momentum. Fortunately a number of Delbarton alumni worked for both the NHL and the New Jersey Devils and once those organizations threw their weight behind the concept, the Frozen Flashback was barreling down the tracks. The official NHL charity, Hockey Fights Cancer, got involved and suddenly over $250,000 was raised.



The game was this past Saturday and it was awesome. I didn't play having graduated from Delbarton prior to 1989 but my younger brother was a senior on that team in 1989 and I did play with most of the players when they were underclassmen. In short, I consider myself a member of the Delbarton hockey family so I really think I appreciate everything that went down leading up the actual game last Saturday.

The game was thrilling. Final score 3-2 Delbarton. But the box score is probably the least compelling part of the story. The money raised, the causes served, and the camaraderie and the intensity of all the players were apparent to everyone who watched from the stands. Still numerous events are staged for charity and most people write a check, nod politely and attempt to give the tickets away to some junior staffer at the office. But this game was different. This game captured the national media; it was the most emailed story from the Wall Street Journal online the week of March 20th. People who knew no one from either school heard the story and were fascinated at the concept and the reason why is simple enough.

Every one wants one more shot.

Obviously we all miss the idea of being young looking at a world full of possibilities but that's not what I mean. Everyone knows that Ponce de Leon was wrong and it's impossible to turn back the clock. Delbarton and St. Joe's weren't going back in time, instead they were finally getting closure. No more what ifs, should haves, or if onlys. They got to step up to the plate and take their cuts and in the end, what more can you ask?

If you ask around it's stunning how most youthful regrets center around the athletic field. It's tempting to think a failed romance would bring the most angst and it certainly does at the time it's happening but by middle age you realize it was fairly unlikely you were going to marry your high school sweetheart. Even if Marty McFly and Doc Brown had their DeLorean time machine for you and you could go back and ask that special someone to the prom before JP Flynn beat you to the punch it's doubtful you'd be together today. Face it, experience has shown how much happened to you in your life between that moment and the time you actually got married. A million other things would have to break right for you to be together today and the odds those things would have happened are one in a million. You should also be wise enough to know marrying the girl you loved so much at 16 would not guarantee anything about being happily married today.

But reflecting on the failed athletic endeavor isn't like that. Nothing in the present changes if you had won except one thing. On that particular day in your life when you played the actual game you'd be a winner and that feeling stays with you forever. We know this to be true because the loss still gnaws at you twenty five years later. We don't reflect on the lost game as to how it would affect our life today. The fact that you didn't get the promotion to regional manager has nothing to do with losing a tennis match in the 16 and under singles in 1992. Likewise your wife and kids don't love you any less even though you were cut from the varsity soccer team as a senior in 1986. Instead every person remembers the one game they lost and how much it hurt and the only reason they still think about it is because it would have meant the world to them on that day if they had won.

That's what brought out the intensity at the Frozen Flashback. That's why I saw grown men throwing quick, hard jabs when battling for the puck in the corner and that's why any player screening the goalie got a cross check in the back. Both teams wanted this so badly you could feel their hunger. All the players trained for months to get here, waking up at dawn and skating outdoors at 5:45 in the morning to retrain their muscles and hone their skills. Everyone is overworked, underpaid and no one has any "me" time thanks to the overenthusiastic way we throw ourselves into our kids' lives. No one hits a bucket of golf balls on a Saturday when their kid has a kindergarten tee ball game scheduled. However, this game meant so much that these overtired professionals found the time, got into shape, and gave up their Saturday nights to scrimmage other old man teams in preparation for the day when it would finally be decided.

The game had it all: quality goaltending, plenty of penalties, and an outcome in doubt right to the final horn. But for all of us in the stands it just brought back something beautiful and painful at the same time. The pain it brought back was the jealousy to be replaying our own athletic Waterloo. The beauty it brought back was the hunger to give it one more shot. Just dreaming about it makes you young and innocent again. Alas we know it will always remain a dream but at least we all watched a dream come true for a bunch of middle age guys who made it happen. It looked like it tasted better than anything you could possibly imagine.