Far away from me

 I've written this post in my head so many times that I don't know what I'm actually going to put on paper. 

I don't care about hockey anymore. 

I want to care about hockey again. 

These two are related, and twined up in the Buffalo Sabres and what they are (aren't).

Hockey hasn't always been about a team for me. It was about the game, and about individual players. For me, the name on the front was a lot less important than the name on the back (Sorry Herb Brooks, that's just how I roll)

This doesn't mean that I haven't fallen in love with some teams along the way: The '94 Canucks will always be the team of my heart (and heartbreak). I have great love for the 2003 Devils- definitely a team I started watching because of Marty Brodeur and ended up really enjoying for many years after. And of course I fell in love with the Sabres (as individuals and as a team) during that magical 2005-2009? 2010? time. But what really draws me in to the game is the individual players. I want to care about who is on the ice and how they are performing day in and day out. And of course hockey is a team sport, so they need to be contributing to the team in order for it work, but to really draw me in and make me CARE, I need a personal connection. I say "personal", like I actually knew any of these guys. (Although, to be fair, I *did* actually know my minor league fellas, but that's a different story for another time.)

By "personal", I want to be able to name more than 2 players on the team. I want to know what their stats are, and what their strengths (and weaknesses) are, and to be able to write a scouting report because I've seen them play enough. (True story, I took an online hockey scouting and GM class back in 2010 and I wrote my final paper on the Sabres- with suggestions on who to keep/trade/let go to free agency, and it wasn't even work, because I knew so much about how the team and players worked at the time that it just flowed.)

I want that back. 

It's partly my fault. I got busy with real life (yay real life)- I was doing a lot of theater and that takes up evenings, so I stopped watching as much hockey. We had season tickets for a few years which was great and I went to a ton of games, but we let the tickets go after 2011 and that had an impact too. And the Sabres fell apart. That shouldn't have mattered so much but it really did. I might be a fair-weather fan (I don't really think of myself this way) and I don't live in Buffalo itself (but almost an hour's drive away, so not in the heart of things) and those are definitely factors to my overall ambivalence. But also, the Sabres stopped giving me reasons to watch. They traded or lost all the players I cared about and by that time I was so jaded (and again with the actual real life going on and not as much time to watch games) that I couldn't be bothered to learn about the new crop of players. 

I still adore the game of hockey, and there is a large part of me that wants to get back into it- learn about the team and start blogging again (I miss my blogger buddies, it seems everyone has kind of gone their separate ways too) and maybe I'll write more. (I always say that) 

I want hockey back. And more importantly, I want to feel something for hockey (and the Sabres) again. I'm just not quite sure how to get there.