Darn. The Jets Game Was in the Afternoon.

Game five of the Winnipeg Jets' Stanley Cup Semifinal series against the Vegas Knights was played on a Sunday afternoon, Winnipeg time.

I found this out when early Monday morning, Wuxi time, the NHL app on my iPhone told me that the Jets has lost game five and thus the series to the Knights.  I had been expecting to follow the game on the app later Monday morning.  [Following the Jets on the NHL app is like watching the numbers go and down on an elevator's panel.  All I see on the app screen for an ongoing game are three numbers:  the two teams's scores and the time remaining ticking down.]  

In Wuxi, I can never follow live a game played Sunday afternoon in Winnipeg.  I just can't keep my eyes open at that time. [And I know, because I have tried to follow big football matches early in the AM.  It can't be done even if the game is compelling.]

Learning of the Jets' demise was a sort of bang mixed with a whimper.  It was a sudden disappointment to learn that the Jets had been eliminated because I hadn't expected the game to have already been played.  But I was able to quickly process the result because the Jets losing was not unexpected to me.  The latter aspect of the reaction may have been a result of age and my physical distance from the continent where the Jets were playing combined with the fact of my following the Jets being a solitary experience:  I wasn't caught up in a frenzy about it as I would have been if there was even another Jets follower I could talk to.

I suppose the Jets were doomed to lose to the Knights as the 116-36 Seattle Mariners were doomed to lose a playoff series to the 2001 New York Yankees who represented a city dealing with the 9/11 disaster.  The Knights began to play days after the Las Vegas massacre.

Learning the result of game five the way I did also leads me to recall how I learned that the 1978 Red Sox had lost that famous pennant race to the Yankees.  I was in Oromocto, New Brunswick and I had been playing a hockey game.  In the locker room afterward, I remember expressing hope that the Red Sox could beat the Yankees in the one-game playoff, only to be told that the game had been played and the Red Sox had lost.

Still, I am glad for the Jets and Winnipeg to have gone through their playoff run.  If they can keep the team together, there will be a Stanley Cup in the future!