It's In The Water

The Portland Winterhawks fell short in game 7 of the WHL Finals last night. So ends their quest for the Memorial Cup, and so continues a favorite saying of a couple of old friends. The Phuc brothers used to say that they didn't know why teams from the Pacific Northwest don't win Championships, but for sure, "It's in the water."

The last team from the Pacific Northwest to win a championship was the 97-98 Portland Winterhawks. Before that you have to go back to the 82-83 Winterhawks. I'm not counting the Huskies shared NCAA football title, BECAUSE IT WAS SHARED! Shared titles don't count. (Co-Champions, what a joke. Get on with that playoff system already NCAA Football!) Before that you have to go back to 78-79 with the Seattle Supersonics, and the 76-77 Blazers.

The late 1970's. Maybe that's when the tainting of the water table in the Pacific Northwest started. There have been teams that have gone to championship games, and series in the meantime. The Blazers had a couple of opportunities in the early 90's. The Sonics made an appearance. The Vancouver Canucks and the Seattle Seahawks both made it to their championship game/series. None of them brought home a championship.

It's in the water. Last year before the deciding game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals Nathan Horton of the Boston Bruins brought some Boston water all the way across North America to pour it onto the ice in Vancouver. The home team had won the first six games of the series. After Horton baptised the ice at Rogers Arena in Vancouver with his Boston water the Bruins went on to win the championship.

As I see it the solution is simple. If I owned a sports franchise, or was the athletic director of a major university in the Pacific Northwest I would not allow any of my players to drink the water. I would provide all the bottled water they wanted. I would tell them that Montezuma's revenge has been creeping steadily north. I would tell them that drinking the water in the Pacific Northwest causes hair loss and a diminished sex drive. I'd truck water in from New York, and Boston. I'd truck it up from Los Angeles, and even from St. Louis. I'd be open to water from almost anywhere but Buffalo, NY. (I'm pretty sure whatever we've got in the water here, they have in the water there.) I would set up a closed water system for each one of the athletes in my organization. I'd include the coaches, the training staff and all of the front office personnel. They would use water from this system for all of their water needs. Bathing, washing, filling water bottles to squirt their dogs to get them to stop barking, ironing, cooking, and washing their cars.

The result? Championships galore! One for everybody! Until someone takes this advice to heart though, us fans will just have to learn to live without championships. You see, it's in the water.