59 – Inauspicious – Unpretentious

By Jeremy Wright

There will be no shortage of ‘Scrivens for Mayor’ blog entries this morning, but that isn’t enough to deter me from gushing over the once in a life time performance that Ben Scrivens, goalie extraordinaire, put on last night.

What.

A.

Show.

This season has been a long, arduous, slogging wade through the trenches of fandom. This was the season that things were to start turning around. The playoffs weren’t supposed to be a distant dream by Christmas. The growing experience of youth was going to be tuned to accelerate into an efficient scoring machine. This was it, the waiting and the pain over… That is not at all what transpired. The expectations are all but gutted and fans have been left waiting, wondering and wanting once again.

Life as an Oilers fan is an interesting one to say the least. Highs and ‘lowes’ define us like almost no other. We have sat witness to many amazing feats of sport. 50 in 39, 215, 92, 51 straight, 8 points, 5 in 7, 99, Edmonton’s David to Dallas’ Goliath. We have also been on the other end of the indifferent stroke of the hockey gods. Game 7 of ’06, Steve Smith, the Gretzky sale, the last 7 seasons plus 55 games. And then last night happened. What a joy it was:)

59 saves and no goals in 60 minutes in pretty damn amazing. It almost leaves you speechless because you know you will probably never see a performance like that again, especially with your team. It’s a once in a lifetime event. What makes it all the better is how unexpected it was, all of it.

Ben Scrivens used the word inauspicious to describe the start to this unlikely ending. And I don’t know if there is a better word to describe the man himself. His past as a player is as inauspicious as it gets.

Mediocre AA midget goalies from Spruce Grove don’t end up playing Junior A, but Scrivens did just that. Most Junior A goalies who don’t even spend one full season as starter don’t end up with scholarships to Div 1 Ivy League schools, but Scrivens did just that. Most undrafted goalies playing US college hockey don’t end up in the NHL (there’s a trend here). And most goalies don’t get traded to one of the worst teams in the NHL and shut the door against one of the best teams with a 59 save, record setting, shut-out performance. But Scrivens did just that as well. Inauspicious is right. A finer story could not be written.

Once it was all over, there he stood using every exhausted breath to praise the work of Nick Schultz and the rest of the Bad News Oil (even though they hung him out to dry to the tune of 100 shot attempts against), being as humble and unpretentious as a most unlikely NHLer from Spruce Grove, Alberta should be.

For one night and forever he will be the man who stopped all 59. A special feat it was.

From all Oilers fans, a sincere thank you:)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to share some banter with me on Twitter, @borisnikov, be it hockey or otherwise.