I write this from a place of uncertainty, anxiety, and hope: the brief but interminable span of time between games six and seven of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final. 

The fact that there will be a game seven at all is a minor miracle. If the Oilers win game seven, it will be a historic, statistically improbable, and miraculous comeback by a team that was at the bottom of the league earlier this season and was down 0-3 in this series. Edmonton hasn’t won the cup in 34 years. A Canadian team hasn’t won a cup in 30 years. It’s been nine years since the Oilers drafted Connor McDavid and began the long climb out of the decade of darkness and into the light.

“Hope Will Never Die” was a slogan coined by OilersNation and festooned across t-shirts and other merch to mark the occasion of McDavid’s first game. “Believe” is another popular slogan that’s used by many teams and sponsors. How does a sports fan endure ten years of lacklustre, playoff-missing hockey without hope? How does anyone wait for anything without believing they will get there eventually?

I’ve been reading about hope recently, and what I’ve read isn’t great. This isn’t surprising when you think about what happens when sports fans’ hopes are let down: riots, domestic violence, and depression.

Pema Chödrön writes in When Things Fall Apart, a collection of talks given by the Buddhist nun over several years: 

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something, they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. 

This chapter, “Hopelessness and Death”, is one of the most challenging in the collection, as it runs counter to a lot of the ways we frame things in the west. Chödrön sees hope as a manifestation of fear, and reminds us that all fear is rooted in a fear of death. Hope is a way of trying to make life feel secure and free from doubt, to deny the fact that you are mortal, to desperately try to avoid death, and so hope is destined to fail us. This idea resonated with me – some of my greatest moments of frustration in life have come from wishing (hoping) that things could be different, that I could be different. 

Chödrön points out that all theistic religion is about hope: that if I do and say the right things, someone, some deity, will take care of me. Many religions also include an afterlife – an escape from death. It’s fitting that Oilers fans refer to McDavid, our great hope, as “McJesus.” Chödrön advocates for living with hopelessness:

When we talk about hopelessness and death, we’re talking about facing the facts. No escapism…Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself, to return to bare bones, no matter what’s going on.

Hockey fans talk about hope, but the Oilers don’t, or not much. They talk about playing one game at a time, getting back to basics, and enjoying the moment. Kinda sounds like Chödrön, right? That’s no coincidence, as the Oilers have hired celebrity mindfulness coach George Mumford this season. The linked Instagram reel is short, but Mumford mentions fear, trying by not trying, and being present. His method is a little hard to discern (disclosure: have not read his books) so I’m not sure if he’s got the Oilers meditating daily or what, but whatever it is, it seems to be making a difference. 

Unlike Chödrön, Mumford doesn’t fit into a particular mindfulness tradition. His website cites “positive psychology, mindfulness, philosophy, neuroscience, the recovery movement, group and organizational dynamics, and spiritual traditions from around the world.” I don’t know what Chödrön thinks of this popular version of mindfulness, but I know that critic and author Becca Rothfeld would have a field day with it. In her recent essay collection All Things Are Too Small, she casts a withering glance on western-style mindfulness, which is divorced from its eastern origins and grew out of the “mind cures” and “positive thinking” movements of the twentieth century. It’s an interesting angle, but sadly, the weakest piece in the collection. Rothfeld sets up ridiculous straw man arguments – that meditation means you can never think or judge, that mindfulness is an all-or-nothing proposition – which is a shame, because she’s onto something in criticizing the commodified version of mindfulness that’s peddled on apps these days. I have no doubt she’d scoff at Mumford’s vague pronouncements and slick website.

And yet! Mumford must be on to something too, because I’ve been watching the Oilers for 25 years and this team, this year, feels different. 

At this moment, despite what I’ve learned, and my years of on-and-off, half-assed mindfulness, I remain half agony, half hope. 

Oilers in seven.