Air Canada Centre

Conservative ministers have shown tremendous hypothetical courage in the face of hypothetical danger

A light, twinkling snow fell against the towered streets as I made my way to the rink last night, my first visit in two years. That this blog had such pull with the Leafs’ press office made me remember the means by which I’d crashed other media rows in past years: fudging credibility to sit in old Memorial Auditorium to watch the Sabres; an anthem-singing guest appearance at the Gardens on the eve of my wedding; and a plea to a novice university pop writer from Expos’ brass in the late 80s to cover a team that no one outside of Quebec wanted to cover. On this visit, however, it appeared as if I’d found legitimacy, passing easily through the glass doors of the rink to the tableclothed media desk in the guts of the Platinum Club, securing my card—my name on it and everything—from a nice woman in whom I confessed procedural unfamiliarity. “That’s okay,” she said, adding, “The elevator is just around the corner,” guiding me with the voice of a nursemaid and a flight attendant’s wave.