Bonus! and Deja vu

I have an incredible sense of deja vu today.
But I'll get to that later. First, my recap of the totally awesome Pittsburgh game that I attended.

Canes won 3-2 over the Penguins Friday, much to my happiness. The Amazing-Power-Forward-Spirit of Cole (see last post) was truly with this team that night.

This was evident in the first period, when Eric Staal laid this incredible body check on Brooks Orpik. I don't think I've ever seen Staal check anyone - especially as hard as he did. And the fact that it was on the most hated player in the NHL (for me, at least) - Bonus!
Actually Staal played one of his best games of the season, in my opinion. But I think that's just because he wanted to show up his younger brother.

This game was just awesome. The sellout crowd was absolutely into it, making this a really exciting game to go to. And the fact that I got to boo my most hated person in the NHL every time he touched the puck - Bonus!

Now, as for today... I'm not sure if it's really deja vu or not. There's just a lot of weird coincidences.

To start off, I'll describe what happened last year on this date. It was a Saturday and the Hurricanes were playing Pittsburgh, and beating them up pretty well. I went to go watch the UNC-Duke game at 9:00, because it was going to be a better show than the hockey game (Plus, if you live anywhere near these teams, you know it's all anyone is talking about Monday morning).
I checked back with the Canes game at halftime - only to find that Cole had been injured - pretty badly, by the way John and Tripp were talking. So, nervously, I went back to watching UNC beat Duke in Cameron on Senior Night.
The next morning, I found several accounts of what Cole was out with - some reports had it was his arm because of the way he went off the ice - but I knew it couldn't be that because he didn't go into the boards with his arm. Finally, the true story came out - that Cole had fractured vertebra in his neck, wasn't paralyzed, but he would be out for quite a long time. (And that Brooks Orpik is an absolute loser...)

Fast forward to today, a year after that Saturday. Both the Canes and Penguins play today, although not against each other. But the teams played each other only played two nights ago. UNC and Duke play each other again - still Senior Night, although this time it's Carolina's night, not Duke's. Cole's out - not with a neck injury, thank goodness.

I don't know where exactly I was going with typing all this out. But, I just think there's way too many coincidences for it to go unsaid that the same events are happening in the same time frame a year later. The more I think about it, the more I think that there has to be some underlying message in all of this.

Or, y'know, I've had too much Mountain Dew within the last week. Take your pick.