I remember it quite vividly, as a Flyers fan.
The Flyers came into that season looking absolutely incredible--that roster, if you recall, was stacked everywhere. Pronger/Timonen/Coburn/Carle was an incredible top 4. Richards/Carter were in their prime, Briere still a monster, Hartnell and Gagne effective, and some second-year guy named Giroux was showing flashes. Emery in net, whatever.
And then they played like shit and Emery went down with his knee condition. Stevens fired, we all cheered, Laviolette in, great...but it took a while and a lot of goalies to get it fired up.
When they started on their run in March and looked like they were going to make it to the playoffs, I kinda had a vision: I was walking down Forbes Ave in Pittsburgh and thought to myself "Holy shit, this team could win the Cup!" I don't know why, but it just kinda struck me--even with Leighton/Boucher as the goalie tandem, it was crazy enough that it would work (in fact, it was so crazy that I thought it had to work, and I had the same feeling when Foles took the reins for the Eagles late in their Super Bowl season. I'm a savant). And I told people about it and no one believed me. They were still in about 10th at that time.
The shootout win on the final day of that season to get the playoff spot...that was my brithday and it was beautiful. Never lost faith in the team even when they were down 3-0 to Boston, actually was able to see my first ever home playoff game because people sold off their tickets for game 4.
I truly believed they were going to win the thing to the very end. It was an extremely enjoyable run, the most fun I've had as a hockey fan/Flyers fan. And that swagger from the team kinda carried over to me, it was infectious. Even though they came up short, that-never die confidence and all the joy of the run kinda changed my whole mental outlook at the time. I went back to college in the fall and within three weeks I was dating the hottest girl who'd ever spoken to me. I'm not kidding when I say that wouldn't have happened if the Flyers lost that shootout.
Hockey rules, thanks for reading my diary.