It's been almost a month since the Penguins' Stanley Cup championship in Nashville, and the four of us who covered it -- Josh Yohe, Matt Gajtka, Matt Sunday and me -- have only recently begun organizing our lives anew.
In the modern era, of course, that means cleaning out one's iPhone pics.
So I thought, in the interest of a major moment in our city's history being preserved for all that it's worth, it would be a good idea for all of us to offer you all our raw footage from the postgame. There isn't that much, and you'll see a least a little overlap, but if you have the same reaction we all did when watching, I trust you'll savor it all over again.
Let's get started with a bit of a prequel, my press box shot of the Penguins-Senators handshake line at PPG Paints Arena:
And now, June 11, 2017, beginning with Nashville's Broadway street scene a few hours before faceoff, this from my walk to the nearest Starbucks:
Inside Bridgestone Arena, from up in the press box, I snapped Faith Hill completing Music City's natural hat trick of butchering our national anthem:
I've got Carl Hagelin's empty-netter. And I'm pretty sure you can hear Josh say to my right, 'They're not going to catch him.' At which point, I turn the camera and say, 'Look at the bench' that, of course, was going bonkers:
Yohe has the final few seconds here, focused on the bench the entire time:
Here's Gajtka, same scene, but focused on Matt Murray's crease instead:
More Gajtka, this of Sidney Crosby accepting the Conn Smythe Trophy:
I kept rolling through the first five guys to take the Cup for a twirl:
Once downstairs, I let my camera roll for a dozen continuous minutes. I've shared this on the site before, but I'm repeating it here for full context and for anyone who might have missed it before:
In a similar spirit, Josh grabbed this moment with Matt Cullen and family:
And this one with Mario Lemieux:
And this one with Marc-Andre Fleury:
Ian Cole's family, all of whom are subscribers to this site, watched as their son participated in Morning Java, which had to be at least the second-best thing that had happened to him that night:
Cole did the opening segment with us, at which point Gajtka and I went over to where a bunch of fans were cheering to do the rest. We had to summon Yohe our way and ... well, this has to be seen to be believed:
Before long, that was it. I found Hagelin and his dad and had a private talk with those two, and we were all leaving the ice. It all happened over about an hour and change.
And as we walked off, Sunday, who'd been dutifully snapping away through all this, took one final shot for posterity: