Another year of wait until next year

I put my UNH Hockey ball cap away on Monday, and replaced it with my Red Sox cap.

It’s what I do as I transition from one season to the next.

One of these days I hope to wear my hockey cap into April. That would mean that the University of New Hampshire Wildcats were playing in the NCAA Frozen Four.

The Frozen Four final is played in April -- this year in St. Paul, Minnesota, next year in Tampa, Fla.

But it wasn’t meant to be this year. As it wasn’t meant to be last year. As it wasn’t meant to be the year before that. And before that. And … well, you get the idea.

Forget what poet T.S. Eliot said about April being the cruelest month. He wasn’t a UNH hockey fun. Or a resident of northern New England, for that matter.

March tends to be cruel to UNH hockey.

It had led the Hockey East pretty much all season, but lost the regular league championship in the last two games of the season to Boston College. Then in the league tournament quarterfinals at the Boston Garden it lost to Merrimack College.

Welcome to March.

But the stars were beginning to align as the bracket for the NCAA tournament started to emerge.

We were going to be playing in the NCAA quarterfinals at the Verizon Center in Manchester, N.H. Also in the draw there were nemesis Merrimack, past nemesis Miami of Ohio, and Notre Dame, my wife Jane’s alma mater.

UNH would play Miami/Ohio in the first quarter final game; Notre Dame would play Merrimack in the second quarterfinal game on Saturday. The winners would play each other on Sunday, and that winner would go on to the Frozen Four.

The weekend meant that I got to walk around in my UNH hockey gear with my wife who walked around in her Notre Dame gear.

We filled out our hockey tournament brackets: mine with UNH as the national champ; hers with Notre Dame as the national champ. She wrote a column for her newspaper about how the weekend would test our marriage.

Indeed.

UNH beat Miami/Ohio. Notre Dame beat Merrimack. Which meant UNH played Notre Dame on Sunday for the right to play in St. Paul next week.

UNH lost. Notre Dame won. I lost. Jane won. Yes, we’re still married. Through thick and thin, wins and losses.

Sure, as March turns to April, I’ll root for Notre Dame next week when the Irish play Minnesota/Duluth in one national semifinal game. North Dakota and Michigan play in the other semifinal. And sure, I’ll root for ND if they make it into the national final on Sunday the 9th.

But my heart won’t be in it.

I’ll be thinking about next year. I’ll be looking forward to when UNH takes to the ice again.

I’m ever hopeful. I’m a Red Sox fan, after all.