Happy Valentine's Day folks. Hope you are all being good to your significant others today.

Last week @BlokchainB noted that I had a lot of random stories. I am going to chalk it up to a life well lived.

So today I present to you a GrayRuby random Valentine's tale, that fittingly occurred 20 years ago today, and I think Blok will like this one because his Sabres play a part in it. I also think @kr can learn a valuable life lesson about Leafs fandom from this one.

The year was 2004 and the Toronto Maple Leafs, who I had grown up watching and (ashamed to admit) loving, were tied for the 3rd best record in the entire NHL. This was going to be their year. I felt it.

They had many household names such as Matt Sundin, Joe Nieuwendyk, Gary Roberts, Owen Nolan, Robert Reichel and Alexander Mogilny but their best player that year was their goalie. Future hall of famer, Ed Belfour, patrolled the crease that season and was incredible with a 2.13 GAA.

The morning of Feb 14 I get a call from a friend of mine. "Hey, a buddy of mine offered me free Leafs tickets for tonight, he can't go because of Valentine's plans, do you want to go?". Without hesitation I responded "yes". My single friend knew very well I was in a multiyear relationship at that time and said "are you sure, don't you have anything planned for valentine's day?". To which I replied "no, it's ok, we were going to hang out but we don't have any specific plans because we were going to go out for Valentine's dinner one night next week when restaurants aren't so busy". My buddy said "cool, I pick up the tickets and meet you at the subway station around 6pm". I replied "sounds good, see you then".

This was awesome. It is now and was then very difficult to get Leafs tickets, let alone, "free" Leafs tickets. Of course, nowadays someone who can't go to a game would likely post the tickets on a secondary ticketing site like StubHub but back then it was fairly commonplace to just give your tickets to "someone who can use them" if you couldn't go to the game.

Now, I had projected much confidence in this decision to forgo Valentine's day and go to the game instead but I was having second thoughts when I had to call my then girlfriend and tell her the news that I would not be coming over on Valentine's night but instead going to the Leafs game with a friend and not her. She wasn't much of a Leafs fan but I think she might have handled the news better if I had told her "we" were going to the game. She was not pleased to hear the news but the conversation went a lot smoother than I thought it would. After all, what's the big deal, were going to have a great Valentine's dinner one night the following week.

So my buddy and I took the subway down to the game, grabbed a couple beers, and settled into our seats. Our seats were great, in the corner around the middle of the lower bowl. The teams were warming up as we sat down. Almost immediately we both noticed something odd. The goalie taking warm ups in the Leafs net wasn't Eddie "the eagle" Belfour, it was the backup Trevor Kidd. My buddy and I almost simultaneously blurt out "Kidd is playing?". We were definitely disappointed in the Leafs goaltending selection that night but still confident this great Leafs team could beat the mediocre Buffalo Sabres even with their back up between the pipes.

Boy were we wrong. Kidd was awful. He gave up 5 goals. Most of them on shots that should have been easy saves. The Leafs lost the game 6-4. They even topped the night off by putting the puck in their own net. This goal would end up being credited to the Sabres goalie Mika Noronen as he was the last player to touch the puck. So even the goalie scored against the Leafs that night.

Quite the disappointing night and to top it off apparently things weren't as cool as I thought with my then girlfriend. She pretended everything was ok but the next few months were pretty rocky and we broke up that spring. I am not saying it was all due to that Leafs game but it definitely didn't help.

That night was most certainly the St. Valentine's let down for all involved.

-The End-

p.s- A love for the Toronto Maple Leafs will always be an unrequited love.

Sats for all, GR