Soccer forces life to move on. There’s always a new match. A new season. There’s always a dream that everything can get better. It’s a game of wonders.

The planet knows no greater silence than two dozen hearts after a loss.

This has been a story about ice rinks and all the hearts that beat in and around them. About people and sports and how they sometimes take it in turns to carry each other. About us, dreaming and fighting.

There's an old saying in Hed: "Tell a stranger you hate Beartown and you'll have a friend for life." The smallest child in Hed is quick to learn that it's important for Hed Hockey to do well, but that it's even more important that things go really badly for Beartown. Partly in jest, obviously. The stands are full of screamed threats about "hating" and "killing" each other, but of course they aren't serious. Until all of a sudden they are.

Sports creates complicated men, proud enough to refuse to admit their mistakes, but humble enough always to put their team first.

The only thing the sport gives us are moments.

That tendency exists in all sports: parents always think their own expertise increases automatically as their child gets better at something.

I just mean ... damn ... this might sound a bit crazy, but sometimes you can't help wondering if we don't take all this a bit too seriously. If we aren't putting too much pressure on the juniors. They're not really much more than ... kids."..."That depends what we want from the kids. And what the kids want from hockey.

Winners have a tendency to be forgiven in this town.