Fourteen years ago, I was a lonely Virginia Tech student up in the rafters of the Greensboro Coliseum at his first live NHL game. Driving down, I wasn't sure I really cared which team won. Hearing "Let's go, Buff-a-lo!" from two rows behind, though, I decided that the guys wearing white deserved some cheers in their building.

The team's new home wasn't all that different culturally from my home of Central Virginia. But, put in a bad situation by a non-native team owner, the people of North Carolina took grief across the continent for being too -- what? Provincial? Preoccupied? Just plain dumb? -- to appreciate hockey.

That wasn't so. A few of us knew it at the time. Now, I couldn't be prouder of what North Carolinians (and, yes, we Caniacs across the state line) have shown the once-doubting hockey world. What TSN's Pierre Maguire (who doesn't act nearly the fool on Canadian broadcasts that he does on NBC) called "the best All-Star weekend [he's] ever attended" simply put the exclamation mark on it.