The hats had rained down onto the ice. The shovels came out. There would be no hockey for a few minutes as the ice was cleared, so Claude Giroux leaned against the boards in front of his bench and did what all the other hatless folk did.
He watched the replay. He watched a burst of speed that he could not conjure at this time last year. He watched the pinpoint purpose of a shot that zipped over the glove of Henrik Lundqvist, the future Hall of Famer, giving the Flyers captain, at age 30, his first-ever regular-season hat trick, adding to the 100-point plateau he had reached earlier in the game – a plateau that only five other Flyers have ever reached.