First came the delivery of the rings.
Then came the raising of the championship banner and a visit by the Stanley Cup itself.
Yes, life was pretty good for the defending champion Carolina Hurricanes .
.. until Gary Bettman insisted on dropping the puck on a new season.
Party definitely over.
What followed, if you missed it, was a decent effort but an opening-night shootout loss to Buffalo nevertheless. Then there was a hopeless 4-0 loss at home again to New Jersey two nights later, and a three-goal third period collapse on the road to make it three losses in the first four nights.
All of a sudden the pre-season in which the Hurricanes went 1-4 and didn't get the one until the final game didn't seem so meaningless, either.
"We haven't had it since the first day of training camp," admitted Hurricanes general manager Jimmy Rutherford. "We haven't had any intensity.
We haven't had any of the stuff that made us successful last year."
Which is why, after head coach Peter Laviolette publicly stated that the Hurricanes were "kidding" themselves, he tried to find that loving feeling in practice this past Sunday, the morning after the Hurricanes gave up those three goals in the third period and were beaten 5-2 by the Washington Capitals, the first of a seven-game stretch on the road that continued Wednesday night in Florida.
Laviolette skated his players hard for a full hour, during which teammates Kevyn Adams and Bret Hedican took the coach's suggestion that "if we're not going to do it in games, we have to do it in practice" a little too literally and dropped the gloves, leaving Adams with a cut around his left eye.
Anyway, the Hurricanes are not the first team be punished in practice, to fight amongst themselves or to win the Stanley Cup, or to even lose in the final and stumble the next season. Heck, the Hurricanes have been down this tobacco road once before. Remember, they went to the Finals in the spring of 2002 with 91 points and lost to Detroit in five games.
The next year they finished last in their division with 61 points, missing the playoffs entirely.
"Totally different situation, though," said Rutherford. "When we got to the finals, Paul (Maurice) did a nice job of coaching and we had great goaltending.
But that team was just okay. It was a good playoff team, but I'm not sure it was a championship-calibre team. It's different now, we won the Stanley Cup with better players, most of them are back and most have a chance to be even better.
"The season after we went to the final, people forget, we were in first place until the end of November, but then it started to fall apart. We lost a game in Tampa on a bad goal, then we lost five or six in a row, the injuries started coming and we never recovered. This is totally different.
This has been in the tank since Day 1 of training camp. But I expect this team to come out of it in the near future."
Beyond the frustrations with the work ethic, the power play and the lack of discipline, all good reasons for their struggles, it shouldn't be forgotten either that the Hurricanes are also a considerably different looking team than the one that won the Stanley Cup on June 19.
Six significant players who were on that roster last spring are gone, including trade deadline acquisitions Doug Weight and Mark Recchi, once number-one goaltender Martin Gerber, reliable defenceman Aaron Ward and useful forward Matt Cullen and Josef Vasicek.
In their place, the Hurricanes have added defencemen Tim Gleason, who has been very good, and David Tanabe, goaltender John Grahame and forwards Scott Walker, Trevor Letowski and Eric Belanger.
That is still significant change, especially when you add the weight of expectations.
And it can't be overlooked, either, that there were just 107 days for the champagne hangover to clear, not a lot of time between meaningful games in other words.
"It was a short summer, but that's okay," said Rutherford. "We've had changes.
We expected some of those changes. But the guys we lost have been replaced and we're back to being whole again."
Well, almost whole.
What Rutherford hadn't planned on was losing forward Cory Stillman and defenceman Frantisek Kaberle for extended periods to injury.
"No, we didn't count on that," said Rutherford. "But we still should be strong enough.
We just have to get our heads out of our butts and get back the work ethic that made us good.
"I guess when you win the Stanley Cup you're supposed to win every game and when you lose people want to know what's wrong. I'm not overly concerned, though, I feel strongly this team will get back into the mix.
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S. has no intention of attacking North Korea over a recent nuclear test, but wants stiff sanctions to be imposed against the country.
About 940 jobs will be lost with the closure.
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