The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written - Part II: We Counted on the Captain

To be honest, I wanted to save this song for later in the summer when I hadn't posted for two months and was sick with heat and tired of Lindsay yelling at me to write something, because I knew it was going to be an easy song to write about - but given recent developments, I felt that the timing was appropriate.

After spending a day and a half in stunned partial-mourning at the news that Steve Yzerman had taken the gm job in Tampa Bay, I began coming to terms and decided that he deserves to be happy, even if happy means opening a chain of Denver sports themed sports bars in Denver (oh god, please no). And while being ok with it doesn't mean I won't fight the urge to vomit every time I see him in another team's colors, his leaving for Florida isn't nearly as emotionally traumatic for me as it was when he retired four years ago. Four years ago, I felt like Yzerman needed more than a banner-raising and a goodbye celebration from the fanbase.

He needed a song.

Which brings us to Dick Fidge's 'We Counted On The Captain'.

Written in commemoration of Yzerman's 22 seasons with the organization, 'We Counted On The Captain' is 3 minutes and 25 seconds of your life that you cannot afford to spend doing anything else.

A lot of the music I went through to pick the songs I wanted to use this summer sort of killed my soul to have to listen to multiple times, but 'We Counted On The Captain' was not one of them. This song has been in my music library for two years now, and I can highly recommend it for blaring out your open windows in parking lots to get funny looks from people and secretly rocking on your iPod earphones when you're surrounded by a bunch of dirty Blackhawks fans. Granted, I come from a belief that any song which opens "In 1983 he was a rookie sensation / Stevie Y was all-star bound" can do absolutely nothing wrong from then on out, so your enjoyment may vary.

One of the real highlights of this tune (aside from the fact that IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT STEVE YZERMAN) is the synth solo at 1:12 (which is, to my knowledge, the only synthesizer solo EVER composed in honor of the Captain).

And has your love of Yzerman ever built up inside of you such that you felt you had to let it burst forth from your body in a sublime falsetto "STEEE-HEEEE-HEEEEEEEVIE YYYYYY-HIIII!!"? (Don't lie. You know it has.) Then you can sing along at the 2:50 mark.

This song is the first time you'll notice a reoccurring theme in this blog - songs to which my response is "a little cheesy, but it's about the Red Wings, so I can't not love it".

Is it stuck in your head yet? You're welcome.