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The colossal building was all but empty, dark, a mess. Confetti, streamers once launched lay motionless on the ground where they'd been shot. Stray kernels of popcorn, sticky spilled pop and beer, discarded food wraps strewn about.
The ice surface empty, shadowy, quiet. The echoes of Chelsea Dagger whispering in the walls.
Deep in the bowels of the United Center in Chicago the party ran on. It was smaller now. At one time there were over twenty-two thousand revelers, now there were maybe fifty.
It was two in the morning. The celebration might have been smaller, but it was no less intense than it was four hours earlier.
It was then that the Chicago Blackhawks dispatched the Tampa Bay Lightning to win the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup.
And if you think this is a story espousing the greatness of and romanticizing all things sports and winning, think again...
The party had found its way to one end of the arena that still glowed, concentrated in a room bursting with leftover players, office staff, family, beer. Someone ordered pizza.
A few Blackhawks had left to go home. Some had gone onto parties elsewhere.
As the revelers reveled, a lone figure strayed from the pack. He wandered to the hazy intermittently lit outer-reaches of this building that has been the epicenter of recent sports greatness; the Bulls championships of the 90s becoming the Blackhawks championships of the 2010s.
Jonathan Toews is the captain of the Chicago Blackhawks. So unusual are his gifts of leadership they say, so seriously has he taken the responsibility, that he was made captain seven years earlier when he was just twenty years old.
Seriously? Yes. He's even nicknamed "Captain Serious." He has such a reputation that sports enthusiasts and media alike phonate that he is possibly the best captain in hockey, maybe in all of sports.
Let's chill for a moment. Toews is human. If we got close to him, we'd see all sorts of faults I'm certain. True of anyone.
But this is exactly the point...he is human. And this night he did the most human of things.
He wandered off from the party and found the security guards who were manning the halls and doors of the United Center late into this party night.
And he took a moment, he shook their hands, one by one, he looked them in the eye and he thanked them for their hard work.
That's it.
What? Were you expecting something more outlandishly spectacular? Did you think I was going to write that he bought them all cars?
You understand, right, that this one act was devastatingly impactful?
The captain of the newly minted Stanley Cup champions, stepped away from a celebration of his and his team's athletic greatness, and thanked the security guards for their hard work.
The security guards.
You don't think that's a big deal?
Let me ask you just a question Mr. or Ms. CEO, or Ms. or Mr. Supervisor or Manager: Forget security guards for a second, when's the last time you thanked someone on your team?
No, no, no, no...
I'm not talking about your annual meeting when you scatter hollow thank yous to everyone collectively. And I'm not talking about thanking them for a file they just handed you. And I'm not even talking about telling someone that they are doing a good job, as important as that is.
No, I'm talking about this: When is the last time you shook someone's hand who works for you, looked him or her in the eye and said thank you.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a game changer.
Getting squeamish now are you?
Thought you might.
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