I grew up with those feelings.

After losing a second Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Finals, the Canucks, and the city of Vancouver, can officially join Buffalo and Cleveland in a miserable place for fandom: sports purgatory.

For a fan, there is nothing worse than coming close to a championship, only to fall short. Growing up when the Buffalo Bills were repeatedly reaching the Super Bowl – only to suffer one agonizing loss after another once they made it there – I learned the hard way how rough sports purgatory can be. I famously predicted to my grandfather at halftime of the 1993 wild-card playoff game between the Bills and Oilers, when the Bills were trailing 28-3, that they would come back and win the game.

That’s because it was unfathomable to me that the Bills wouldn’t make it to the Super Bowl. But once they got there? As much as I wished for something else to happen, I knew in the pit of my stomach what was destined to happen.

Fans from towns like Buffalo and Cleveland know what I’m talking about. Plays like “No Goal,” when the Dallas Stars scored a clearly illegal goal to win Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Buffalo’s home ice, and the NHL didn’t have the guts to reverse the call, happen.

Moments like “The Drive” happen, when John Elway drove the Denver Broncos the length of the field to tie the Browns at the end regulation the 1987 AFC Championship Game, a game the Broncos, of course, went on to win. Or “The Fumble” happens, when Earnest Byner fumbled on his way to score a touchdown the following year to give the Broncos another win over the Browns.

Or, most painfully for me, “Wide Right” happens, when Scott Norwood missed a game-winning 47-yard field goal as time expired, giving the New York Giants Super Bowl XXV.

Watching on television, you could feel the misery and hear the groans coming from the depths of every Canucks fan standing inside Rogers Arena last night once Boston forward Patrice Bergeron scored late in the first period, knowing that this was the moment they had been dreading ever since the Bruins forced a Game 7.

Once Brad Marchand put the Bruins up 2-0 midway through the second period, you were almost sure the Canucks had no chance. And then, a few minutes later, you were 100 percent sure after Bergeron scored his second goal of the game – shorthanded, no less – and that was that.

It was a sobering thing to watch, having personally lived through it. Somebody who grew up a fan of the Yankees, or the Lakers or Celtics, or the Steelers or Cowboys can’t really understand what it’s like. Sure, those cities have had other teams suffer through depressing losses, but there’s nothing like an entire city knowing that all of its teams are cursed, have the chips stacked against them before they even begin the game.

It’s a unifying force, as well as a depressing one. It’s also one I’d never wish on another sports fan. That’s why I couldn’t help but feel for Canucks fans, why I couldn’t help but pull for Vancouver to win the Cup this year, and finally give those fans the release they’ve been waiting decades to enjoy.

Instead it’s back to the drawing board, back to another brutally long summer. Then, once next season rolls around, they’ll pack Rogers Arena again and begin to get their hopes up, just like the fans in Buffalo and Cleveland do year after year.

Only, in the end, those fans all know the way it’s going to end. But that doesn’t keep them from holding out hope that one day, maybe, possibly, they’ll be wrong. And what a glorious day that will be.

Everyone expects LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to win at least one, if not several championships together in Miami. Jason Kidd had already remarkably led the New Jersey Nets to back-to-back Finals in 2002-03, and now, with his Hall of Fame resume intact, was just a member of Nowitzki’s deep supporting cast, along with Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion and Jason Terry.

But for Nowitzki, these Finals were everything. A chance to redeem himself from the 2006 Finals, when he and the Mavericks let a late lead in Game 3 – and a 2-0 series lead – slip away and lose the series in six games. He then lost in the first round three of the last four years, including the dramatic upset of the top-seeded Mavericks by Baron Davis and the Golden State Warriors in 2007.

Now, after a brilliant performance through the first three rounds of this year’s playoffs, Nowitzki found himself in a position to forever alter his legacy – something that, after the Mavericks’ recent playoff failures, something that seemed like an impossibility just a couple of months ago.

Of course, Nowitzki managed to do just that, playing brilliantly again throughout the series and leading the Mavericks to their first-ever championship, and one of the bigger upsets in Finals history. So now, with the Finals over – and, unfortunately, with a lockout looming that could wipe out much, if not all, of next season – it’s the perfect time to assess just where Dirk ranks among the greatest players in the history of the league:

By Geography

It’s pretty safe to say that Dirk has established himself as the greatest European player in the history of the league before this title, but the significance of him breaking through and becoming the first to lead his team to an NBA title cannot be overstated. Harvey Araton, the brilliant columnist from the New York Times, made a very compelling argument in a column leading up to Game 6 that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James wouldn’t have poked so much fun at Nowitzki for being sick if he wasn’t European.

The clear myth that a European wasn’t tough enough to lead his team to a championship also was shattered, as Nowitzki stood toe-to-toe with Wade, James and Bosh and took the title they all wanted from them, despite lacking the “second-star” that title teams traditionally have. You have to go all the way back to the 1994 and ’95 Finals, when Hakeem Olajuwon led the Rockets to consecutive titles, to find a time when a transcendent star led his team to a championship without a second great player to rely on (the ’04 Pistons don’t count in this metric, because they had several very good players; you certainly wouldn’t put Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton or Ben Wallace anywhere near Nowitzki’s status).

Among international players, Nowitzki ranks second or third all-time, depending on your definition of a foreign-born player. If you consider Tim Duncan, who was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, to be a foreign player, than he would rank third behind Duncan and Olajuwon. But, either way, that’s pretty good company to find yourself in.

By Position

When Bill Simmons ranked the 96 greatest players in the league’s history in “The Book of Basketball,” which was released in 2009, Nowitzki ranked, in his eyes, as the seventh-best power forward in the history of the league, behind Kevin McHale, Kevin Garnett, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Bob Pettit and Duncan.

In the intervening two seasons, Dirk has made two more All-NBA second teams and, this past season, shot the highest percentage of his career from the field (just under 52 percent) and was the best player in this year’s playoffs, averaging 27.7 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game.

With this year’s championship now burnishing his credentials, Nowitzki clearly moves past McHale, Garnett, Barkley and Malone, in my eyes. McHale was a great player, for sure, but his career was shorter, and he never led his team to a championship. Garnett did finally get a ring, and he was a heck of a player, but you could never count on him to get you a basket in a clutch situation. Same thing goes for Malone, who never could quite get it done when it mattered.

Barkley might be the most underrated guy of this group – he went toe-to-toe with Jordan in the ’93 Finals, which will always stand out in my mind because it is one of the first series that I vividly remember. And if Kevin Johnson had given him some help in that series, Barkley’s Suns may well have won it, and who knows where he’s ranked on this list.

But, at the end of the day, he didn’t win a ring, and Dirk did. That’s the dividing line between the two of them.

I actually would put Pettit behind all of these guys. He had a terrific career, to be sure, but he falls into the same category as George Mikan – fantastic players when they played, but if their careers started five years later, they simply don’t have the same impact that they did when they played.

So that leaves Duncan, and Dirk doesn’t have the overall resume that Duncan has. Duncan won four titles – and was his team’s best player each time – won two MVPs, and was considered a top five player in the league for a solid decade (from 1998 through 2008). He may be tailing off now as he’s reaching his mid-to-late 30s, but that doesn’t change what he’s done throughout his career.

Still, ranking as the second-best power forward of all-time isn’t too shabby, either.

Overall ranking

There’s a clear group that Nowitzki is a level below, consisting of the following players (in no particular order): Jordan, Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson, Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and Moses Malone.

But after those 13 players, you can make a strong case for Nowitzki against any of the next group of players: John Havlicek, Elgin Baylor, Julius Erving, Isiah Thomas, Scottie Pippen, Wade and James.

Nowitzki is ahead Wade and James at the moment. However, I’d say both Wade and James will end up passing him down the road – assuming they do what we all think they will in Miami, and Nowitzki doesn’t get any more rings. But that’s a different argument.

As for the remaining players – Havlicek, Baylor, Erving, Thomas and Pippen – Nowitzki ranks ahead of all of them but Baylor. Erving, despite their vastly different styles, is a lot like Nowitzki, in that both came up short plenty of times in the postseason. But he never led an NBA team to a championship, so I put Nowitzki ahead of him.

The closest choice is between he and Pippen. But, at the end of the day, I give the edge to Dirk because he led his team to two separate trips to the Finals, as well as winning a title. Pippen is one of most interesting players I have ever seen, and I always enjoyed watching him play, but in his one big shot to lead the team after Jordan left, he couldn’t get past Patrick Ewing’s Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, whereas Nowitzki led his team to the Finals twice, and won a title.

That would put Nowitzki around 15^th all-time, or at least comfortably in the top 20, depending on how you would personally rank that second-half of those top 20 or so players. But there’s no question that Nowitzki has earned his place in that rarified air after one of the most impressive postseason runs in the last 20 years.

Not bad for a guy who, six weeks ago, was considered to be one of the sport’s perennial underachievers on the biggest stage.

Then I saw this tweet from the National Post’s terrific sports columnist, Bruce Arthur: ”Nathan Horton looks like he got hit by Mike Tyson, in his prime. Eyes flickering. Christ.”

After that, I wasn’t so upset that I’d missed Monday’s game, which saw Horton, a forward for the Boston Bruins, get knocked out cold on a vicious cheap shot in the middle of the ice by Vancouver defenseman Aaron Rome.

It’s the same old story with hockey, the same tired back-and-forth that seems to play out once a week now. One player takes a cheap shot on another, hits him in the head and gives him a concussion. Then a debate ensues about whether or not the hit was legal, whether or not it was a cheap shot, whether or not it was right.

But none of that addresses the true problem with the sport moving forward: now that concussions aren’t a dirty little secret anymore, the game either needs to change, or risk becoming irrelevant.

***

Even after the Rome hit on Horton Monday night, I was looking forward to watching Game 4 of the series last night. Then, after I turned on Versus at 8 p.m., I got sick to my stomach.

In the network’s open to the broadcast, it showed the hit multiple times, showed Horton not moving on the ice, showed him getting carted off the ice. It actually used the phrase, “Win For Horton,” followed by “Win For Boston.”

This is just one way that hockey has to change. It needs to stop glorifying these hits, using them to attract interest like those rubberneckers driving by a wreck, straining to see if anyone survived.

During last night’s broadcast, Mike Milbury (who clearly is an objective commentator on this series, since he spent his entire career playing for the Bruins) called Vancouver’s superstar brothers, Henrik and Daniel Sedin, “Thelma and Louise,” as he wasn’t impressed with their physicality during the first two periods of last night’s game. Never mind that they’re two of the 10 best players in the league – go out there and try to kill someone!

It’s this mindset that threatens the future of hockey. The league’s signature player, Sidney Crosby, missed most of the season after suffering from concussion symptoms for the remainder of the season after taking head shots from Washington’s David Steckel on New Year’s Day and Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman four days later. One of Crosby’s predecessor’s as the top player in the game, Eric Lindros, say his career irrevocably changed because of multiple concussions, as did Pat LaFontaine before him.

But none of that seems to make any difference to the “hardcore” hockey fan. They don’t care if these players go away. Maybe they consider it a “casualty of war,” or something as equally absurd as that.

Personally, as a fan of the game, I do care. I care a lot. I don’t watch hockey to see if any of the players are going to try to decapitate one another. I watch the game because, when played well, it’s a wonderful spectacle to behold.

One of the best games I have seen in a long time came in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals between Boston and the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a tense, hard-fought affair, with neither team scoring until, ironically enough, Nathan Horton deflected the puck past Lightning goalie Dwayne Roloson with less than eight minutes to go in the third period.

For 60 minutes, those two teams laid everything on the line, and there wasn’t a single penalty called. Not because the referees were letting them play with impunity, but because there wasn’t a reason to make a call. It was just two teams going back and forth, up and down the ice, going all out in the hopes of continuing to have a shot at a championship.

That is what hockey should be aspiring to. Not sickening cheap shots like the one Rome took on Horton Monday night. There has been talk about broadening “Rule 48″ in the National Hockey League’s rulebook to outlaw any head shots. But that was shot down earlier this spring by Brendan Shanahan – a future Hall of Famer who recently was put in charge of the NHL’s disciplinary program. “I don’t think it’s realistic,” Shanahan told reporters at the NHL’s GM meeting this spring. “Defenders defend standing up, and forwards attack bent over. There are other things we can do first.”

There may be other things the NHL can do first, but that doesn’t mean they are the right things. For the good of the game, the league should get rid of head shots all together, and allow the immense skill and talent of its players to shine through. Unfortunately, the men running the league come from another era, one where players like Henrik and Daniel Sedin are likened to “Thelma and Louise” for not being tough enough.

Soon, tough guys might be the only ones playing hockey. And, if that happens, I won’t be watching.