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WINNIPEG — The MTS Centre wasn’t just loud, it throbbed. In the first NHL playoff game in this city in 19 years, the arena, the smallest in the league, buzzed and vibrated with cheers and shouts as 15,000 or so Jets fans, a good 14,998 of them wearing white, celebrated hockey, and country, and civic pride. The building groaned like distressed steel.

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And then, boom. Adam Lowry flipped a backhand pass off a rebound to a wide-open Lee Stempniak, and the resulting goal sent the din to new heights. It was loud and painful and hard to think, like a Michael Bay movie was unfolding in your head.

It wouldn’t last. The Anaheim Ducks would tie late in the first, and then go ahead in the second, before the Jets would roar back with two goals of their own in the period, from Tyler Myers and Blake Wheeler. The teams would trade two more goals in the period. Again and again, the building would roar to life, and shake and groan. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was among those in attendance, and he said that on this night, there was “no place he would rather be.” Winnipeg proved him right.