It's only possible to contemplate the aura of hope and excitement the Canucks have created in Vancouver this hockey season in the context of the misery and heartache the team's supporters have known for most of the previous 39 seasons.
This is a hockey team, after all, that for years was a perennial league laughingstock, for their uniforms as much as their record. Amid the gloom and depression of the franchise's first three decades, there were unlikely runs to the Stanley Cup in 1982 and 1994, both unsuccessful. But the Canucks were mostly a middling group, seldom good enough to allow their followers to even dream about watching their team hoist hockey's silver chalice.
More recently the Canucks have had teams that qualified to be dubbed Cup contenders, only to flame out in early rounds of the playoffs, leaving the mad, mad hockey fans in the Vancouver area more frustrated and mournful than ever.
But this season feels different.
On Thursday night, the Canucks clinched the President's Trophy, awarded to the top team in the NHL during the regular season. One of their players is the odds-on-favourite to win the scoring title and the league MVP award - for the second year in a row. They are leading the league in almost every statistical category that counts. When the team arrives to play at other buildings now, there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands of fans wearing Canucks jerseys there to cheer them on.
It's like they are the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens. Well, almost.
Yet despite the team's astounding success, or maybe because of it, Vancouver is a city on edge. You can feel it. At least I can. People have already begun holding their breath and the playoffs are still a couple of weeks away. Once they begin, the fate of the city's hockey team will be the only thing on people's minds.
Forget politics. Forget mortgage rates or the HST. Forget about everything else until this season is over - for better or worse.
As I say, it wasn't always like this. Yes, the Canucks had a core group of diehard believers who refused to give up on them no matter how bad they were. They were the fans who painted their beat-up automobiles in the team's then-garish orange, black and yellow colours and renewed their season tickets after campaigns in which the team lost more than it won.
But more often, the Canucks were the butt of jokes, a team that always boasted more heart and character than skill and finesse.
But a new century brought better karma and improved fortunes and the sad-sack Nuckleheads slowly, inexorably, blossomed into a persistent winner. It now had players that have won major awards and were featured on the covers of major hockey magazines. Along the way the Canucks became the crown jewel of Vancouver, a team that in many ways has come to define the city itself.
Today, the organization can build a marketing campaign around the words We Are All Canucks, and it doesn't seem laughably inappropriate. Games have been sold out for years. Many followers have developed the kind of smugness about their team that Leafs fans have long inexplicably displayed.
Ah, yes, those hated Leafs. How Canucks fans have loved this season for that reason alone. The fact that Toronto is being managed by the person who is largely responsible for the resurrection of this once much-mocked franchise makes it even sweeter. If the Canucks do go on to win a Cup this year, Brian Burke's name has to figure somewhere in the history of this notable campaign.
It was the now-Leafs GM who manufactured the draft-day deal that delivered the Sedins - arguably, or maybe without question, the two greatest players to ever don a Vancouver uniform. And if the Canucks win the Cup this season, there's a good chance the two unassuming but gloriously talented Swedes will likely have played the biggest on-ice role in making it happen.
There has never been a Canucks season like this one. Nor has there been a time previous when the people of this city and province ever felt as positive about their team's chances of going all the way.
Which is why there is so much nervousness and anticipation and, yes, even some dread among fans who worry that a season that has seemed too good to be true may turn out to be just that.