The old axiom was that newspapers are the first draft of history. That's not true anymore. Websites carry the first draft. So there I sat in the press box of TD Garden in Boston on June 12, ready for history.

My colleague Jim Thomas would be writing the game story on Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Blues and Bruins for the next morning's Post-Dispatch. My job was to write the story that would go online at STLtoday.com immediately after the game ended. (And then after that, to write a sidebar for the website as well.)

The Blues' loss in Game 6 had afforded me the rare luxury of having three days to think about what I was going to write, and I had written both Blues win and Blues lose stories the night before and had them saved in my computer. I would then adapt those as needed, adding details from the game, for the website.

So on one file in my computer I had a story that began like this:

At last, Blues are first!

BOSTON The 2018-19 Blues, a team once given up for dead, on Wednesday achieved hockey immortality.

The Blues completed the longest road back in hockey history with a x-x win over the Bruins at TD Garden, giving the franchise its first Stanley Cup in its 52-year existence. And they did it an unprecedented way, coming back from having the fewest points in the league on Jan. 3 to being a dominant team the final half of the season.

And I also had one that began like this:

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Party's over. Blues lose Game 7 to Bruins

See the original post:

Writing St. Louis sports history, win or lose, on deadline, as Blues try to take the Cup - St. Louis Post-Dispatch