The Flyers-Penguins game had fans, and the world took a little step back toward normalcy | Mike Sielski

It was never going to feel exactly as it used to feel, because the setting and the circumstances aren’t quite yet what they used to be. On Tuesday night, for the first time in 357 days, there were fans at a Flyers game. There were 2,800 of them at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, wearing Penguins jerseys and Penguins shirts and Penguins hats, not a sea of them, just a pond. And they cheered and clapped at the conclusion of the national anthem, and they cheered and clapped and blared horns when Kasperi Kapanen scored twice and Bryan Rust scored once in the second period. And even if you were rooting for the Flyers and were disappointed that they collapsed in the middle of the game and lost, 5-2, you might have smiled, just because things were closer to the way we once knew them.

Little steps. That’s what withstanding the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic, has come down to, hasn’t it? A family member in isolation, fevered and fearful. Another aggravating day trying to get your son or daughter to do his or her schoolwork. Another day without any in-person interaction. You get through those, if you’re among the fortunate, and even the slightest shaft of light is welcome, is a wave of hope and relief. Warmer weather presenting the chance to congregate outdoors safely and comfortably. The news of a vaccine, and another, and another. A loved one showing off his or her sore forearm, with a square of gauze taped to it.

Tuesday night, after the state’s announcement Monday that it was lifting some of its restrictions on indoor events, was one of those little steps, those little rays of promise. We’re moving in the right direction. We’re not home yet, but we’re getting there. It was the latest stage in the entire process of regaining our orientation, the rhythms of our lives that we once took for granted. A little thing that isn’t that little.

Consider that idea just through the prism of sports for a moment. First the games went away: no NCAA tournament, the NHL and NBA seasons and Major League Baseball spring training stopped cold. Then the games came back: a NASCAR race, the winter sports starting their postseasons – not ending them, starting them – in the middle of summer, floating heads on Zoom calls every night … but no fans at the arenas or the ballparks.

Could we get past that? I’m not sure we ever really did. The ersatz crowd noise piped into the telecast that often drowned out the play-by-play voice, the mannequins in the bleachers, the “bubbles” and the masks: Sports can usually offer a respite from the real world, but now the respite presented nothing but reminders of how the virus had paralyzed most of our lives. And without fans in the stands and the seats, without the electric crackle they can create, without the athletes playing to them and reacting to them, the games themselves weren’t as thrilling, weren’t as dramatic. They lost much of their ability to transport us to another place.

» READ MORE: Sidney Crosby-less Penguins whip Flyers, 5-2, despite two goals from Joel Farabee

Maybe you feel differently. Me, I found it harder to watch when the stadiums were empty. I never got accustomed to it. Some of the athletes themselves didn’t, either.

“It’s certainly weird, still,” Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk said before Tuesday night’s game. “You miss that energy a crowd always brings to the games, whether it’s home or away.”

That hum of expectancy returned Tuesday. Flyers defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere said that he could sense it during warmups, particularly just before the game’s opening puck-drop. It is an intangible but essential aspect of sports at its highest levels, one that intensifies the entire experience – the connection between the competitors and their followers, the performers and their audience, the unspoken acknowledgement that one wouldn’t be there without the other.

» READ MORE: About 3,100 fans are allowed back in the Wells Fargo Center, starting with a Flyers game Sunday

“It was the first time in a long time there were actual, real fan noises instead of the background sound we’ve been hearing since the bubble,” Flyers coach Alain Vigneault said. “It was good to see them. We’re looking forward to hearing from our fans, and I need to get my team ready.”

In the here and now, it was a lousy loss, a sloppy effort. In the big picture, it was OK. So the Flyers didn’t show up Tuesday night. The important thing is, 2,800 other people did. Little steps.