Who was on the other end of that phone? "It could have been Jesus Christ at that point, I don't know," Billy Kapogiannis says.
theathletic.com
Billy Kapogiannis kept screaming long after the television camera stopped recording. He found himself yelling as he left his seat inside Amalie Arena and realized he was still going even after crossing a street, walking outside in a warm, victorious evening in Tampa, Fla.
“I just couldn’t stop,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know what the hell came out of me.”
His reaction made him famous to television viewers and social media users on Monday night, releasing a primal scream after watching Leafs forward Alex Kerfoot cap an unlikely comeback with an overtime goal to secure a 3-1 lead over the Lightning in their first-round playoff series. Kapogiannis was seen on the Sportsnet broadcast screaming into his phone, before abandoning the call to scream into space.
By Tuesday morning, raspy and happy, he had forgotten who was on the other end of that call.
“It could have been Jesus Christ at that point, I don’t know,” he said. “I just answered: ‘Hi, Jesus! It’s the Leafs!’”
Kapogiannis is a restaurant server and entrepreneur from Aurora, Ont., just north of Toronto, who flew to Florida on a whim. Sam Cortese, a friend and colleague, was standing next to him when the camera zoomed in after the win. Cortese was laughing as Kapogiannis screamed to the heavens.
“That’s the passion, that’s what being a Leaf fan is,” said Kapogiannis. “That’s what the world doesn’t understand: We’re not fans, we are Leaf fans, and there’s a difference.”
He cheers for teams in other sports, including the Dallas Cowboys.
“When it comes to the Leafs, I don’t know what happens to me,” he said. “I just go mental, if you want to know the truth.”
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Kapogiannis works at Avenue, an Italian restaurant in Kleinburg, a 45-minute drive north of Scotiabank Arena. Cortese is a chef. They are also partners in VTL Indoor Golf & Academy, an indoor golf facility in Vaughan. (It was a customer who offered them the tickets in Tampa.)
At 59, Kapogiannis is old enough to have been alive when the Leafs won their last Stanley Cup, but not to have any living memory. He has been a fan of the franchise for his whole life, with the playoff run of 1993 seared into his memory.