Philly Dips

It’s not news that the Flyers went out in six games after the regular season. The second round of the playoffs is now underway and my lads are watching on their smartphones at the golf course. I could stomp and scream and make generous contributions to the swear jar, but even if the visually-impaired ref had made the appalling “I-can’t-believe-it-was-missed” call on Kris Letang kicking the skates from beneath Sean Couturier in the third period, the boys likely wouldn’t have survived a game 7 in the first round. Not against Pittsburgh. Not this year.

This isn’t news either, but a hockey team needs more than one scoring line, otherwise it’s too easy for the opposing team to shut you down, and that’s exactly what the Penguins did to the Flyers. Mind you, Captain Claude was invisible, and Jake Voracek wasn’t worth much, either. The two top point-getters in the regular season did nothing in the post unless you count letting the kids do all the work, in which case you might be inclined to commend them for creating what public servants refer to as “learning opportunities”.

I learned that the next generation has all kinds of potential if Ron Hextall can afford to keep the current roster in place. Nolan Patrick in particular, but there’s a handful of other twenty-somethings who will make Philadelphia a force to be reckoned with in the next few years. And they should give Couturier the captaincy. He more than earned it in games 5 and 6. He was a horse through those two games, and only when it was over did we hear that he’d been playing on a torn ligament and will need surgery this summer. I love Claude Giroux, but come on. It was Coots who played like a captain.

More not-news: I harbour fantasies about the Flyers going the distance each time they make the playoffs; what hockey fan doesn’t? And the same fantasy was harboured this year, though I had no illusions against Pittsburgh, who has three scoring lines and way more experience than the fledgling Flyers. Plus, Sid Crosby is on a mission from God every time he plays his Pennsylvania state rivals. Honestly, his stats against Philly alone are astonishing … and nauseating to a gal who bleeds black and orange. I knew if we could get past him, we’d be all right – but he knew it too, and he used the negative energy of the home crowd to kill the home team in all three of their home games.

Following the non-call on Letang, when the fragile Flyer lead was lost with two quick Penguin goals and my boys were eliminated in the first round, Ter said to me, “I don’t think I can support the Pens after that crappy non-call on Letang.”

“Agreed,” I replied. “I’m going for the western conference team in the final (unless it’s San Jose), and in the east, it’s ‘go, Leafs, go’.”

Well, that was short-lived, too. The Leafs pushed it to game seven, but the Bruins are, well, the Bruins. ʼNuff said about that. And I must admit, I loosed a silent cheer on hearing that the Pens beat Washington in their first game of round 2, so …

$*^&#%

Hawk Trumps Bear



2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks



I won’t say that I was totally engaged with the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, but as the rounds went deeper, I watched more of the games. It became a case of voting out the teams I cannot endure, so I was content with Chicago getting to the final for the west. In the east, however, my will was consistently foiled. Pittsburgh is my second string favourite after Philly, but when the Boston Bruins shut down Sid Crosby and the Penguins and advanced to the Cup final, I started to fret.

And foam.

And use poor language.

I loathe the Bruins. Can’t say why, I just do. I think they’re a bunch of goons, and being a Flyer fan of old means that I know goons when I see them. I like their goalie, though. He’s deadly cute, for one thing, and Finnish for another. I like Finnish goalies. They’re steady, efficient, and reliably cool under pressure.

The Blackhawks are young, slick and skilled. I’ve had their captain in the office hockey pool for three years in a row. Patrick Sharp and Michal Handzus are both ex-Flyers. The team bit Detroit in the collective butt in round two, coming back from being down 3 games to 1 and winning in seven. Phew. So I reckoned, if they ran circles around the Bruins and tired out the lumbering oafs, they had a good chance of winning the Cup.

And they did. They had to work for it (winning the Stanley Cup is easy, after all – you just have to win 16 games), but by the gods’ dainties, they did it. How they did it I really don’t know; they were stonewalled at almost every turn, but in the end, I think they did exhaust the oafs. They got hit, they got up. They got scored on, they scored back, even if the game meant going to overtime – and it did. Three agonizing times. They were even shut out in one game, thanks to the deadly cute Finnish goalie. Back and forth, up and down, amid stupid penalty calls and stupider non-calls, the Hawks refused to go away. And last night, just as we were resigning ourselves to a seventh game, Bryan Bickell popped one past Tuukka Rask (I told you he’s Finnish) with something like a minute and a half left in the third period. Now the game was tied and yet another overtime looked imminent. I was just thinking about making tea for the duration when Ter suddenly yelled, “He scored!”

Yup, seventeen seconds after Bickell’s goal, Dave Bolland got another past Rask and it was a done deal. No way could the Bruins come back within the remaining minute, not with their loutish lineup. Hats and horns! The Hawks won their second Cup in four years, and this time I enjoyed it (the first time they beat the Flyers and became anathema until this year).

Everyone is at different stages on the great cosmic journey and Love is the only rule. Kindness, acceptance, tolerance, fairness – they’re all principles in which I implicitly believe. Generally, I live by those principles. However, when it comes to hockey, I become a tiny, petty, egoically-identified cretin whose greater delight stems not from the Hawks winning the Stanley Cup, but from the Bruins not winning it. Yep, it’s small. I’ve pondered my shrivelling wickedness, and I’ve decided against apologizing for it. No one died, no homes were lost, everyone kept his job (unless you’re a coach), the world looked the same this morning as it did last night and, as my father always reminds me, it’s just a game.

Sure, Dad.