Pens 3, Sens 1 -- Time For A Little Downtime

I suppose posting a Creamy Middle about last night is rather pointless. If you're reading this (from either side of the fence) you already know what happened, and why (and if not, my interweb friends here, here and here will be happy to fill you in). Besides, it would be a litany of the same things I've been saying since December, and truth be told, I'm running out of funny ways to say "Here's why we suck".

I'll be taking a few days off now. When you think about it, I've been staring at this screen almost every night, pretty much since the season opened in October. It's a wonder I'm still married (um...I am still married, right Beloved? Hello? Anybody home?)

I'll be back with a final Totally Half-Assed Season Recap along with the requisite Keep 'Em/Trade 'Em/Stuff 'Em In A Steamer Trunk and Banish Them To The Outer Moons of Jupiter review of the roster, probably next week sometime.

In the meantime, I would encourage all of you to jump, with both feet, onto the Habs bandwagon (HF29 already said we could). Not only are they a fun team to watch, but anything that keeps the Four Habs Fans stripperific and lethally funny posts coming should be embraced and nurtured.

I'll give the last word to our new found Pens pal (BOOOO! LAME!), FrankD at PensBurgh.com. Classy guy. Too bad we couldn't give Pittsburgh enough of a series to see how he'd do under real pressure.

Dear Ottawa,

I could be a complete jerk and give you the "ha-ha" and "you suck" treatment, but I prefer to have more class than that. Besides, there's nothing more to say than what your media has already said since Game One.

Every morning I made it a point to read the Ottawa Sun (online). Your hockey coverage is exceptional, but the faith of the columnists and writers alike seem to be in disparity. That's not to say the media really has an influence on a team's performance, but could it hurt to just show a little support?

Case and point: we all know a healthy Ottawa team would've been downright scary. I don't know what the contract situation is with Gerber but you guys better hold onto him. He's not the reason Ottawa lost; your lack of offensive production is to blame for that. Even still, Gerber is only one man (and closer to a machine at that).

It's been fun sharing the postage-free letters with SLC, and we've already talked of continuing the new found tradition into next season.

Rest up Senators, you'll have your chance for redemption. Pittsburgh and Ottawa have a date in Sweden at the end of September.

And one more thing. Please don't bring along the half-naked Spartan Warrior guy - we wouldn't want to get your trusty editor SLC too excited.

It's been fun.

See ya next season,
FrankD
Pensburgh.com

Stick that in our Stockholm and smoke it.

It's Not The Fall That Hurts. It's The Sudden Stop At The End

Anyone who didn’t realize by the end of December that this was exactly how this season was going to end was either blindly optimistic or hopelessly naïve. One thing is certain, those folks haven’t been watching very closely.

We never got it back. This team lost everything, its confidence, its swagger, its resilience just before Christmas and we never got it back. It’s as simple as that. And everything The Bryan tried turned to shite. Fire the coach? Nope. Trade for Commodore and Stillman? Nope. Finally send Rayzor into the dark hole of obscurity he so richly deserved. Nope and nope.

We can try and use Paddock, or injuries to key players or any number of bad breaks as ready made excuses, but that’s all they are. Excuses. The truth is they weren’t good enough. They didn’t skate hard enough. They didn't hit hard enough. They couldn't score, and they couldn't stop the other team from scoring. Despite all of the platitudes repeated over and over all season long, the same mistakes were made by the same people over and over again. And they were our supposed “stars”. Redden, Meszaros, Gerber, Emery…

There will be time enough in the next few days to pick at the scab and come to grips with the question of how exactly a season that started so strong could come to this. But for now, we’ll have to settle for the obvious. A group of incredibly talented athletes started to play badly, and none of them thought to work hard enough to fix it. Worse, they didn’t seem to care enough to try.