Let The Re-"torts" ensue

OK, here we go.  I've given myself a lengthy break from the blogging world to apparently come up with what is probably going to be a hockey fan in Pittsburgh's least favorite blog post in 2014.  I preempt this with my usual "I don't read the news, I avoid as much as possible until I have my own unbiased opinion on a subject" clause. (This makes me think, already, of my post about Mendenhall retiring). But it's hockey, and I definitely have opinions on hockey.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were not just bumped out of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs in Round 2, they were chased off, or so it appears by the fact it looked like they just ran away from the Series.  They had a chance in Game 5 to clinch a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals and await the winner of Boston / Montreal (which was neck-and-neck the entire series, even when it shouldn't have been).  They were at home, in front of a faithful crowd, waving their white flags ...I mean towels... and a huge outdoor crowd watching on the Big Screen. Then, New York got the biggest boost you can get: Your star player loses a family member, and your team is on the brink of elimination. A fire lights under you, and you take your game to MSG on, of all holidays, MOTHER'S DAY. The Pens had chance to show the fans at MSG that it doesn't matter how loud the "sixth man" is, it's about playing hockey. But that wasn't how the game went. Happy Mother's Day, Mrs. St. Louis. Your son led his team to a Game 7 at the Consol against a team who has a pretty hazy Game 7 record. And that game was not meant to be either. An early goal in the first period by Boyle and the Rangers didn't look back.

Now, one might ask, "What happened here?" (one probably DID ask...) I know you guys who have been keeping up with me know my feelings towards the Columbus Blue Jackets, my predictions for the post season, and so on.  So, it shouldn't surprise you that I was actually a wee bit surprised when Pittsburgh pulled past Columbus in round one.  Was I rooting against Pittsburgh? Not really, but I wasn't rooting against Columbus either. I wanted a hard-fought series where the Jackets show they belong in the Eastern Conference and mark some territory in the playoffs.

But what happened? Evegeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby didn't really show up in the goal scoring column.  They got points, don't get me wrong, but I can't even tell you how many times I heard rants about these two needing to step up and score goals.  The first four games were a final score 4-3, two of which went to OT.  It wasn't that the Pens were having a lack of scoring, they were getting goals out of their other players, which I think is awesome, considering two players don't make a team, whether they score goals or not.  Can they stop the puck? Block the puck? I don't really know. I had very little contact with televised games this playoff season. A fan who likes hockey moreso than teams will tell you that the games that go down to the wire are the most fun to watch.  A fan who has favorite teams gets to know a bottle of Pepto pretty well in a series like that. The teams went back and forth.... PGH, CBJ, PGH, CBJ, PGH, PGH.

Fleury got his (un)fair share of controversial speculation. Should he have came out of the net to play the puck? Should he have waited for his defense to bail him out? Should he ____?  Is he worth putting in for Game _?  And then there's Sid, who thinks it's funny to have to defend his goalie all the time. I think it's funny that nobody defended him during "Sidney Crosby hasn't scored a goal in __ playoff games" rant.  Yeah he's your team captain. I get that.  But Captains aren't there to score goals so much as encourage the team to succeed. To energize them. To do everything short of put on spanks and make a pyramid of clapping fools.  That's what I never really heard about Sid:  How motivational he was for his team during the playoffs. He shouldn't be worried about how many games before he scores, nor should he hear about it. If he's making feeds to guys that are open and the team is winning, he is doing one thing...promoting a TEAM atmosphere.  One thing about the Red Wings I always loved is that EVERYBODY contributes and nobody took the heat, aside from Osgood and his 1998 bout with soft goals, but even still, he went out there and said "everybody gets bad breaks, everybody gets bad bounces" and the team moved on.  When you're in the playoffs, you shouldn't be pointing fingers as much as pointing to the future, get over it without letting it manifest. The Jackets played a hard series, and lost at home, but they had a team in the crowd as well, people proud of their boys for making it that far. Upset for not prevailing, yes, but not devastated and overlooking the accomplishments of this brand new team to the eastern conference. It's not supposed to be easy when you go up against the 2nd place team in the conference, first in the division, but the Jackets put up one hell of a fight. Then the Pens lost on home ice.  It's both very cool to me and pretty disappointing that a team with home ice advantage could do better on the road in the playoffs.

So where do we go from here?  What can we take from this?  Well, one thing I look at is the importance of Sid and Malkin.  I really should emphasize that the way I mean.... Yes, they're both very important pieces to the organization. They are both big money tickets where Salary goes. But how important is it to have Sid and Malkin? I have been living in Pittsburgh for 3 years or so now. One thing I noticed when I started watching Pens hockey was in the first season I saw either Crosby was out with concussion or Malkin was out. There was very little dual action.  Same thing seemed to happen last year, with Sid needing facial reconstructive surgery for a puck to the face, and Malkin seemed to be out of the lineup quite frequently this season.  Well, all three years the Pens made it to the playoffs, right?  They didn't really get a good jump on Philly a couple years ago, they did not play MENS hockey against Boston, and they got chased away by the Rangers this year.  I would propose that having so much power on one bench is sort of detrimental to the team. When either of the two figureheads were out, the team pulled together and dug in their heels. They played hard so their big players would have something to come back to. It seems to me that you can't function when you have two figureheads.  Who do you look to for leadership?  And where is your defense? If you don't have Fleury standing on his head stopping everything, you get 4 Goals scored on you in 2 of 6 games in round one, 3 Goals against in 3 of 6, and one game that actually made sense for a dig in your heels hockey game.

Every year the focus shifts from the players who didn't come through for the team to the GM and coaches who didn't buy the right team, or teach the right plays, or do what the captain was apparently incapable of -- motivation.  For a team that seemed to make more trips to the penalty box than to center ice after a tally, who do you look to to calm your team down?  If you haven't picked up on it yet, I say the number one speech would come from the captain of your team.  Maybe because I grew up watching a team captained by Steve Yzerman and Nick Lidstrom, (and has been to the playoffs for 23 consecutive years). Stevie and Nick didn't have to be top scorers in the League, they had to have the drive to push a team through three plus periods though 80 some plus games, and be role models for the newbies.  Yzerman started in 1983. By 1990, the Wings were a force to be reckoned with year after year.

So, I'm putting off the statement that I suspect would cause an uproar if I actually had a huge following on this here blog.  I think that Pittsburgh should bring in John Tortorella. I mean, he was born with a fire under his ass when it comes to hockey.  He may not be the most loved (recently fired) coach in the NHL, and he considers the Pens Organization to be "one of the most arrogant...in the league," so it's not like he'd come in and baby a team who just got their hearts ripped out in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  He is a defensive coach, in two ways.  Obviously, he's always on the defensive, but he emphasizes the importance of shots not getting TO the net. Logic: if shots don't make it to the goalie, he can't screw up and miss the puck. He has a passion for hockey that I've always enjoyed. I mean, you don't chase an opposing coach to the locker room after a BS first second throw down if you don't have a passion for your team.  You say, "Screw it, we probably deserved it."  No, he's got character. Whether he's loved for the passion he has for the game or detested for his means of approach to the game, he's still got what it takes to take a team who needs a Crosby AND a Malkin to even be close to making it to the playoffs.

What the NHL are you Implying?

When the NHL conference and division changes were announced, I was a tiny bit worried. Being a Detroit Red Wings fan living in Pittsburgh, PA, I had settled my inner hockey rivalry by playing the conference card. [Figure: it's not too hard to root for a Detroit / Pittsburgh Stanley Cup rematch, though my absolute favorite SCF was 2011 when the Boston Bruins played the Vancouver Canucks in the playoff season where it seemed everybody was playing the full 7 games and OT, and the Pens had the ginormous upper hand on Tampa Bay and dropped 3 in a row to be catapulted from the Cup run, to boot]. But to find the Red Wings on their way to the Eastern Conference after such a power grip on the Western Conference even with the likes of Vancouver, LA, and Chicago emerging over the past 5 years [When I was growing up with hockey, your Western Conference eight was typically Vancouver, Calgary, St. Louis, Dallas, Colorado, Detroit, Phoenix, and Anaheim] made me very worried.

I consider myself a Hockey fan more than picking and sticking with a team, though I will always love the Red Wings as my first born. Now, I'm a first born, and I know how little water that argument can really hold.  But really, when I lived in Michigan I used to absolutely love watching the Eastern Conference games.  Montreal, Boston, and New Jersey were my favorites. I used to love the Buffalo Sabres too. And the old-school Crapitals were pretty cool (clearly my opinion has changed) when they had Adam Oates and Chris Simon. And it was easy to rationalize because in my eyes, the Red Wings were #1 and the Eastern Conference as a whole was #2.

I always tell people there is one major difference between East and West hockey.  The Eastern Conference has always been the elitist group, if you will. The tape-to-tape passes, precision, accuracy, and most importantly speed. The pace of an Eastern Conference game still blows my mind.  The Western Conference is all about the physical play. Get your man in front of the net and screen, screen, screen! The pace is slower because there is more hitting and board play.  The West is your nitty gritty, so to speak.  Your grind lines and "bash brothers" hockey [cref: "The Mighty Ducks" movies].

The Red Wings were going to the Eastern Conference and I was worried because, as I said when the change was announced, "There's nowhere for them to place!"  Looking at Boston, Pittsburgh, Montreal, New Jersey, the new division breakdowns, the retirements, the overall age of the Red Wings, who went from one of the oldest average to one of the youngest average, etc. etc. etc., I said "They're going to get eaten alive!"  Now, like I said, The Red Wings will always be my first child and I wasn't giving up on them as much as seeing it in the light of when your kid goes from elementary school to middle school and they've got thick glasses and a limp and you love them dearly but you hope to God the other kids don't pick on them.

Then I got bold.  The other team to switch from West to East was Columbus.  And I was willing to bet that they'd be in the playoffs without even blinking an eye.  I need to remind you, I'm a Michigander for the most part and when I'm not, I'm a Pittsburgher, and Ohio is the POS in the middle and neither state appears to be very fond of Ohio [The armpit of the United States] so this was about as bold a statement as I could ever make.  But the Blue Jackets got buried in the Western Conference.  They didn't have the grit to fight, say, the Colorado Avalanche. They had the speed to keep the game moving. They had wise players, precision players, but were up against grind line checkers who pulverized them before they got to show their stuff. But in the Eastern Conference, there would be more opportunity for their precision and speed.

I saw the first half of the season standings.  I didn't really watch many games due to work conflict and lack of cable, but what I do know is this: The CBJ are becoming the team I expected them to be.  And I'm proud to see my Detroit Red Wings trying to grasp at 8th in the Conference. These two teams are neck and neck, trying to show the folks who've been sitting in the Eastern Conference for ...forever?... that not only do they belong in the East but they can excel at it. I will forever be happy that the Red Wings didn't tank.  They've got some injuries holding them back a bit, but Hockeytown is a magical place... in DETROIT.

Part of me wanted to write about this just to have proof that I said Columbus was going to make it to the playoffs this season, but the rest of me doesn't really like to be held accountable for bold predictions.  However, I am just a hockey fan who loves to make predictions.  And I'm thankful to have a sport to be so passionate about.