a penguins post-mortem

Well, we learned this much: The Detroit Red Wings really are the best team in the National Hockey League. Their dominance of the Pens for so much of the Stanley Cup finals was so evident -- Detroit's speed and its ability to play defense was such that often it seemed the team had six skaters on the ice -- it's a wonder the damn thing actually went six games. But we also learned this: The Pens played with tenacity and grit, enough to literally steal that memorable Game 5, which they certainly should have lost. And today, we learned that something really was wrong with Evgeni Malkin, whose play was mysteriously poor throughout the series. Bottom line: The Pens are young -- Sid Crosby is 20, Malkin 21 and Marc-Andre Fleury just 23 -- and many of the game's all-time greats had to lose before they won. They will be back.

pensblog has some fun with sykora's called shot

This is just too fantastic for words, courtesy of the pensblog:

the epic that was game 5 of the stanley cup finals

As the one and only Mike Lange might say, if you missed it, shame on you for six weeks. But if you saw it, if you sat through all or most of that five-hour sporting epic that took place last night in Detroit, you're surely not going to forget it anytime soon, if ever. Hockey is one of those games with what might kindly be described as a niche following -- though still sometimes mentioned as one of the U.S.'s four major professional sports, its national television ratings often rank somewhere between poker and re-runs of Murder, She Wrote. With the constant white screen and the difficulty that goes with following that little black puck, hockey can be a tough game to watch on TV. But then, alone in your living room, you sat through something like last night, something like the three periods and the three overtimes that added up to Penguins 4, Red Wings 3, and you wondered: What's not to get? Granted, not all games are like this. They don't all involve a team staring at elimination and staking a quick 2-0 lead before suddenly falling behind 3-2, the creeping inevitably, the home crowd on its feet, the Stanley Cup being polished and ready to move for the pending coronation until ... the game gets tied with 35 seconds left, the Pens' Maxime Talbot improbably poking the puck into the corner of the net, causing folks from one city to jump and scream while those from the other just screamed. And then the overtimes -- not one, not two, but three of them, all filled with constant sways of action, with big shots and even bigger saves -- all hail Pens keeper Marc-Andre Fleury -- with a back-and-forth melodrama that left you bug-eyed and delirious, a dizzying display that caused you to wear a path in your living room carpet by the time it was all over, at 12:46 a.m., when Petr Sykora of the Pens finally found the net with a goal he had literally guaranteed to a television reporter sometime in the second OT. And that's when your phone started ringing, when friends began texting with congratulatory messages and your parents suddenly called from Pittsburgh just to ask if you saw it, knowing full well you did because they simply needed to share their excitement with you. All it means, in the long run, is that there will be a Game 6 Wednesday night Up-tahn at The Igloo, that the Red Wings still have a 3-2 edge, that the Pens must win two more without losing to win it all. But so what? It'll always be something to savor, something to remember, something that's just a simple reminder of why you really love sports so much in the first place.

and so the penguins eliminate the flyers...

I'm going to be careful in how I write this, if only because a number of my friends are good, knowledgeable and respectful Philly fans with a clue. But to be honest, this series exposed a few simple truths about Philadelphia and many of its sports fans:

1. Much of the talk about how good and knowledgeable Philadelphia fans are is a bald-faced lie. Fact is, folks in this town are probably the most provincial in the country -- completely and utterly clueless about the reality beyond Broad and Pattison. Before the series began, a lot of commentary had focused on the falsehood that the Penguins had "tanked" their final regular season game against the Flyers so as to avoid playing them in the first round. The thinking was, the Pens were afraid of a physical team like the Flyers, as if this were 1975 and Bob Clarke was going to be punching someone in the face and frightening him into playing poorly from the moment the puck dropped. What it ignored was that the Pens wanted to rest Sidney Crosby for what was essentially a meaningless game because he was still feeling the effects of his high ankle sprain. Anyway, now, after a series in which the Pens won four games against just one for the Flyers, after the 6-0 whitewash that that took place in Sunday's series-clinching game at The Igloo, how does that analysis hold up?

2. Another misconception that made the rounds these last two weeks is that Pens fans are johnny-come-latelys to the sport of hockey. Even Rich Hofmann's column in today's Philadelphia Daily News has generated some comments from folks who continue to argue a) the Pens are in this place because they were so bad for so long, thereby allowing them to draft good players (which is true), and b) unlike in Philly, where everyone is supposedly loyal, no one cared about hockey in Pittsburgh until now. Now, while the life of kings pleads guilty to being on the bandwagon (and shamelessly so), many others in Pittsburgh have indeed been loyal since at least the mid-to-late 1980s, when the team began its first real run of success. But the Pens eventually got to be so bad again because their ownership group had literally run them into the ground. A perceived lack of fan support, as a simple read of Mario Lemieux's Wikipedia page makes clear, had nothing to do with why the team nearly folded or left town before Lemieux rescued it. Besides, as we've already demonstrated, Philly has also failed the loyalty test in recent years. But few in this town will tell you that, and fewer still will want to accept it.

3. If it wasn't already known, this series made it demonstrably clear: Philadelphia fans are the most boorish and obnoxious anywhere. It's funny to me that some will point to incidents in other cities as evidence that it's not just a Philly thing. But in Game 4, both times the Penguins scored goals and began to celebrate in the corner, several Flyers fans stood against the glass above the boards and raised their middle fingers -- some even reaching above the heads of children to do so. Real classy. After all, as we all know, a true tough guy does such a thing from the safety of his front-row seat. Losers.

4. Passion and knowledge are not to be confused with loutish behavior. But a lot of people in Philly will never understand this.

5. The back page of today's Philadelphia Daily News. Just 'cause:

memo to anthony gargano: shut up. just shut up.

Heard from a friend back in Philly that 610 WIP-AM radio host Anthony Gargano had ambushed a newspaper columnist from Pittsburgh on the air today, accusing the city of being a johnny-come-lately in terms of its passion for hockey. He also mocked the guy for daring to pick the Penguins to sweep the Flyers -- despite the inconvenient fact that, last we checked, the Pens were already halfway there. And for his coup de grace, Gargano proceeded to taunt the guy for wearing "Penguins panties" or something or other. OK, tough guy, OK. Your station has also often pointed out that the Pirates failed to sell out a few playoff games back in the early 1990s -- an inexcusable act for the fans in Pittsburgh, even if the unsold seats were way up in the outfield upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium, about 10 miles from the field. Very well. But lookie here, cuz: the life of kings has discovered that, as recently as 2000, the Eagles -- the so-called pulse and passionate lifeblood of Philadelphia sports -- needed the Fox Network to buy up approximately 1,500 available seats to avoid having a playoff game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers blacked out. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself right here in The New York Times. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: Less than a decade ago, the Philadelphia Eagles needed help to sellout a playoff game. So shut up, Gargano, and enjoy your head start on the next 25 years of rooting for one loser after another while you continue to parade around with your knuckles scraping against the pavement.

even the hipsters in pittsburgh are all pucked up

Here's how crazy it's getting: the life of kings is in Pittsburgh for Mother's Day, and because we suddenly had some writing to do this evening, we needed a wireless connection like quick (don't ask). So we went to our favorite hipster coffee jawns in Squirrel Hill, the kind of place where the girls are super cute and the music is always something you never heard of, because if you did they wouldn't want YOU to hear it. Anyway, to our surprise when we entered, we found the usual arrangement of Cool Bands You Never Heard Of had actually been replaced by the Penguins Radio Network broadcast of Game 2 of Flyers-Pens, complete with Mike Lange loudly uttering his trademark inanities like "How much chicken can you eat?" and "She wants to sell my monkey!" And when the Pens scored to take a 3-2 lead in the third period, the darling little blonde behind the counter whooped like she had just been told they were giving away bandanas across the street at Eat 'n Park. Or something. The handful of people on laptops or pretending to read Proust all reacted, too, except for this one guy on his laptop who was listening to an i-pod. He suddenly heard the fuss and looked around scornfully before intently returning to whatever the hell it was he was working on. [C'mon, dude. Smile a little and enjoy this. All the cool kids are doing it.] And if that weren't enough, Bob Smizik has written a column in the Post-Gazette that suggests this town's love for the Pens is beginning to rival that of the Steelers. Can it be? I mean, whoa.

phil sheridan makes nice

With all the smack-talk being flung around our great commonwealth this week (ahem) in anticipation of the big Pens-Flyers series, which begins Friday at The Igloo (in case any of yinz were wondrin' 'n at), Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer has decided to take a kinder, gentler approach. In his column today, Sheridan seeks to find some common ground between the life of kings' hometown and the life of kings' adopted home. Money quote:

We're talking about Pittsburgh, that bridge-happy city on the other side of the state. We're talking about our neighbors. Taking cheap shots at Pittsburgh would be like picking a fight with your favorite cousin. Think Pittsburgh and you think blue-collar, beer-drinking, salt-of-the-earth folk who are working hard to reinvent themselves in the post-industrial era. That makes you want to hang out with them and compare notes, not insult them. ... Pittsburgh fans [are] a lot like us, only more polite.

Cheers to that. And cheers to what promises to be a fun series. They're calling for all the fans at The Igloo to wear white for Game 1, which means the joint will look a lot like this:


Sweet.

it's on.

Penguins. Flyers. For the NHL's Eastern Conference championship. Winner advances to the Stanley Cup Finals. Loser gets to hear about it from here to eternity. I expect to have few friends in Philly over the course of the next couple of weeks. And I don't care. The Igloo and the Wacho Center are both gonna shake. Oh, boy, is this gonna be fun.

50 bucks!?! for a stinkin' t-shirt!?! what the %&#@!!

Now that I've shamelessly declared myself to be the Pittsburgh Penguins' unofficial Pain-in-the-Ass Bandwagon Captain, I figured it was high time to be as thoroughly obnoxious as possible by strutting around Philly in some fancy Penguins gear. Tooling around the Pens' web site, I came across this T-shirt, which I could see myself rocking around town -- until I saw the price tag. Eff that.

some sports musings

* They spotted the Broadway Blue Shirts a 3-0 lead. Didn't matter. They came back, took the lead and were suddenly tied again. Then Sooper Sid connected on a one-timer from Ryan Whitney that was actually tipped in by Evgeni Malkin. In front of an insane "white-out" crowd dahn-tahn at The Igloo, 'Guins win.

* Over on the North Side, it was Phillies 6, Pirates 5. Zach Duke really stinks, and the Buccos can't get rid of those awful Friday red jerseys fast enough.

* What in the world has gotten into the 76ers? Where do they get off running a veteran team like Detroit out of the gym like that? Ah, who cares. It's a cool story just 'cause it's even happening.

* The NFL Draft is today! Yawn. What's the best thing about being at The Penn Relays -- aside from, you know, actually being at the Penn Relays? It's a totally draft-free zone. Nice.

"call arnold slick from turtle crick!"

Here come the Penguins, baby.

[photo credit: Peter Diana/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

That's right: I'm on the bandwagon. And no, I have no shame.