Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Sorry, Penguin Fans

by Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we pored over reams of official documents, classified files and hundreds of hours of videotape to find out exactly how Detroit bought the referees in the last series, how much was paid out, and how many twelve-year-old Cambodian boys the Red Wings had to part with from their vast storehouse. This week I was planning on dedicating the column to my annual family-friendly feature, Who Would Win in a Pitched Battle to the Death? (Red Wings and Penguins are natural enemies in the wild), but due to recent events in el mundo de hockey, I was forced to abandon those plans and go with Plan B: Write Something About the Stanley Cup Finals.

I know, I know, it seems almost completely pointless, seeing as the Stanley Cup Playoffs ended last week with Dallas' disappointing effort in Game 6 to Detroit. Detroit was then handed the Championship Award for Hockey, and went on their merry way back to Detroit. Finis, fino, the end. Seeya next year.

Or so we thought.

Strangely, though, the NHL decided to hold some sort of weird "secret bonus round", in which Detroit and Pittsburgh were to keep on playing, long after Detroit had won it all. It's strange, to be sure: perhaps some arcane NHL by-law requires it, for draft-order purposes? Or it may be similar to the Consolation Game the losers get to play in most fantasy leagues, to determine third place?

Regardless, this is a mystery that may never be solved. But the fact of the matter is, your 2008 NHL Champion Detroit Red Wings had to postpone their amazing victory parade through downtown Detroit for another week (I refuse to make an easy joke about the players avoiding downtown Detroit at all costs: the people of that godforsaken hellhole have suffered far enough) thanks to said NHL scheduling gaffe.

Well, we all saw what happened: in the first two games of the series, Detroit completely dominated the Pens. I haven't seen that level of competitive imbalance since I beat the shit out of my goldfish, Dr. Satan, with a crowbar. Penguins fans --some of the best in the world-- were shell-shocked by Detroit's style of play, tactics that we Western Conferencers have been privy to for two decades. Dominating puck possession and shot totals, yet still 0-0 or 1-0 for an abnormally long time? Check. Your team just misses a wide-open net, only to have Detroit score two or three goals in rapid succession in the third? Check. Your team is down 3-0 late in the third period, yet a Wings goalie takes multiple obvious dives? Check.

Eastern conferencers were outraged!! How dare a clearly superior team play with their food for two periods, only to deliver a series of quick, backbreaking goals late! The chutzpah! How dare Osgood dive twice in the third, when the game was already totally out of reach! Don't they know that diving is only allowed in the early part of the game? Have they not seen game tape of our very own SidneyHockeyJesusCrosby? For shame!!

Although I despise the Wings more than any other sports-related entity on the face of the earth --other than my longtime peewee hockey league rivals, the Appleton Apples (gutless babyeating archdevils!! You're lucky I can't find where to take out the batteries on this ankle bracelet, or else I'd be back at your practice rink, delivering Groin Punches of Sweet Justice!!)-- I'll admit I was secretly rooting for the Wings to sweep the Penguins, and not-so-secretly rooting for four straight shutouts.

Why? Because my Man-Love for the Stars is that much greater than my Totally Justified Hatred for the Wings. The more completely dominant and unstoppable the Red Wings appear, the better the Stars look by comparison. For example, after the Stars forced a Game 6 by being the only team in recent memory to defeat the Wings on their home ice in the playoffs, it became extremely obvious that the Stars rule while others drool. Ducks, Sharks, Avs, Preds, Wild (haha...just kidding about the Wild. I only included them to see if you were paying attention) all pale in comparison to Dallas, and soon the media darling Penguins will be added to that List of Even More Futile. There's no shame in losing to the eventual champs... unless, of course, you get shut out twice and lose in five.

Astute readers will point out that the series is far from over, that the Penguins' victory last night changes everything, that in order for the Penguins to win the series in 6 --like almost every major media hockey pundit predicted-- they would have to lose two to Detroit at some point. And you readers would be technically correct: after all, both teams have the same number of guys on the ice for the most part, and Detroit's players aren't openly given any physical or mental or pharmaceutical advantage that would decide this series before it even started. Technically.

But!-- realistically, all Game 3 did was to set up Pens fans, Eastern Conference fans and clueless media pundits up for an even more crushing defeat. Western Conference teams sweeping the East in four has become a pretty common Cup Finals occurrence, but this year was going to be different! I mean, look! Crosby! Malkin! Holy cow! Did I mention Crosby! Yowsah! They're like the 1983 Edmonton Oilers except with no Mark Messier and Gretzky Lite instead of Gretzky Real! No one can stop them! I'm wallowing in my own juices just thinking about them!!

Unfortunately for the high-priced talking heads, hockey is a team sport. It's not tennis or golf or the NBA, joke sports where the individual is all-important and team means nothing. No, hockey is like football or college basketball, where all individual accomplishments are the result of your team playing well around you. Every year the Denver Broncos are near the top of the league in rushing: yet, every other year they dump their statistically amazing running back and replace him with some scrub off the practice squad, who then dominates the league himself until he, too, is cast aside like last week's leftover fishsticks. Crosbymalkinites would have you think that the Broncos are making huge mistakes every year by not keeping said running backs and signing them to massive multi-decade deals. People with working eyeballs would tell you otherwise.

And so it will pass, that my prediction of Wings in Five will come to fruition sooner than later, and we can all laugh and forget that this Penguins team ever existed. Already near next year's salary cap ceiling without having contracts for Hossa and with Malkin, Staal and Fleury's contracts up in 2009, both the Wings and the Pens will be long-forgotten afterthoughts within two years, ancient lore remembered only by the never-perused writings in eldritch record tomes. By then, Nick Lidstrom will have finally retired from hockey, been elected Prime Minister of Sweden, and captained them to a glorious and mistake-free invasion of Northern Prussia. Crosby will be a lonely, bitter, hulk of a 22-year old, permanently hunchbacked from years of excessive diving, skating the puck in his broken-down arena in complete darkness, as his employers will not be able to afford their electricity bill. And Malkin will have just been signed for 15 years, $18 million a year by the New York Rangers, where his point production will drop 40% and gambling debts to the Russian mafia will force him to publicly date a blonde Russian tennis/supermodel, much to the chagrin of his gay lover Sean Avery.

I could go on --and probably will during the criminally hockey-sparse dog days of summer-- but the prison warden just tapped me on the shoulder, so I've got to wrap this one up. Tune in next week when I infuriate legions of Stars fans with my newest column: 'Trevor Daley --Not as Bad as All That.'