GET THE NET
for everyone who doesn't get the
netminders.
I have often -- in fact, as recently as yesterday -- praised and rooted for my beloved
Pittsburgh Penguins while also chastising a large and unfortunately loud segment
of their (ahem) fan base: the people who shout Shoot! any time a player
touches a puck in the offensive zone, even if he has no lane or angle to shoot;
the people who confuse open-ice checks with sound positional defense and so
shout Step up! or Hit him! in situations when a miss, or anything
less than full contact, will spring an odd-man rush or even a breakaway the
other way; the people who call up the Mark Madden show and suggest line
combinations that would still suck, even if they weren't plugging multiple
forwards into positions they've never played; the people who argued, and who are
apparently still arguing -- against all reason, common sense, and even the most
rudimentary understanding of this team and its talents -- that Ty Conklin should
be getting some sort of chance to play in
goal.
These people, for lack of a better, more delicate term, are fucking idiots.
They could be forgiven, or at least more easily laughed off, when Marc-Andre Fleury was rehabbing his ankle and Ty Conklin, bless his season-saving soul, was playing like the second coming of Patrick Roy. Or at least of Johan Hedberg. Conklin was hot, Fleury was still injured, and the Pens were playing great. Of course, you never heard anyone suggest that, since the team was playing so well without Sidney Crosby, they may as well scratch him for a while when got healthy -- you know, because Jeff Taffe had been playing so well. But I digress.
Conklin, a career back-up on the ride of his life, was not, would not, and could not ever be a suitable replacement for Marc-Andre Fleury, a number-one overall draft pick who had an amazing season last year, had been playing great right before his injury, and was showing signs of maturing and (forgive me) blossoming into the franchise goalie everyone with eyes and a brain and fleeting familiarity with the game knew that he could be. But, hey, you go with the hot hand, and you ride the wave, and you gotta keep playing Ty because Fleury's never proven himself, and yadda freaking yadda. It was stupid. It was short-sighted. But at least it was, in some put-an-amoeba's-brain-under-a-microscope way, understandable.
(And, yes, I'm fully aware that amoebas do not have brains. That was my point. Now...)
But the fact that, in some dark and demented corners of the Penguins' so-called fandom, some rotting, festering remnant of this idea still exists, that it still lurches, zombie-like, in the decaying crania of people who somehow manage to manipulate a remote control and turn to Fox Sports Net, is enough to make what's left of my distending cranium explode. It was not enough, perhaps, for Fleury to return from injury and go 10-2-1 in a stretch of unparalleled excellence that, as his coach rightly notes, made him the best goaltender in the entire league over that span. It was not enough, apparently, for his Save Percentage to be fourth-best in the league (higher than that of Martin Brodeur, Henrik Lundquist, Roberto Luongo, and Evgeni Nabokov, just to name a few), nor for his Goals Against Average to be tenth-best in the league (dropping like a stone after the injury, a period when it was the best in the league), nor even for him to have pitched a shutout in Game 1 of the Senators series and then to have played well in Game 2, giving up only three hard-fought, hard-earned, semi-flukey-bounce goals.
Oh, no. None of that was enough for the nincompoops who still thought that Marc-Andre Fleury, the best goaltender in the league the last month-and-a-half, the best goaltender in the league through the first two games of the Stanley Cup playoffs, should make way for a (much-beloved, but still nothing more than) journeyman goaltender whose play, after that hot streak, had cooled almost enough to keep milk fresh.
Am I exaggerating? Am I whipping up a Straw-and-Twine-Man to rail against in this post? Not if you take a look at today's Post-Gazette Sound Off sports poll, the voting for which ended yesterday: when asked if the Penguins should give goaltender Ty Conklin one start in the series against Ottawa, a staggering 34% of respondents said yes. Since I saw no disclaimer on the question yesterday, nor on the results today, that the PG would be polling only on the wards at Western Psych, it's safe to assume that a hell of a lot of people who follow hockey and read the Post-Gazette have no idea what they hell they're thinking or talking about. Or else remember a time, long before I started following hockey, when teams thought it wise to sit the hottest goaltender in the league and give his back-up a crack at a best-of-seven playoff game.
Even last night, after Fleury had withstood a tremendous Senators' assault in the first ten minutes of the game, after he'd given up only a single goal on a sudden breakaway in the offensive zone, after he'd become the only goaltender in the playoffs to win his first three games, lowered his (second-place-in-the-league) playoff Goals Against Average to a fabulous 1.34, and raised his (starting goalie, league-leading) playoff Save Percentage to a phenomenal .956, some moron still phoned into the Subway Nightly Sports Call and told Bob Pompeani, who gets extra points for not laughing 'til he puked, that the Penguins should start Ty Conklin in goal for Game 4 so they can get him some work, because you know they're gonna need him sometime down the line.
If I'd been holding the remote control in my hand, I might have thrown it through the screen. And I suspect that people all over the East End were trying, around 10:45 last night, to figure out what angry, wounded animal emitted that strangled cry they heard pierce the stillness of the Shady Avenue night.
But I'm better now. Especially after writing this long, cathartic post. And so I'll leave you with but two simple requests:
The next time someone tells you that Pittsburgh is a great hockey town, tell 'em they're right. And then tell 'em that, in frighteningly large parts of it, it's also a stupid one.
These people, for lack of a better, more delicate term, are fucking idiots.
They could be forgiven, or at least more easily laughed off, when Marc-Andre Fleury was rehabbing his ankle and Ty Conklin, bless his season-saving soul, was playing like the second coming of Patrick Roy. Or at least of Johan Hedberg. Conklin was hot, Fleury was still injured, and the Pens were playing great. Of course, you never heard anyone suggest that, since the team was playing so well without Sidney Crosby, they may as well scratch him for a while when got healthy -- you know, because Jeff Taffe had been playing so well. But I digress.
Conklin, a career back-up on the ride of his life, was not, would not, and could not ever be a suitable replacement for Marc-Andre Fleury, a number-one overall draft pick who had an amazing season last year, had been playing great right before his injury, and was showing signs of maturing and (forgive me) blossoming into the franchise goalie everyone with eyes and a brain and fleeting familiarity with the game knew that he could be. But, hey, you go with the hot hand, and you ride the wave, and you gotta keep playing Ty because Fleury's never proven himself, and yadda freaking yadda. It was stupid. It was short-sighted. But at least it was, in some put-an-amoeba's-brain-under-a-microscope way, understandable.
(And, yes, I'm fully aware that amoebas do not have brains. That was my point. Now...)
But the fact that, in some dark and demented corners of the Penguins' so-called fandom, some rotting, festering remnant of this idea still exists, that it still lurches, zombie-like, in the decaying crania of people who somehow manage to manipulate a remote control and turn to Fox Sports Net, is enough to make what's left of my distending cranium explode. It was not enough, perhaps, for Fleury to return from injury and go 10-2-1 in a stretch of unparalleled excellence that, as his coach rightly notes, made him the best goaltender in the entire league over that span. It was not enough, apparently, for his Save Percentage to be fourth-best in the league (higher than that of Martin Brodeur, Henrik Lundquist, Roberto Luongo, and Evgeni Nabokov, just to name a few), nor for his Goals Against Average to be tenth-best in the league (dropping like a stone after the injury, a period when it was the best in the league), nor even for him to have pitched a shutout in Game 1 of the Senators series and then to have played well in Game 2, giving up only three hard-fought, hard-earned, semi-flukey-bounce goals.
Oh, no. None of that was enough for the nincompoops who still thought that Marc-Andre Fleury, the best goaltender in the league the last month-and-a-half, the best goaltender in the league through the first two games of the Stanley Cup playoffs, should make way for a (much-beloved, but still nothing more than) journeyman goaltender whose play, after that hot streak, had cooled almost enough to keep milk fresh.
Am I exaggerating? Am I whipping up a Straw-and-Twine-Man to rail against in this post? Not if you take a look at today's Post-Gazette Sound Off sports poll, the voting for which ended yesterday: when asked if the Penguins should give goaltender Ty Conklin one start in the series against Ottawa, a staggering 34% of respondents said yes. Since I saw no disclaimer on the question yesterday, nor on the results today, that the PG would be polling only on the wards at Western Psych, it's safe to assume that a hell of a lot of people who follow hockey and read the Post-Gazette have no idea what they hell they're thinking or talking about. Or else remember a time, long before I started following hockey, when teams thought it wise to sit the hottest goaltender in the league and give his back-up a crack at a best-of-seven playoff game.
Even last night, after Fleury had withstood a tremendous Senators' assault in the first ten minutes of the game, after he'd given up only a single goal on a sudden breakaway in the offensive zone, after he'd become the only goaltender in the playoffs to win his first three games, lowered his (second-place-in-the-league) playoff Goals Against Average to a fabulous 1.34, and raised his (starting goalie, league-leading) playoff Save Percentage to a phenomenal .956, some moron still phoned into the Subway Nightly Sports Call and told Bob Pompeani, who gets extra points for not laughing 'til he puked, that the Penguins should start Ty Conklin in goal for Game 4 so they can get him some work, because you know they're gonna need him sometime down the line.
If I'd been holding the remote control in my hand, I might have thrown it through the screen. And I suspect that people all over the East End were trying, around 10:45 last night, to figure out what angry, wounded animal emitted that strangled cry they heard pierce the stillness of the Shady Avenue night.
But I'm better now. Especially after writing this long, cathartic post. And so I'll leave you with but two simple requests:
The next time someone tells you that Pittsburgh is a great hockey town, tell 'em they're right. And then tell 'em that, in frighteningly large parts of it, it's also a stupid one.
Posted: Tue - April 15, 2008 at 12:59 PM
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Published On: Apr 17, 2008 04:25 PM
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Published On: Apr 17, 2008 04:25 PM