If You're Not First You're Last

And Then There Was One.

The Penguins have played 105 games this year.

Almost 6500 minutes.

They've dealt with free agent losses, injuries, trades, and a coaching change.
And the memory of losing in the Stanley Cup Finals last year.

And it all comes down to this.

One game.

60 minutes.

Less than 1% of the season.

And then the rest of their lives.



This city has never experienced anything like tonight.

We've won two Super Bowls in the last decade, but football is always a one and done.

We've won two Stanley Cups in the last twenty years. But they were in six and four games. Not seven.

The last time a road team won a Game 7 in the Finals was 1979 when the Pirates defeated the Orioles. But baseball is not hockey. And in terms of intensity the World Series is nothing compared to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Pittsburgh has never seen a sporting event like this.



The Pens are being counted out in a lot of circles. Even "experts" that thought they would win Game 6 are migrating to the Red Wings camp.

The popular opinion is that home ice, experience and Osgood are going to make the difference for Detroit. You've heard all the stats:

- Only twice in fourteen chances has a road team won Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Finals.

- The Pens have been outscored 11-2 at Joe Louis Arena in the Finals.

- Detroit is 5-1 at home against the Pens in the Finals the last two seasons.

I'm here to tell you, you can throw it all out the window.

Because when this is on the line in a winner take all Game 7



anything can happen.

One shift

One shot

One bounce

Could spell the difference between victory and defeat.

An entire season could come down to one moment.

And one play could be responsible for crowning a new champion.


Enjoy it Pittsburgh.

60 wins.

1 more to go.

Keep the Faith because It's a Great Day for Hockey.


-the legend

Liza Minelli is a Communist

I turned into Sportscenter this afternoon and stuck around through their neverending Lebron James coverage (OMG he didn't shake the Magic's hands and I heard that Dwight Howard took him off his five and is no longer following him on twitter) because next up was the recap of Sunday Night's Stanley Cup Final game. Big mistake. After suffering through that train wreck, and shortly after vomiting, multiple times, I reached this conclusion: I don’t want mainstream coverage of the NHL. Take it off ESPN. No PTI. No Around the Horn. No Sportscenter. Unless Buccigross, Melrose, or Linda Cohn are speaking I’m done with it.

I’ll admit every day during the Caps-Pens series I eagerly awaited 5 o’clock to roll around so I could see our wonderful sport presented to the masses. However, after being forced to watch Michael Wilbon, Woody Paige, and Skip Bayliss butcher what is otherwise frozen I don’t want it anymore. They don’t know the sport, they don’t know the players, they don’t understand the rules.

According to Robert Flores, FILLPula, scored Detroits second goal and and the reason Malkin is going to play in Game 3 is because the NHL thinks he is too good of a player to be suspended. He ignored the fact that they had already rescinded a suspension to Aaron Walker earlier in the playoffs, and they failed to suspend Ovechkin, Cooke, Kunitz, and others who have committed questionable fouls this postseason. Not to mention the aspect of the rule that addresses a second offense in the playoffs, not a first, as well as Colin Campbell’s press release. I’m sick of watching idiots blubber their way through what I’m assuming is mandatory coverage. And nothing is worse than PTI.

The thing that hurts the most is that quite frankly ESPN should be embarrassed that its flagship show, other than Sportscenter of course, employs two people who as PROFESSIONAL sports writers, who are employed by newspapers based in cities that HAVE A NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE TEAM know less about hockey than I, an above average sports fan who hates the NBA and has never seen a game live, know about professional basketball. But they aren’t embarrassed because hockey matters that little to them.

If that’s going to be the case I say as fans we embrace it. Fuck ‘em. We’re not going to become more popular by watering down the sport to appease the average fan and we’re certainly not going to do so by having people like Wilbon and Kornheiser introduce it to them. That’s like sending Joan Rivers and Perez Hilton to other countries as ambassadors. Sure they might be knowledgeable in their respective fields, award show fashion and plastic surgery for Joan, trashing celebrities and blowing dudes for Perez, but that doesn’t mean they should be the ones that explain the US to the rest of the world (btw I’m pretty sure Kornheiser would be Joan Rivers and Wilbon would be Perez which I guess means Tony Reali would be Melissa).

What we should do is embrace the nicheness of the sport, at least for now. Stick with cable television and let hockey be covered by people who know the sport. Fix the NHL network up, make it a 24 hour coverage thing and start producing analysts that can infiltrate ESPN. Perfect the product on the ice. Then once the market’s ready go public. It worked for Mixed Martial Arts and now the UFC is huge. The only difference is in our sport we take the gloves off before we fight.

-the legend