Ice Ice Baby

As I've stated several times on this blog, I'm not a sports kinda guy. If left to my own devices, I'd watch a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine marathon over just about any sporting event. However, due to extreme summer boredom, I've been religiously following the Penguins playoff games this year.

When I last blogged about hockey, I pointed out that I knew next to nothing about the game. At the beginning of the playoffs, that was still true. The extent of my hockey knowledge was limited to a few basic facts:
1. Get puck in goal
2. Look good doing it
3. Beat the shit out of the first motherfucker to get in your way of accomplishing either one

When I saw the Penguins play in Buffalo back in January, I was too busy worrying about my nuts freezing to the bleachers to worry about the game, but even then, I seldom care about sports (though I do like to watch football games sometimes). However, as if planned as some sort of cosmic joke, all of my friends in Kittanning are hardcore sports fans. They typically drag me to all sorts of sporting events that I care nothing about, and I make witty (at least in my mind) comments about ugly spectators, seemingly random game rules, or the referee's exposed ass-crack (I'm very sophisticated). This summer, I've been heading to one of the bars in Kittanning every other day or so to watch a Penguins game, and what's incredibly surprising to me is that I got really into it.

Over the last month, I think I've been able to figure out how the game of hockey is played. It doesn't seem like random back-and-forth stick tapping anymore. I even understand most of the penalties, though I still don't fully understand how there can be a penalty for "roughing" in a game where it's legal to body slam a man into a fucking wall. It's an advantage for the team if a player bleeds, so who really gives a shit? I say the only rule should be to get the puck into the other net by any means necessary. Let them sucker punch each other, crack each other in the face with their sticks, or slice the thorax of another player with their skates. "Death Hockey" could really take off.

Unfortunately, despite my loyal following of all their games, the Pittsburgh Penguins lost to the Detroit Red Wings in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. I was genuinely disappointed. I really wanted the Pens to win, but I have to admit that Detroit deserved to win. As far as I could tell (and just about everyone except Totos and a loud six-year-old who was sitting behind me last night agreed with me) the Red Wings played the game better. In the first two games, Detroit owned the ice; we were playing on their terms. Even when we stepped up our game in the last four games, Detroit was just bafflingly good. I was told that there can only be five men on the ice at any one time, the Red Wings could have had me fooled. It seemed that no matter where that damn puck went, Detroit had someone there. Even when it looked like they fucked up a pass or we knocked it away, there was STILL someone there. I suspect they have a Borg-like collective consciousness that they were using to communicate at key points in the game... but I think I may have been the only one in the bar who was thinking that.

The only goal that was a real kick in the nuts was the last one scored against the Penguins in tonight's game. Henrik Zetterberg shot the puck at goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who stopped it, but the puck fell between his legs and came to rest about six inches behind him. To try to stop keep the damn thing from going into the goal, he flopped down, trying to sit on the puck. But against all laws of physics, his ass propelled the puck right into the goal. They replayed that moment at least six times, and I still can't figure out how it was physically possible.

It's a shame that it ended that way too, because Fleury is an amazing goalie. He blocked something like 50 shots in game 5 alone, which, I'm told, is incredible for a single game. Sydney Crosby may be the big name for the Penguins, but they would have been owned in four games flat without Fleury covering for them. I hope the guy doesn't have to take a lot of shit for what is essentially a one-in-a-million occurrence.

Side Note: I also can't help but love that an ice hockey player is named "Fleury." I guess it would have been equally amusing for him to be a weatherman, but I think the hockey angle works too.

So I guess I'm a fair-weather fan, but I'm sorry that the Pens lost. On the plus side, at least the Stanley Cup trophy is safe for another year. I'm told that the last time the Pens won the Stanley Cup, some guy jumped off a diving board with it in a moment of drunken revelry causing rather severe damage to said trophy. I can appreciate that because it seems like something that I'd be able to convince one of my friends to do for a Klondike bar.

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It's too damn hot for a penguin to just be walkin' around... so he better be skating.