The First Soft Steps on the Path to “DOOM”

Regular readers of this blog (when it was a more regular publication) and good friends of mine are well aware of the "DOOM" scenario as often prophesized by my wife Emily.

“DOOM” as defined by Emily involves a Stanley Cup Finals match-up between our two favorite hockey teams; the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks.  The fact that said match-up no longer threatens to impede our pending nuptials, as it would have three years ago is irrelevant.  Simply put, “DOOM” is a bad thing.  To put it in proper perspective, one would likely need to have been involved in our wedding planning and/or spent Super Bowl week with the Harbaugh parents.

When we first started discussing (or more likely dreading) the concept three years ago it was distasteful. Now, it’s FAR worse.  My wife has always been a Hawks fan first but three years ago her loyalties were more closely divided.  Today she is as rabid a Hawks fans as you will find anywhere. She LIKES the Pens…she LOVES the Hawks.

I bleed black and gold and that will never change.  Still, my Hawks fandom has grown as well, sufficient even to attend an away game by myself in San Jose last February.  I do not doubt my wife’s influence on that development (which is unfortunate because I would NEVER try to influence her sports loyalties) but there is more to the story. 

I have lived in Chicago nearly 18 years.  I live one mile from the United Center.  I love hockey.  And five years ago the Hawks performed the most startling sports metamorphosis ever seen.  They changed almost instantaneously from one of the worst organizations in North American sports to one of the best.  On top of which, they dispatched the Orange and Black Goon Squad in the Stanley Cup finals, thus allowing me to remain in existential harmony with the hockey universe.  It’s a debt of gratitude I can never truly repay.

For most of the hockey world, a Pens/Hawks match-up for the sport’s most cherished prize would be a dream.  They are the league’s two best teams bar none and arguably the most exciting as well. With all due respect to Barry Trotz, it is highly unlikely that either Dan Bylsma or Joel Quenneville with unveil the neutral zone trap if that series comes to pass.

For Emily and me, it’s an unmitigated nightmare. 

The two clubs have met only four times since we became “an item”, and the atmosphere around us could be charitably described as “uncomfortable” each time.  Mind you that is with nothing but organizational pride at stake in any of those games.  One cannot help but think that our 1,295 square feet of living space will seem a bit congested if fate and/or Crosby and Toews were to deliver this match-up.  And keep in mind I have not even addressed the Marian Hossa issue.

So the question becomes, how close are we to “DOOM”?  Is it a forgone conclusion that these two teams will meet in the Stanley Cup finals?  NHL history after all is replete with unfathomable post season upsets.  Just last season an 8^th seed Los Angeles team that barely qualified for the post season caught fire and rampaged to a championship.  Rarely do the NHL’s two best regular season teams meet in the finals.

Just as rarely however does the league produce one team, let alone two with a 75% regular season winning percentage. If you toss out shootouts, given the obvious random element involved, the Penguins and Blackhawks COMBINED to lose only 19 of 96 hockey games this season.  The Blackhawks opened the season with a 24 game point streak; the Penguins followed with a 15 game winning streak.  So yes, there is cause for mild concern (if not full on panic).

And yet in the true spirit of being conflicted sports fans, we fear both the prospect of “DOOM” and the absence of “DOOM”.  We can interchangeably dread the potential for this match-up and the equally nerve wracking idea of another early exit for either or both.  It’s the great conundrum of our dual hockey existence.

The merciless nature of the NHL is this; the playoffs truly are a second season, separate and distinct from the first.  Post season failure will eradicate virtually any level of regular season success.  Penguin fans know this well; it took only two dreadful weeks last April to erase six months of inspired hockey from our memories.

There were palatable if not comforting explanations for the Penguins losses to Montreal and Tampa in 2010 and 2011.  Conversely the team is still washing off the stench of last year’s collapse against their most hated rival.  Their performance was completely inexcusable and put virtually EVERY player (short of #87) and coach on notice that another such meltdown could end their time in the Burgh. 

The Blackhawks needed two full seasons to recover from the salary cap armageddon that occurred after they skated the cup in 2010.  Even still, their loss to Phoenix last season was uninspired at best.  The team never looked truly right after the All Star Break and the worst kept secret in the league was the tension between Quenneville and Scotty Bowman’s kid.  I’m not sure exactly where management sides in this dispute but suffice to say, either or both could be unemployed if the Hawks are ousted before Memorial Day.

Which means simply that the Pens and Hawks are both at risk of being branded Washington Crapital style post season chokers if the drop out early again this year.  To that end, my honest belief is that both teams but especially the Penguins benefited from the short-season.  I can only imagine the build-up of angst over 82 games for a team with Stanley Cup or bust expectations and a 20 point lead in the standings.  Even with that, the collateral damage from another early exit could be significant. 

No other sport ascribes less importance to its regular season than the NHL.  For great teams and great players, immortality is earned in May and June.  Brett Favre and Peyton Manning fashioned impenetrable legacies in spite of numerous post season failures because NFL regular season success is considered a noteworthy achievement.  In the National Hockey League, it’s merely a footnote.

When you are as talented as the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks, getting to the Stanley Cup tournament is taken as a given.  It’s what you do afterward that creates or maintains your legacy. 

The Pens and Hawks are championship caliber teams.  Both are deep and talented, exceptionally well coached and experienced under playoff pressure.  Both have a core of players with proven abilities to step up in the biggest of games.  Notwithstanding the wild-card of the shortened season, I cannot remember a year where two NHL teams appeared so obviously superior to the rest of the league. 

Even with that, “DOOM” is still a long ways away.  It remains incredibly difficult to win one NHL playoff series let alone three.  There are completely unpredictable variables such as injuries (see Crosby, Sidney) and hot goaltenders (see Halak, Jaroslav).  There are bad breaks, bad schedules, and bad match-ups.  Any number of things could happen between now and mid June to prevent this match-up.  When Emily and I view either team individually, such concerns are at the forefront of our collective thoughts. 

 
When we view the teams collectively, the “DOOM” scenario seems almost unavoidable.  As such Emily and I are beset by a truly unsettling paradox. If we get exactly what we want, we will get exactly what we do not want. It's the ultimate circular reference in our hockey lives.

As if to drive home this point, the NHL created an almost unfathomable scheduling coincidence whereby the Hawks and Pens play the same night in six of their seven first round games. I’m not a Gary Bettman hater by nature but even his most strident enemies cannot think him diabolical enough to have purposely crafted such a schedule.

For now, I will simply speak in the time honored language of coach-speak.  We will take each game and each series one at a time.  We will worry solely about the teams in front of us.  There is a lot of hockey to be played between now and mid June.  For better or for worse, anything can happen.

A Freaky Hockey Convergence on the Path to Doom!

For the better part of two and one half years, my wife Emily has feared what she poignantly describes as “the DOOM scenario.” Emily defines “DOOM” as a Stanley Cup match-up between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks.

In actuality my girlfriend Emily started preaching this in the spring of 2009. My fiancée Emily continued it with exasperated vigor in the spring of 2010, and my wife Emily maintains this fear today. And in point of fact, the doom scenario as narrowly defined has been avoided, given that the two teams avoid said confrontation on the weekend of our wedding.

Thankfully, or perhaps I should say "making the best of a potentially awkward situation," Jaroslav Halak and the Orange and Black Goon Squad conspired to quash this fear in 2010. It’s a practical impossibility for me to be happy with a Penguin playoff loss so I’ll just say this; if Sid, Geno and the Boys had to have a bad spring, May 2010 was not the worst time for it.

Emily and I maintain what most people would classify as a “mixed marriage.” We have navigated a significant cultural divide in our relationship that many couples could not overcome. In short, my hockey allegiances fall first and foremost to all things Penguins; hers are to the Hawks. Flip it around and we both cheer for the other team, on a secondary basis.

We have navigated this relationship obstacle through fortuitous conference alignments, scheduling, timing, and the good graces of Cristobal Huet. In short, the teams play in opposite conferences meaning that other than perhaps one regular season battle, they can meet only in the Stanley Cup finals. The Pens development towards Stanley Cup contenders started one or two years earlier than the Hawks. And any chance the Hawks had of getting to the finals in 2009 went were quashed by Hawks GM Dale Tallon’s post all night drinking binge signing of Huet as his goaltender.

Ok, that’s not exactly fair given that Huet was not even the starting goaltender in the 2009 playoffs. In reality, I knew the Hawks were not quite ready to beat Detroit that year, just as the Pens were not ready the year earlier. Let’s just say that feeling was “Cristolized” when Huet replaced (go figure) an injured Nikolai Khabibulin in game 4.

I assume that 450 words in to this blog the question my readers are asking is, why do I bring this up now? After all, Emily and I are happily married and our wedding went off without a hockey related hitch. In fact, I would offer that we got the opposite effect with my beautiful wife taunting my Philly friends to Chelsea Dagger the day after the Hawks game 1 victory. All is well, and life begins again.

So why, to quote my wife, am I fearing once again that “ALL ROADS LEAD TO DOOM”? Let me explain. No, is too much…let me sum up.

Emily and I are off to St’Louis this weekend. We could not believe when we looked at the schedule and saw this nugget, Blackhawks at St’Louis Friday night; Penguins at St’Louis Saturday night. Beyond the unparalleled joy of a two night reunion with Jaroslav Halak, I was astounded that our two favorite teams could be in the same city on back to back nights? It seemed nothing less than a miracle of scheduling, especially given that the Pens play in the Eastern Conference.

In retrospect that’s not the miraculous part. The miraculous part is that the Pens and Hawks are actually NOT playing on the same night. Given what’s transpired this season, I’m shocked the NHL did not schedule a doubleheader at whatever they call the arena in St’Louis.

To wit, we are 12 days in to the NHL season and the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks have played on the same night for all seven of their games. And here is the really, really scary part, they have the same result EVERY NIGHT.

Yes I know their records are slightly different because one Hawks loss came in overtime. That being said, let’s take a real cash flow approach to this rather than the NHL’s adjusted analysis which includes points for overtime losses. In short, the Pens and Hawks are both 4 and 3. Both got off to shockingly sluggish starts, both are looking better just as we get the oil changed for our trip west. The result…

Date-------------Result------ Pens/Score------ Hawks/Score

Thursday October 7th-----Loss---Philly 2-3----Colorado 3-4
Saturday October 9th-----Loss---Montreal 2-3----Detroit 2-3
Monday October 11th------Win---New Jersey 2-1----Buffalo 4-3
Wednesday October 13th---Loss---Toronto 3-4----Nashville 2-3
Friday October 15th-------Win---NY Islanders 3-2----Columbus 5-2
Saturday October 16th-----Win---Philly 5-2----Buffalo 4-3
Monday October 18th------Win---Ottawa 5-2----St’Louis 3-2

So maybe I’m going off the deep end here but this is just a tad too freaky.

It’s weird enough that one team would open the season with 7 games in 12 nights, let alone two. I’m not sure I’ve seen that other than the '95 lockout season. The fact that both teams would have the same result on each night is…well there is no other way to interpret this but, POTENTIAL DOOM!

I covered the issue last year about dual citizenship in the sports world. I’ve lived happily as a Pittsburgh fan in Chicago for 15 years. Chicagoans have overlooked my less than subtle support for the Steelers and Pens, with the notable exception of when our teams come to town. It’s an uneasy coexistence but it works, for now.

Clearly such a relationship would be strained if the Pens were to defeat the Hawks in the Stanley Cup final (or I guess in theory if the opposite scenario occurred though I can not fathom that).

That being said, our marriage clearly adds a new element to this. We’ve gone beyond just whether or not I can walk the streets of Chicago safely in my Fleury jersey (or Brent Johnson jersey if things keep going the way they are). We are now at the point of questioning whether I will come home from a business trip and find my wife has changed the locks.

To be clear, Emily is a Penguin fan. She loves the Flightless Waterfowl and has a particular affinity for the Superstar, Max Talbot. Hers is not that painful, pit in your stomach fear of a world where Chris Pronger, Michael Leighton and the Orange and Black Goon Squad carry the cup.

Her issue is one of split loyalties, driven primarily by the never ending conversion attempts of her husband. She would be thrilled if the Hawks won the cup but sad for the Penguins. And as a truly caring person, her issues are compounded by the understanding that I would not deal well with seeing the Penguins back in the Marian Hossa position after a Stanley Cup loss.

We’ve been fortunate that during the length of our relationship the Pens and Hawks have played only one time, a brilliant battle last December. In spite of the loss, I actually enjoyed the game. As for my wife, I will charitably say she appeared “uncomfortable” for close to three hours. Let’s keep in mind that as great as the game was, this was a fairly meaningless regular season event. I don’t relish the idea of experiencing her “discomfort” level if the Pens and Hawks are playing in June for Lord Stanley’s Cup.

Compounding my concerns is that Emily possesses a level of self control and human decency on this issue that tragically eludes me. No matter how torn she was, no matter what she was thinking during that game, she sat stoically throughout it. In contrast, I screamed and nearly jumped through the ceiling when Jordan Staal tied it late in regulation.

I like to think I’m mature enough to temper my reactions in a series. My days of screaming at goaltenders on TV, a la Andy Moog in the early 90s are, for the most part, behind me. Alas, I don’t think I can keep my emotions in check during the Stanley Cup finals. Let me rephrase that, I know I can not.

The boundless optimists, the Christopher Disque’s of the world say this is a good problem to have. There are worse things than your two favorite teams playing for a championship. When you consider how bad the Pens looked in their first four games, I should be happy that we are once again discussing this as a realistic possibility.

Alas, as happy as I was for the Hawks success last year, I’m not one of these, “I’m just happy if one of my team’s wins guys.” When you are born black and gold, you are black and gold for life. Plus I genuinely like the Hawks and their players and I do have a tendency to develop shall we say, adversarial relationships, with Penguin opponents. I’d just assume stay on good terms with Kaner, Toews, and Keith (if not that Slovakian winger who used to play in Detroit).

So for now I’ll simply follow the advice I gave Emily last year. Don’t panic, let things play out as they will. It’s a long season and the odds of any two teams playing in June are slim, even two of the best in the league. I will hope that the first two weeks of the season were nothing more than a freaky convergence of Gary Betteman scheduling and some inexplicable bit of hockey karma and coincidence.

In short, I will hope we can somehow avoid “DOOM” for another year.