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.

Crosby’s Concussion Overshadows Steelers off Week

I am not ignoring the Steelers brilliant but troublingly close victory over the Jets on Sunday. I am not ignoring a third trip to the Super Bowl in six years. Trust me I’m thrilled, even if it took me 12 long hours to de-stress on Sunday night. Just once for posterity…I’VE GOTTA FEELIN…PITTSBURGH’S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL !!!

Alas, we have 13 days to endure debating the endless minutia of the Super Bowl on continuous loop. At this point, I simply do not have anything of substance to add to the discussion. Sometime before they kick off in Dallas, I most assuredly will.

Instead I want to focus on a major issue on the Pittsburgh sports scene that is being shockingly undersold for its significance and severity. That would be Sidney Crosby’s concussion(s). The concussion(s) that he suffered somewhere between January 1st and January 5th (or both) and has managed to keep him off the ice and even out of the gym for three weeks.

Does anybody besides me think this is a MAJOR concern?

I give the Pens tremendous credit for how well they have played without Crosby and for the last three games without Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. That said, it’s fair to say their absence from the line-up has had a profound affect. Getting beyond the fact that I never thought I would see Craig Adams score the winning (and only) goal in a hockey game, the reality is the Pens have scored 4 goals in three games without 87 and 71. They are winning on grit, determination and Fleury right now.

I covered my belief that the Pens desperately need to add another scoring winger in a previous blog, not to mention every third conversation I’ve had with Christopher since March 2008. That however is not the issue here. The Pens could reincarnate Maurice Richard and it will not matter if Sid is not in the line-up. And right now, there is no sign of either of those things happening any time soon.

Let’s examine this issue for what it really is. The general belief is that Crosby suffered a “mild” concussion at the winter classic when he was hit by David Steckel and then suffered a second one five days later. That seems fairly reasonable to me based on the visual evidence. If that’s the case, Sid had two concussions in five days. That’s bad enough at face value but even worse when you consider that the first one did not heal before he suffered the second.

And I believe that’s exactly what happened.

We all know concussions are cumulative. We all know the once you get one, it’s a lot easier to get another. And that assumes the first one is given time to properly heal.

I’ve watched enough football over the years to get an idea of how the concussion thing works. When a player gets his first concussion ever and its of the “mild” variety (i.e., NOT cold cocking Heath Miller helmet to helmet 200 MPH), more often then not he is on the field the following Sunday. At worst, he sits out two weeks.

When they get a second concussion, the wait is usually longer. Consider Aaron Rodgers who earlier this year left a game with a concussion but played the following Sunday. Later in the year he suffered a second concussion and missed two weeks. The same thing happened to Big Ben last year as all of us along with Hines Ward and Dennis Dixon well remember.

For more context consider what happened to Miller. He took that absolutely brutal, helmet to helmet shot against the Ravens. I believe he was out for 18 days. I don’t know if that was Miller’s first ever concussion but it’s certainly the first I remember with the Steelers. If that had been his second or third, it might well have ended his season, or worse.

It’s usually when players start suffering multiple concussions that we seem them sitting out for long periods of time. Think Steve Young and Troy Aikman near the end of their careers. Or when they absorb a brutal and pointed hit to the head like the one Marc Savard took from Matt Cooke last year. Or like the one that Sid took from Steckel.

I appreciate that the Penguins are being ultra careful with Sid, as they should. He should not skate until he’s 100% symptom free and frankly I would not play him until he’s been symptom free for AT LEAST one week. That likely will happen because Sid will need time to get back in game shape when he ultimately does recover. Given that the All Star break is a free week off, it made sense for him not to try a comeback in the interim.

That said, we are now at three weeks and he is still having symptoms.

A few weeks back I wrote about the “de-evolution” of the Penguins. The premise was that with each passing year, the Pens are becoming more dependent on Crosby as the salary cap strips away their other offensive weapons. I contrasted that to the late 80s and early 90s when the Pens gradually became less dependent on Mario Lemieux. It got to the point where they were good enough to knock out the Rangers in 1992 with Mario sidelined thanks to Adam Graves' borderline criminal slash (yes I’m still bitter).

Well now you have a better idea of why I’m so concerned about this. When you depend so much on one player, no matter how great he is, you are vulnerable. I know the Pens are winning without Sid right now. There is a big difference between one goal victories over the Islanders and Carolina in January and beating the Goon Squad, Craps, or Dead Wings in May.

That said I have a bigger long-term concern. Concussions are cumulative. And Sid is not Vincent Lecavalier. He does not play out on the perimeter and shy away from contact. Sid is a gritty superstar. He scores most of his goals from 15 feet and in. He takes hits to makes plays and battles for loose pucks on the wall. Guys who do that sometimes get hit…hard. Pre concussion he can slough those hits off. Post concussion, one of them might end his season. Do you think just maybe Daniel Carcillo is aware of that?

And who knows if Crosby will be as willing to play his style of game after this. He admits this is his first major concussion. Nobody knows how he will react. A 10% reduction in his game might be the difference between the singularly dominant Sid we’ve seen the last 12 months and say a Jeff Carter. Can the Pens win the Cup as currently constructed if Sid plays even at that level?

I’m well aware that Sid is a smart player who plays with his head up. That’s in sharp contrast to the NHL’s poster children for concussions, Savard and Eric Lindros. I commented last year that while Cooke’s hit on Savard was careless and should have drawn a suspension, Savard did duck his head as he went to shoot which made him vulnerable. Well Savard suffered another concussion this week, one that may end his career, and I noted the same thing. He ducked his head and actually hit his head board level. That’s a player who puts himself in vulnerable situations.

As for Lindros, he refused to learn that no matter how big and strong you are you can not steamroll guys on every shift. And he paid for it. Of course once he stopped playing that way, he was never the same.

Sid is smart enough to skate with his head up and not seek out unnecessary contact. He’s done that his entire career. And that did not protect him on two separate occasions during the first week of January. A smart player can minimize the risk of head shots. He cannot eliminate it.

I’ve often wondered how many Cups the Pens of the 90s would have won if Mario could have stayed healthy. I’m convinced that the horrible, awful loss to the Islanders in 1993 was in no small part related to Lemieux’s recovery from cancer. He simply ran out of gas in that series. We know he missed the entire 95 lockout season and we will never truly know just how much his continuous back problems limited him in other seasons. I don’t want Sid’s head to become Mario’s back of the 2010s.

Some of this could be mitigated by Geno returning to full Geno status, which frankly we have not seen since June 2009. For the record, I fully support the Pens decision to sit him and let him get healthy as well. That said, with $17.4 Million of cap space invested in two centers, the Pens model for success is pretty clear. Crosby and Malkin have to be healthy and they have to be dominant. This team is not built to win the Stanley Cup any other way.

That reality and two Crosby concussions in short order is a potentially scary combination.