No Mess, No Way

This time there was no Messier.  This time there was no Miracle on the Hudson.  The team that worked hard all season to have a game seven in their building never got the chance to use it.  The New Jersey Devils' superior depth proved too much for the New York Rangers to overcome and now it is 18 years and counting since the last championship, and the team that has won three Stanley Cups since 1994, is four wins away from their fourth.

In what can only be described as poetic justice, the Devils ousted the Eastern Conference top seed in overtime in game six.  No Stephane Matteau this time around.  Indeed, not once in the six games did the Rangers dominate play.  By my count they played a total of seven good periods the whole series and it was only due to the sheer brilliance of Henrik Lundqvist in games one and three that the Rangers were even in position to win, so bad was their play.

For the Rangers, it is a bittersweet moment.  Not since 1997 had they gone so far in the post-season.  Fans understandably felt that this was the year this team would drink from the Cup.  But in reality this team, as hard as it worked all year - and no team bought into a team concept better than this - had some profound problems that almost cost them in the first two rounds.  The Ottawa Senators and Washington Capitals both pushed the Rangers to a game seven.  Teams with Stanley Cup aspirations don't allow clearly flawed teams to extend them that deep in preliminary rounds.  The '94 team needed a grand total of nine games to dispatch their first two opponents.  Yes, the NHL of today is far different than the NHL of the '90s and yes, the President's Trophy Vancouver Canucks were ousted by the L.A. Kings in five games.  So what?  Great teams can overcome the parity of their league.

But the Rangers, despite what the standings said, were hardly a great team.  Indeed they had many flaws and the Devils, the most dangerous lower seed in the tournament, exploited those flaws brilliantly.  Consider this, had it not been for Lundqvist, this would've been a four-game sweep.  That's how lopsided this series was in so many ways.

And now the Rangers' brain trust will have to deal with those flaws, not the least of which is to find a way to build some depth on a team that was terribly thin up front.  You can only go so far with a system that demands your players turn themselves into human piñatas and relies on all-world goaltending.  You need to put the puck in the net.  Since scoring four goals against the Senators in the first game of the playoffs, the Rangers failed to score more than three the rest of the tournament.  Even in today's NHL, you need to at least make your opponent aware that you can light them up. Throughout most of the season and most of the playoffs when the Rangers gave up more than two goals, they lost the game.  This issue must be addressed by Glen Sather during the offseason.

Then there's the issue of leadership.  Marion Gaborik was simply dreadful.  Scoring one goal in the Conference Finals is unacceptable.  Brad Richards' performance was equally abysmal - no goals, two assists - but he gets a pass because of his superior play in the first two rounds.  Sather has to find a goal scorer that isn't afraid to grind it out and can score in the clutch.  The team that worked harder than any other team in the league, in the end had nothing left in the tank by the third round and it showed.  If this team has any intentions of winning a championship next year, they will have to fix all this and perhaps more.

The bright spots were obvious: great goaltending and arguably the best four defensemen in the league.  Ryan Callahan is a fine captain and a natural leader.  He's no Messier, but then who could be?  But he needs some help.  The Devils' fourth line outperformed the Rangers' third and fourth lines combined.  Chris Kreider had a marvelous playoffs and has a promising future.  His speed and deceptive shot should give the team a solid number two winger.  If Sather can get creative with the salary cap he might be able to land a proven scorer via free agency and/or trade.  At the risk of second guessing a prior posting of mine, it's time to revisit Rick Nash. In hindsight, he might've made a difference against the Devils, assuming Sather could've pried him away without trading one of his prized defensemen.  If he can land him during the offseason, he should go for it.  Then dump Gaborik for a center who can win faceoffs and score.

Daunting tasks for sure, but that's why they pay him all that money.  The window of opportunity will be open for a few more seasons.  Lundqvist is 30 and the defense is young, so the future remains bright.  If the above flaws are effectively dealt with a Cup may be in the offing.  If not, 1994 may go down with 1940 in a few more years.

Devil Dogs

So it's round two of The Battle of the Hudson.  The Rangers and the Devils face off for the first time in the conference finals since 1994 and, if history is any indicator, this series should be one for the ages.

Eighteen years is a long time.  Only one player from either team has appeared in both series.  Whatever else you may say about Martin Brodeur, know this: he's still an elite player and he would no doubt love the chance to avenge the loss he suffered at the hands of Messier, et al.

As a Rangers' fan, my main concern is not the match ups, which favor the Blueshirts.  It's stamina.  No team has ever won a Stanley Cup being extended seven games in each of its first two series.  Fatigue is bound to play a role sooner or later.  The Devils, meanwhile, are well rested, having dispensed with the Broad Street Pussies in five games.  Though it is worth noting that it took them the full seven to beat the Putty Tats from Miami.  Still, going into this year's tournament, I felt the Devils were the most balanced and dangerous team in the hunt. They can come at you with three solid lines, while the Rangers pretty much will rely on the Brad Richards' line for the bulk of their offense.

And let's get one thing straight.  Unlike '94, whoever wins this war is NOT a lock to win the Cup.  L.A. has played a whopping ten games this post season and won nine of them.  Their goaltender is as good as any in the league.  With all the talk about Henrick Lundquist winning the Vezina trophy this year, Jonathan Quick has been his team's most valuable player.  Period!

Of course I'm picking the Rangers, but barely.  This is going the full seven, no doubt about it.  So buckle up and get ready.

Three Ring Circus

I don't often find myself admitting this - at least not in public- but there are worse things than being a Mets' fan.

BEING A JETS' FAN!

With the acquisition of Tim Tebow finally complete, Jets' fans can now officially kiss the 2012 season goodbye.  In one of the most ridiculous and befuddling moves of all time, the Jets managed to bring to New York, not one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history in Peyton Manning, but the quarterback Manning displaced in Denver.  In so doing they undermined their current number one quarterback, Mark Sanchez, who not only will have to deal with the chorus of boos when he stinks up the joint next season, but will now have to contend with an onslaught of chants for Tebow every time he throws an incomplete pass.

Can you spell STUPID?

At least Mets' fans have the satisfaction of knowing their ownership just doesn't give a shit; the moron who owns the Jets - Woody Johnson - apparently spent so much of his time as a boy going to the circus, he can't resist the urge to turn his team into the NFL equivalent of Ringling Brothers.

Here's a trivia question for Jets' fans.  What do you get if you put Tim Tebow and Mark Sanchez together?  A quarterback who still can't throw a spiral more than 30 yards!

Yep, I am SO looking forward to September.

Two Wild

So baseball has finally figured out what every fan has known for years: that having a single wildcard team doesn't make for a more exciting home stretch in September; it actually has the unintended consequence of being about as interesting as watching a tied hockey game in the third period.

So to fix it they've decided to add a wildcard team to each league.  Both wildcard winners would then meet in a one game playoff.  The hope is that the wildcard contenders - rather than coast knowing that they have a playoff berth in the bag - will pull out all the stops looking to win their respective divisions and avoid a winner take all playoff game.

Baseball hasn't done many things right over the last few years, but this one they nailed right on the head.  It's about time. 

With that in mind, maybe the NFL should tinker with their playoff format, too.  Given that three of the last five Super Bowl winners have either been wildcards or lower seed division winners, I'm thinking that the playoff Bye should be eliminated altogether.  By adding two wildcards per conference you would simply have the first seed play the eighth, the second play the seventh and so on, just like the NHL.  The division winners would host the wildcards in the first round.

While not perfect it would deal effectively with the one nagging issue which has plagued the league for the last few seasons: rustiness.  While taking nothing away from the Giants' playoff drive, the simple truth was that the Green Bay Packers looked like a team that hadn't played a meaningful game in a month.  They were out of synch pretty much the whole game against New York and Aaron Rodgers looked nothing like the MVP he had been throughout most of the season. 

I'm not saying that a first-round playoff appearance would've guaranteed a different result - who knows maybe they would've lost that game too - but it's quite clear that the present playoff format isn't working as intended.  Instead of being a reward for a season of excellence, the playoff bye ends up being an anchor that drags the supposedly better team down to the same level as their opponent.  These teams end up discovering the hard way that you just can't turn it on like a switch.  As the old saying goes, "You snooze, you lose." 

Something to think about...

Somebody Up There Must Hate Me

So Davy Jones is dead, Snooki is pregnant - my condolences to the father - and the Wilpons intend on keeping ownership of the Mets for "a very long time."  Thanks for the warning Fred.  Now I know what I'm going to be doing this summer: rooting like hell for you to lose as much money as is humanly possible.

I mean really if it wasn't for the ten suckers who ponied up $20 million each for the privilege of owning part of a losing team and the fact that the commissioner is your buddy, you'd be up a creek.  I am so praying that the Madoff trustee cleans your clock but good in court.  Maybe then you'll do the right thing.

I've never wished for my team to tank it as much as I have going in to this season.  Not even during the late '70s and early '80s when the team really sucked and Steve Henderson, Lee Mazzilli and Craig Swan were basically it as far as talent went did I root against the team.

But your continued ruination of this franchise has been an embarrassment to the city and the millions of Mets fans who toil year after year hoping for some ray of light to shine down upon them from the heavens.  It's bad enough being the second team in a town that has the Yankees as its number one, but the only reasonable goal this team has this year is NOT to finish in last place.

You're joking right.  That's what we have to look forward to?  You lose your shirt in a Ponzi scheme and the rest of us get stuck with the bill.  Well not me; not this time.  This time when I turn on the channel and I see those men in blue and orange, I will be rooting for the other team - unless of course it's the Phillies (fuck them and their shit-ass city).

Now I know what it's like to be a Jets fan.  Well almost.  At least my team won a championship since 1969!  Ah, 1986!  That was a great year.  We owned this town.  But back then Nelson Doubleday was the majority owner, and you were the kid from Brooklyn.  He cared about winning.  Maybe you did once, too.  These days I don't know what you care about.  You say you love this team.  Prove it.  Sell it to somebody who can rebuild it into a contender.

It's not too late to save your precious legacy.  Somewhere out there is someone with the money and the passion to turn this franchise around.  You owe it to the throngs of loyal fans to swallow your pride and find him or her.

Do the right thing, Fred.

Nash Stashed

Now that the Columbus Blue Jackets have decided to keep Rick Nash rather than trade him, I'm inclined to say good. While I was rooting for the New York Rangers to work out a deal to land the explosive winger, the more I find out about the negotiations, the more relieved I am that Glen Sather didn't get the chance to pull the trigger.

While the Rangers are hardly the offensive powerhouse the Bruins, Penguins and Flyers are, their defense is first rate and the goaltending championship caliber. Nash would've certainly made them more dangerous on the power play and given them another scoring winger to go along with Marian Gaborik and Ryan Callahan, but gutting the team to acquire him would've been subtraction by addition.  And that's exactly what would've happened had Columbus gotten its way.  For once, Sather didn't get what he was after.

Forget the cap issue, which would've been challenging but hardly insurmountable, the asking price for Nash would've cost the Rangers a package that likely would've included Brandon Dubinsky, prospect Tim Erixon, a first-round draft pick,  Derek Stepan and either Ryan McDonagh or Michael Del Zotto.  While Dubinsky's stock has gone down a bit this year, he is still a proven 20-goal scorer; McDonogh and Del Zotto anchor a defense that is the envy of the league; and Stepan currently centers Gaborik, the team leader in goals.  In the end it was way too much to give up even for a wheeler and dealer like Sather.

I guess it's true that sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make, or can't.

Cleveland Rocked

As if the Blue Bird of unhappiness hasn't shit enough on the city of Cleveland, while looking up the list of Super Bowl teams, I came across this little tidbit of information about the once venerable NFL franchise in that city.

• Cleveland Browns, NFL champions four times in 1950, 1954, 1955, and 1964; appeared in six other NFL championship games in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1968, and 1969; and appeared in three AFC Championship Games in 1986, 1987, and 1989^[63] (The Browns are officially viewed as one continuous franchise that began in 1946 as a member of the All-America Football Conference, joined the NFL in 1950, suspended operations from 1996–1998, and resumed play in 1999.^[64] The Baltimore Ravens were an expansion team created in 1996 with former Browns players.)^[65]

Okay, the NFL has seen its share of franchises pull up stakes and move from one city to another.  There was Robert Irsay's contenious departure from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984 - 15 vans literally cleared out everything but the kitchen sink in one night.  Two years earlier there was the infamous move of the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles, which was basically Al Davis telling Pete Roselle to go fuck himself.  And then there was the Los Angeles Rams bolting to St. Louis in 1995, the same year that the Raiders skedaddled back to Oakland, thus leaving the second largest sports market in the country without an NFL franchise. 

But while all those cities went through a period of mourning, none has had to endure the anguish of Cleveland.  The Browns were a proud franchise with a storied history.  Jim Brown played for them. Their four NFL titles in the pre-Super Bowl era are rivaled only by the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears.  Their loss to the Denver Broncos in the 1986 AFC Championship game still ranks as one of the great upsets in football history.

When Art Modell decided to move them to Baltimore in 1995 that was bad enough, but what the NFL did next only added salt to a deep wound.  It's one thing to lose your team, but imagine after all was said and done you found out that the team you lost went on to win a Super Bowl while all you got to keep was the lousy name that now belongs to a decrepit expansion team.  And then the league that sanctioned the move had the balls to tell you that your franchise was "one continuous franchise" that "suspended" operation from 1996 to 1999.

Bullshit, I say.

I'm no Cleveland fan, but no other city has been fucked over more than this one.  If there's any justice in the world, Cleveland will one day get its real Browns back and Art Modell will wind up roasting in hell alongside Robert Irsay, Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere.