I’ve got a big box of tissues nearby.
What pissed me off on Wednesday night was when Marchand got Cooke in a head lock, yet COOKE was the one who got the penalty. Yes, I know, it’s Matt Cooke. But since when did they allow players to choke a guy and not get sent to the box? C’mon!
Judging by the lines at the morning skate, don’t worry: this loss is for the best. Dan has run his course, hopefully we can get somebody competent next year to man the ship.
Not sure what you’re referring to. The only time I remember Cooke in the box was on matching roughing minors w/ Lucic in the beginning of the 1st OT
This is painful to watch. Julien is doing his usual “shit the bed to make it interesting in an elimination game” variation on a 1-4 trap (although in this case it’s kind of brilliant, since Penguins love to make terrible plays in their own zone), while Dan Bylsma is having some kind of meltdown and jumbling up all the wingers for no discernible reason, while keeping the first line and PP unit intact, which have been useless. Malkin’s line has included Matt Cooke and Tyler f’n “Manbearpig” Kennedy, Cooke is also getting double shifted, while Bennet - the rookie who has made a ton of plays and is showing the most fight - has the lowest minutes on the team. And Letang is playing smarter than a dog shaped helium balloon, but not by much, yet he still on the top defensive pair.
Good luck to whatever team takes Disco Dan!
So that series was perhaps one of the most beautiful, systematic dismantlings of a coach’s “system” that I’ve ever seen this late in the playoffs. I’d be in love if it hadn’t just happened to my team, but mad respect anyway to Julien and the Bruins for their incredible execution.
But, was Julien amazing, or was Bylsma historically bad? Julien basically played a trap, and Bylsma tried to defeat it with stretch passes over and over and over and over. It didn’t help that Julien got all the matchups he wanted, because Bylsma didn’t seem to give a shit. I knew they lost Game 4 as soon as I saw the line rushes at the morning skate today - but it was even worse during the game, where he desperately threw together lines like a drunken Picasso on a midnight deadline at the card design division at Hallmark.
I don’t care how good Rask is playing, even Hasek or Roy in their prime lets in more than TWO goals in 4 games if the Pens’ are coached by anyone that isn’t dumber than a tub of miso paste. That kind of offensive ineptitude hasn’t happened since, what, the 2003 WCF where the Wild only got 1 goal in 4 games? Hell, Tortellini’s Rangers just got 5X that many goals only a series ago!
God damn, I love the Pens’ because they aren’t the Pirates. But 4 years of playoff ineptitude has me starting to wonder…
at 19:00 into the 2nd period, 0-0, I was honestly expecting to see Dan pull the goalie lol
Take it from a long time Wings fan about haunting events, at least a sweep to end it ends the what ifs. but.. being bounced in a game 7 overtime, after a game 6 that had the worst penalty shot call in playoff history to prevent overtime?
Take it from a long time Leafs fan about haunting events, at least a sweep to end it ends the what ifs. but… being bounced in a game 7 when you’re up by three goals half way through the third period is the saddest way to end a season ever.
[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Take it from a long time Leafs fan about haunting events, at least a sweep to end it ends the what ifs. but.. being bounced in a game 7 when you’re up by three goals half way through the third period is the saddest way to end a season ever.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I’m going with Leaffan for the “win” here. That was painful to watch. Add to that the fact that at least the Wings have skated with the Cup a few times in living memory of most fans…
And I haven’t seen much mention of it yet, but if the Hawks hold on in the west, we’ll have the first Original Six final since 1979. Although I’m sure there will be no lack of discussion of that fact should it come to pass.
Wonder what? Four years is the blink of an eye in sports history. And this is a year in which the Penguins won two out of the three playoff series they were in.
Losing in the playoffs is the normal state of affairs for even very, very good teams.
Yeah…this series was very disappointing, but a run to the conference finals is not playoff ineptitude.
Not to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Maybe Shero should have focused on D and G after all, eh?
Maybe the Devils should have worked harder at making the play-offs, eh?
But, they weren’t even competitive. That was an absolute pathetic performance, maybe even worse than the Flyers series last year, because at least we scored goals then. And if Vokoun hadn’t given us one of the best playoff performances for a goalie in Pens’ history (that dude’s seriously underrated), it would have been a massacre - assuming we got that far without him, that is.
What bothers me is that they’ve lost in similar ways 4 years in a row: stubborn coach that won’t adapt, individual performances over the team, a certain arrogant “I’ll just take my ball and go home” attitude, which is all on the coach. Yet, the rumors here are that DB is safe and won’t be fired. Mostly because he’s a great guy in the community, he’s really nice to the media, and let’s players do whatever they want - there’s no accountability, it’s an absolute Country Club at CEC. Which is exactly how the Pirates have been run for 10 years now, except Penguins are infinitely more talented so have better results.
And then, there’s these head scratching comments after the loss…
So a “force” kept the puck out of the net, when there were only 4 or 5 rebound shots in the entire series?
Vokoun was absolutely brilliant. What wasn’t was defeating a trap with a stretch pass and a box 4 with chip and chase.
Is that supposed to be hurtful?
FWIW, the Devils would have beaten the Penguins too, had they faced them.
YIKES! Quick should never have given that one up.
Saying such a thing about a team that didn’t make the playoffs is, in a very literal sense, ridiculous. “My team would have beaten you in an imaginary universe where they didn’t finish eleventh” is a statement deserving of scornful laughter. If a team didn’t make the playoffs, they had a losing season, it ended in April, and they deserve not a cent of credit for what they might have done if they weren’t losers.
I suspect that fans of 26 other teams would be happy with the Pens post season for the past five years.
As a Penguins fan, trust me when I say I understand that. But again, it’s not that they lost - Bruins are a pretty elite team - but how. Pens’ had the most stacked hockey team of the post-lockout era and they didn’t even show up to play. This is, by the by, only a year after the 2012 Philly series which was the only time I’ve ever actually been embarrassed to be a fan of a team, and it took almost the entire regular season for me to remove most of that bitterness left after that series.
Also, the records worse than I think most people realize. Bylsma - since the Stanley Cup in 2009, which wasn’t really his team - has only won 3 playoff series, 2 of them this year. He’s 12-14 at home in the playoffs. He’s horrible at elimination games. Hell, in these playoffs alone he was out-coached by Jack Capuano.
Historically, 3 of the worst playoff collapses in Penguins history were when he was behind the bench. There’s 1975 when they blew the 3-0 lead because they were scared of meeting the Flyers in the next round; 1993 when prime Jagr/Lemeiux/Etc wet the bed (and the most talented Penguins team on paper until 2013); then there’s 2010 when they couldn’t close out a 3-1 lead over Tampa Bay (losing game 7 5-2); 2012 with the Flyers travesty; and this years historically bad 2 goals in 4 games.
And if you go by the eyeball test, they were the worst coached team in the playoffs. I mean, just look at other teams - their positioning, their awareness, their identities - then watch the Penguins sometime. Even when they win 6-2 like against Ottawa, it’s all off rushes and mostly due to the brilliance of Crosby/Malkin. But even in those games their defensive structure is terrible - some soft zone coverage which gets easily confused by the simplest cross passes.
And they have some of the dumbest, most bush league breakout plays imaginable when they have Crosby/Malkin who can pull off some creative, insane stuff if given a coach worth a damn.
I mean, am I wrong with this? Penguins have one of the only generational talents in the game (who even if he’s more Lindros than Gretsky, he’s still generational), one of the best puck moving/offensive d-men, and the best 2nd line center/border generational talent in Malkin, plus a pretty talent roster up and down the lines. And they’ve won 3 playoff series in 4 years - none in any real impressive fashion, either.
I think almost any competent coach can get you to 2nd in the Atlantic division in the regular season with this roster, as Bylsma has every year. But it takes an actual coaching staff to win a cup, and since that weird Therrien hybrid team, Bylsma’s Penguins haven’t even come close.
There it is. Great game.