After a little emotional counseling session with Katebits last night, we decided what we needed with the Devils was a little space. Not a trial separation or anything drastic like that; no, their rampant sucktitude of late has been suffocating us, and we were looking for some room to breathe. So we eschewed a game diary for this match, justifying it to ourselves that we were being too easy, we needed to play hard-to-get, we needed the Devils to prove they deserve a game diary. And our ploy worked perfectly. Tonight the Devils looked like they desperately want us back — they skated hard, they shot pucks from all over the place, they killed penalties and generally made the Flyers look like, well, last year’s Flyers.
The most significant story coming out of this game is that Marty finally picked up his 500th win. We are, of course, delighted for him, but more importantly we’re hoping everyone can just get back to the business of winning regularly now that there isn’t some enormous, figurative “500″ blotting out the sun everywhere the Devils go. It was nice to see Marty making those trademarked behemoth, ridonkulous saves we love so well from him, after which he stands there giggling at the replays on the jumbotron, and it’s nice to know the milestone wasn’t reached on one of those awful games before which we can only imagine Marty announced to his skaters in the room, “You only need to score 7 tonight, boys, because I’m only letting in 6.” So, yeah. We’re sending out a hearty IPB congratulations to Marty, and chase it with a stern, “Now build on this” admonition.
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