Devils vs. Flyers, Game 1

Here at the outset of the latest installment of “The Devils, Playoffs Version”, we’re beginning to understand why Red Wings bloggers are the way they are. When your team not only makes the playoffs every year (and since we became Devils fans at the start of the ’96-’97 season, we’ve never seen them miss), but also doesn’t even come close to not making it, there’s just not that much to say as a blogger. So you can be like the Wings writers, crowing about how great you are, how stupid everyone else is, and crafting outlandish conspiracy theories to explain away the times when your team doesn’t come through, or you can be like us and struggle to think of new ways to say, “Yeah, my team’s rolling along, as usual.” Consistent regular-season winning is a wonderful, comforting thing; as sure as there will be the seasons and the tides, so too will there be 40+ wins for our team. And just as we are grateful for the seasons and the tides, we’re also grateful for our annual 40+ wins. Really, we are. But honestly, who wants to write about the tides every day?

Anyway, we wanted to get that little bit of positivity (and apology for being lousy bloggers) out before moving on to the topic at hand: the playoffs.

Sigh.

Just as the Devils are consistently winners in the regular season, they have lately been consistently losers in the playoffs. They’ve been atrocious in each of the last three seasons, so we think we’re justified in being a bit reserved about the successes of this past regular season. Also, we think we’re justified in being extremely reserved in our enthusiasm for the Devils’ playoff chances this time around. Thrice bitten, many many times shy, as the old saying goes.

So, realistically, how do we think this Devils/Flyers series is going to shake out? Well, there is a variety of subplots that merit mention. There’s Jacques Lemaire, and the question of whether he’ll hoist the team on its own petard like he did last time he was coaching the Devils in the playoffs. There’s the Zach/Zubrus Showdown At The Triple-Z Ranch buzzsaw that we’d love to be the key to the series. There’s Kovalchuk trying to put an exclamation point on his contract year. There’s Paulie trying to cram an entire contract year into one playoff run. There’s Patrik Elias playing against a Boucher-backstopped Flyers. There’s Langer and his all-around captainy awesomeness (HAHAHAHAHAHA! Just checking to see if you were still reading). But ultimately, none of that matters. It doesn’t matter what the forwards do, doesn’t matter what the D does, doesn’t matter what the special teams or coaches do. No, the only thing that really matters is Marty. Is this going to be the year that competent, gives-his-team-a-chance-to-win-every-night Marty returns to the playoffs? Or is this going to be another year of Marty giving up bad goals at the worst possible times, and losing his focus, and throwing hissy-fits, and whining and pointing fingers and generally looking like he doesn’t belong at this level? Four years ago, against the Hurricanes, we blamed the d-men. Three years ago, against the Senators, we blamed the system. Two years ago, against the Rangers, we blamed the universe. Last year, against the Hurricanes, we blamed the forwards. If it happens again this year, we’re blaming Marty.

Our prediction for this series? Flyers take a 3-1 series lead, but the Devils win in 7. Just the way it should be.

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Advice Week: Sid Edition

Dear Sid,

I hear it’s really hard for teams to dominate in Game 7′s on the road. Is that true?

Alex, Washington DC

Dear Alex,

Not for me it isn’t.

–Sid

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Canucks/Hawks! Wings/Ducks! Open Thread!

We’re all excited for some hot Western Conference playoff hockey tonight! WOO HOO! Here’s hoping it’s ass-grabbingly good and full of Red Wings failure!

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Things That Are Stupid

1. The Sid/Ovie “Debate” This is so played out. We’re exhausted by the volume and the predictability of the whole thing. Yes, we KNOW you think Sid’s a whiner. Yes, we KNOW you think he has no personality. We’ve been hearing it for YEARS. And over those years, the pro-Ovechkin party line is that he’s all awesome, all the time. Well, until the hype machine backlash swings around full circle and the dialog about these two includes a universally-accepted and equally emphatic knee-jerk response of “Ovechkin’s a raging douchebag” (which is as fact-based as the boring/whiner response to Sid), we refuse to engage. As it stands, it’s just the same old tired shit, shouted louder and louder as if the person doing the shouting thinks they’re actually contributing something new or of value to the conversation.

Pictured above, the bloggers’ representation of the league’s two-pony show.

2. The Sid/Ovie Exclusivity We would like very much for IPB’s official stance to be: “In the battle of Sid vs. Ovie, we vote Parise and Getzlaf and Richards.” Wait, are we allowed to do that? What’s this, we’re getting a memo from the league? Let’s see here… It says we have to decide if we think Sid’s a diver or if Ovie’s a showboat. There’s no option for “We’re above this?” Please.

3. Specially-Engineered Dirt That Tells You When Your Lawn Needs Water Perhaps the most mentally-consuming stupid thing we’ve seen in these playoffs is a commercial for a lawn starter thing that advertises that it is specially engineered so that the dirt changes colors to tell you when you need to water. (No, we don’t know the name of the product, or its manufacturer, or where you can see the product/commercial online. We’re bloggers, not journalists.) We ended up in a bit of a panic after we considered this product, because we suspect we may have accidentally gotten some for our own garden, when just plain dirt would have sufficed. Seriously, consider this:

That’s one of the beds in our garden, after being watered.

And that’s the one next to it, after drying out. Look at the dirt! It changed colors! This is terrible!

4. Changing The Playoff OT Format To 4-on-4 We get that NBC doesn’t like the prospect of limitless, commercial-free playoff OT. It really does fly in the face of their business model, when you think about it. But it’s also one of the best traditions in any sport. So why not, instead of jettisoning the concept of playing regular hockey until someone wins, jettison the idea of it being commercial-free? And if there is some sort of real programming NBC would like to have on in place of 3OT (man, did we get lucky during that Ducks/Wings game that it was just tape-delayed horse jumping, a fact that cracked Boomer up to no end. She kept giggling about all the little horsey tweens who were crying because they were stuck watching ugly old hockey), then slap the game over onto Versus when it runs too long. Sure, we all love to wail and beat our chests about the indignity of that Senators/Sabres game getting shunted aside for Preakness pregame drivel, but that was certainly a much smaller indignity than changing to a 4-on-4 format (a concession that starts us down the slippery slope to shootouts) just to keep our sometimes network happy.

5. Versus’s Great Hockey Moments We have been suffering the lousy broadcast standards on Versus (and NBC) since the lockout because we understand they are gearing their programming toward the elusive “new” or “casual” fan. Fine. You want to present hockey in as crappy a manner as possible because you think it might entice someone who was flipping channels? So be it. But how does that explain the deadly-dull Hockey Moments (or whatever they’re calling them) during the Versus intermissions? What MMA-starved 18-to-25-year-old non-hockey fan is going to see those and go, “Hot damn! This sport is AWESOME!”? TNT’s NBA intermission (er, halftime) show is the talk of the town and you know what it doesn’t include? Grainy footage of shit that happened forty years ago.

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Pens/Caps Game 1 Open Thread

Hi-diddly-ho, Gentle Readerinos! Join us today for an open thread for what is promised to be THE GREATEST MATCH-UP EVAH! It’s no secret who’s side we’re on, so grab some snacks, put on your Pierre McGuire noise reducing earphones, and repeat after us: “Go Sid, go!”

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IPB Hour Episode Six

It’s time again, Gentle Listener, for another episode of the IPB Hour. In this week’s installment we stretch our metaphors for how we feel about the Flyers to ridiculous lengths, review the four second-round series that have just concluded, and spin our wheels while trying to convince ourselves that we don’t care about the Rangers.

You can download this episode or subscribe to the podcast here.

IPB Hour Episode Six; 29 min.

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Sharks vs. Stars, Game 6

Gentle Reader, we promised that as soon as the Rangers were out, we’d start diarizing again. Why did we need the Rangers to vacate the playoff premises before getting back in the saddle again? Because they were the only Atlantic Division team our schedules permitted us to diarize all eight regular-season games, and then had five playoff games to boot. We couldn’t handle it anymore. But sweet merciful Hockey Gods! The Rangers are gone! Thank you, Penguins, for finishing them off in OT today; we spent this evening enjoying a playoff goggle toast to a happy playoff future:

And now that we’re lightly toasted, we’re ready to enjoy the Stars/Sharks game in full diary form. Stay tuned during intermissions as we update.

Ahhh. There’s nothing better than settling in for a night of hockey on Blersus that we know will not feature any talking-up or highlights lauding a team we hate. It’s so freeing! Of course, less freeing is the highlights package setting us up for Game 6 of the Sharks goals from Game 5. The fact that they still haven’t given us an angle that conclusively proves Soupy’s “goal” actually went into the net has us highly doubtful. Pookie puts it best when she says, “I’m going to go to my grave believing that didn’t go in.” (To be fair, we’re fairly confident it did go in, since if it hadn’t, we’d be hearing about it, but really Blersus. Would it kill you to give us the overhead? It’s the principle of the thing.)

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