Anyway,

But it’s got to suck for Detroit. Winning two in a row without Pittsburgh being much of a challenge, and then losing four out of five?

I disagree. Pens worked hard for two games and never caught a bounce. Detroit worked hard and caught all of them. So it goes in hockey. But the bounces even out, and after the first two games I said to most everyone I knew that if the Pens played like they did in the first 2 games for the whole series, we’d win.

We didn’t play every game like that, but we played 4 of them, and that’s how you win a cup.

Sorry, bug giant paragraph just to say: I think the Pens played their game for 2 games and lost. We just ended up being the better team over the whole series/

Either way: HOOoooooooooooooo!

(I became a fan early in the Lemieux era, in 1988 when I moved into the city and was, like 10 years old. It was a good time to discover the sport.)

Anyway,

But it’s got to suck for Detroit. Winning two in a row without Pittsburgh being much of a challenge, and then losing four out of five?

I disagree. Pens worked hard for two games and never caught a bounce. Detroit worked hard and caught all of them. So it goes in hockey. But the bounces even out, and after the first two games I said to most everyone I knew that if the Pens played like they did in the first 2 games for the whole series, we’d win.

We didn’t play every game like that, but we played 4 of them, and that’s how you win a cup.

Sorry, bug giant paragraph just to say: I think the Pens played their game for 2 games and lost. We just ended up being the better team over the whole series/

Either way: HOOoooooooooooooo!

(I became a fan early in the Lemieux era, in 1988 when I moved into the city and was, like 10 years old. It was a good time to discover the sport.)

I’m, happy Pittsburgh won, as I’ve been a fan of the team for a long time. (Before Crosby, before Jagr, before even Mario Lemieux.)

But it’s got to suck for Detroit. Winning two in a row without Pittsburgh being much of a challenge, and then losing four out of five?

Ouch.

Yet another Malkin gets it done.

And personally, I’m endlessly fascinated that right wingers, who often pride themselves on their (perceived) manliness, will almost always suspend that attitude when it suits them. For Republicans, Rules are Always for Other People.

For instance, the right wing’s dishonorable attacks on Democratic leader John Kerry, who served honorably in combat, and even went up the river during the Viet Nam war, were even more despicable because of the absurd right wing deification of AWOL Republican Bush who was an effete East Coast Ivory Tower Cheerleader who couldn’t even show up for his Alabama ‘get out of combat free card’ duty.

Good progressives might not say such things, but I hold myself to my own very conservative standards.

By my standards, if the right wing is going to mock and slander an honorable combat vet, I’m certainly not going to feel bad pointing out that the right wing’s leader was an East Coast Ivory Tower Cheeer Leader.

Unlike the right wing, I’m not making anything up.

And if you re-read the dry text of what I wrote up above, you might realize that it’s what your attitudes interpreted that made what I wrote seem so bad in your head.

Though you do bring up an interesting point, when you consider how needful right wingers are in creating a fiction of manliness for themselves, especially when right wingers denigrate ‘weakness’ as a coded insult for ‘womanly’, Republican Bush’s traditionally feminine role as a Cheerleader through most of his early life might have been part of what led him to overcompensate for by lying US into war.

For all of the reasons ascribed to Republican Bush’s decision to lie US into war, wouldn’t it be especially tragic if the real reason American soldiers ended up dying in an unnecessary war was so that Republican President Bush could feel, and feel he was perceived as, manly?

On topic though, yeah, sports rock, but if there is a Red Wing’s Championship it will do very little alleviate the soul-crushing suckitude of being in Detroit.

Maybe the Lions winning the Super Bowl will actually help, but those gains will be offset by the massive losses suffered in the series of earthquakes which swallowed the cities every NFL team.

But Republican George Bush was Head Cheerleader.
http://google.com/search?q=George+Bush+cheerleader

Right winger “Dennis” asks “What the heck does this [cheerleaders] have to do with sports teams…”?

Well, I guess that would depend on which team you play for, “Dennis”…

In any event, a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 is one of the great things to watch.

About a team turning a city around: not really when it is expected. Detroit pretty much expected a deep playoff run – so this will be a nice night for them but not a Cinderalla story.

Now the ’69 Mets on the other hand kept a city in suspense from about July right on through their drubbing of the Orioles. Most of us living through it agree with the conventional wisdom that the city avoided a lot of angst that summer because of the focus on the Mets. But it was the underdog run that did it. Here . . .no suspense and no awe at the surprise of it.

Good grief, NI, you really are a mentally stunted psychotic twit. What the heck does this have to do with sports teams and the economic climate of towns hosting national championships? Does any thought not go through your demented synapses that isn’t poisoned by your unhinged hatred for one George W. Bush?

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/05/29/surprise-stadium-predictions-flawed/

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/07/911-memorial-good-eminent-domain-abuse-bad/

On land grabbed through eminent domain.

Then Bush cashed out, making a small fortune at taxpayer expensive.

The ‘conservative’ Republican President’s fortune was based on his getting government to actively pour tax payer money into his pocket via a sports stadium built on land grabbed through eminent domain.

Bush’s early career as a Cheerleader really paid off.

Sums up conservatism/right-wing/Republicanism. Yup.

And just for giggles: “Libertarians” voted for the guy!-)

Nuts.

I’m with you there, Eric. I used to live in the Burgh, never one of the years they won the Super Bowl, but I was there the last time they won the Stanley Cup, and there’s nothing like the excitement of a national championship energize the whole city and bring everyone together, no matter what the economic climate.

Jaromir Jagr was only 19 years old that year and was put up with a family on my street after the Pens brought him in from Czechoslovakia, just 4 -5 houses down from ours, and I never knew it until after the Pens won and his limo came down our street with him hoisting the cup up above his head through the sun roof.

Winning tonight will be a tough task, though.

They get our tax money, then I say we get the Stanley Cup. ‘k? ‘k.

LET’S GO PENS!