I'm Ready to Talk About the Heartache

We know how you feel, Jordan. Now come over here and let Mama make you feel better.

No, not that heartache. That one's for me and me alone.

I'm talking about the fact that my Penguins knocked themselves out of contention for another Cup in the 2nd round of the playoffs.

The Pens just didn't look like they were all there from the last handful of regular season games all the way through Rounds 1 and 2. Too many line changes, not enough chemistry between linemates (except when Geurin, Crosby, and Dupuis were matched up), Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar practically disappearing at times (hello? You guys are a couple of the highest-paid players in the League, you make a combined $14 mil a year, show up and EARN it, dammit!), Jordan Staal not getting the support on the wing that he needs and deserves, not to mention a potentially season-ending injury at the skate of PK Subban...I could go on and on, but the list is too depressing.

My friend Ed is a big Rangers fan, constantly frustrated, because in his words, "sometimes they go out and play like they're the best team in the NHL." He could have been talking about the Penguins. In fact, toward the end of the season, when I was scratching my head at the bush-league level of Pens play, he kept telling me not to lose faith. "They can lift their game at will," Ed told me. And occasionally we saw that happen. It just didn't happen often or consistently enough.

After playing over 300 games since the 2008-09 season, plus sending their 5 stars to the Olympics this year, the Penguins just didn't have enough gas left in the tank for a playoff run into the Cup final. Had they made it, it would have been on vapors, prayers, and with the assistance of angels.

Unfortunately, those things were in short supply this season in Pittsburgh, and the Penguins have packed up their lockers at Mellon Arena for the final time, to face a long summer of golf and soul-searching, to see what changes need to be made, and hopefully get enough rest for 2010-11.

Here are my thoroughly inexpert predictions for who we'll see and who we won't next season:

1) Cool your jets. Crosby, Malkin, and Staal are all staying put. They eat up a HUGE chunk of salary cap space, but c'mon, you've got a Richard trophy, a Conn Smythe trophy and a Selke finalist on your first three lines. Do you really think Ray Shero's gonna mess with them?

2) Sergei Gonchar is probably gone. He enters free agency this year, and the Pens really can't afford a $5 million dollar a year, 36-year-old defenseman who doesn't produce like he used to.

3) Bill Guerin -- gone. Billy G has been crucial to the Pens' success these past couple of seasons. But let's face it. He turns 40 in November. The old man has GOT to be plain exhausted. He can't go out and fight ALL the fights. In my fantasy, Bill puts on a tie and gets behind the bench to work on the Penguins' lame-ass Power Play. I know, it's a fantasy, but it's MY fantasy, and I can do whatever I want with it. Plus, I love Guerin in Pittsburgh. Handsome or not handsome (Bill is on that cusp of ugly-gorgeous), he raises the hotness quotient of the team immeasurably.

4) Ponikarovsky was an experiment that failed. Buh-bye.

5) I'm still on the fence about Jordan Leopold.

6) I guess I wasn't paying attention to Mike Rupp throughout the season, but then again, he might be one of those guys who steps up and shines in the playoffs. I mean, his first playoff goal, ever, won the Stanley Cup for the NJ Devils in 2003. So the kid's got something (kid! Hah! Guy's 30, which makes him a kid in my book but practically a senior citizen in the NHL.) Anyway, I loved his play in the playoffs, and for some reason I was really confused and got it in my head he was some kind of defenseman. Maybe it was because he plays without a shield on his helmet, maybe it was his broken-up face, maybe it was all the fights. Surprise! He's a working-class center. Keep him on the 4th line, I like him there.

7) Sigh. Matt Cooke. The player you hate to love. We have our own version of Sean Avery in the city of Three Rivers. Bad reputation but a more-than-competent, quick and agile playmaker. Shit! He was a real contributor to what little success the Pens managed to scrape up in these playoffs.

8) Fleury ain't going nowhere. Flower won the Stanley Cup. Had a so-so season and dismal playoffs, but he won us a Cup. That counts for something. Plus, he's just so purty.

Well, here's where I bid adieu to the Penguins for the season.

And let's hope for a Blackhawks-Canadiens Final. I'd love to see two Original Six teams battling down to the wire. And secretly, even though they destroyed the Washington Capitols and the Pittsburgh Penguins, I'm quietly rooting for the Habs.

They're scrappy.

And you know Jane loves her some scrappy.

Pittsburgh Penguins to Jaroslav Halak: "Hey, kid, get off my lawn!"

Something is up with the Penguins. They were 4-for-4 on the power play tonight. I thought maybe they fired the power play coach, Yeo, but he's on the bench with Dan Bylsma tonight. Maybe he got a little come-to-Jeebus talk.

Stat on the screen: highest point-per-game average in the playoffs:

Gretzky
Lemieux
Crosby
Malkin

Three Penguins and The Great One. Nice.

Sadly, Jordan Staal left the ice at the beginning of the 2nd period, after a weird collision with Habs hotshot rookie PK Subban. Looked like he took a skate across the foot, but of course, it will be listed generically as "lower body injury." Huge deficit for the Pens if he's out for any period of time because he's a very important player for the Pens, especially in the playoffs. He also hasn't missed a single game in his career due to injury, and I'd hate to see that streak broken.

Keep your eye on this Subban kid. He's really, really talented. A little rough around the edges, still, but he could make a real difference to a midleague team.

At one point badass Brooks Orpik was coming off the bench and you could read his lips very clearly: "I'm on Subban." So he is aware.

I don't know WHY Montreal waited until the Pens scored 5 goals before pulling Halak. The guy just played the game of his life on Wednesday night, dontcha think he might be a little tired?

It was really nice to see Sergei Gonchar looking like his old self again. I guess the old guy still has some gas in the tank.

As always, Sidney Crosby is simply magical to watch. There is just nothing he can't do. I am agog every time he gets the puck.

Annnnnd Billy Guerin closes it out with a casual empty-netter.

6-3 Penguins.

Tonight was a grinder's game: goals credited to Gonchar, Staal, Letang, Adams, Goligosky, Guerin.

2nd Period Intermission Report

Kids, this game 4 is what hockey is all about. Penguins scored FIVE goals in the 2nd period.

More later. If we take a win back to the Igloo, it is OVAH.

My heart is about to burst and I am making a scene all by myself.

I Know I've Been Missing For Awhile

No, I haven't disappeared in the Facebook, and I continue to refuse to be a Twit(terer). I've just been preoccupied with other things. Work has been distracting, my old cat now has a diagnosis of high blood pressure requiring daily medication (blind, deaf, shaky in the legs with hypertension -- I swear my Dad has come back to reside in this fur person), and I just haven't had much to say.

I honestly think this cat is going to live to be 25. Someday you will see me featured on Huffington Post, I just know it. "Mambo, world's oldest cat, turns 25." Yikes.


Jack Skellington's Cat











Wait, I always have something to say...I just haven't been saying it on the Blog. Huh. I keep having ideas for blog posts then not writing them.

Besides, I think I have been quite admirably silent on the subject of Governor Quitter for long enough. Don't you know how HARD that has been for me?

Some of the ideas that came and went since October 22nd:



Did you really think I was going to put the actual book on my blog?

November was apparently "Special Olympics of Publishing" month, as half-a-retard Wasilla housewife Sarah Palin got a whole lot of trees murdered on her behalf. A book ghost-written for a maroon who doesn't think, to be bought by a whole lot of other maroons who can't read. But frankly, isn't it about time the white trash parts of America get a coffee table book to call their own?

But it does inspire me to suggest some holiday mischief for all you holiday Krampuses (or is that "Krampii?") At any rate -- go into your local Barnes and Noble or any big box bookstore and move the books around. Switch "The Nation's" version with the "not written by Sarah Palin but by her Ghost Writer Lynne Vincent" version. Move them one at a time to the bookshelf outside the store bathrooms. I have to confess to doing some variation on this petty vandalism every time I travel -- I move Glenn Beck's books around in airport bookstores, turn them upside down, or put two copies of someone else's book on top of his. Since most people who are looking for Sarah Palin's book have probably never been inside a bookstore before, it should be really easy to fool them.





If you look really closely, those two Penguins are Evgeni "Geno" Malkin and Sidney "Sidney" Crosby

I went to the NY Rangers game on November 30. That would be the one where they got totally spanked, and really hard with a wooden spoon drilled with holes, by my beloved Penguins. The Rangers have been on a bad slide after a strong start, mainly because they seem to be relying on Marian Gaborik to throw the entire team over his shoulder and fireman-carry them through the entire season. If he gets hurt they are TOAST. In other hockey news, Alex Ovechkin, who is probably the best player in the NHL -- I have to admit, that guy is an ANIMAL -- learned about karma the hard way, not only getting kneecapped and injured, but he earned a suspension in the bargain. Somewhere in Pittsburgh, Sergei Gonchar had to have said (like that Chinese guy in "The Hangover"), "see you later, muthafuckaaahhhh." Don't know if Ovie's back on the ice yet.




Apparently morning TV needs another Mommy.

No matter how much I try to like her for being the "liberal" voice on "Morning Joe," I find Mika Brzezinski completely annoying. She gets this purse-lipped puss on her face and climbs up onto her moral high horse where she wags her finger at Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle every morning. Blecch.




You said I'm funny. How the fuck am I funny, what the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what's funny!


Bullet in the Eye, Back of the Garbage Truck. I have to admit to having this fantasy, folks. First, you have to imagine you hear the piano outro from "Layla" as background music. Then, long shot on a Cadillac. Pink. Camera moves in, to reveal two dead people in the front seat. Look, it's Dick and Liz Cheney! Fade to shot of refrigerator truck, move past frozen slabs of beef on hooks, to show another frozen solid corpse on a hook...Joe Lieberman! Last, but not least -- and "Layla" is still playing, folks, while Ray Liotta supplies our voiceover -- we see the garbage truck, churning its fetid refuse, turn out the bloated corpse, with a closeup on the bullet in the eye, of Glenn Beck! Ahhh, a girl can fantasize, can't she?


ET, phone home.

I saw "This is It," in November. I have to admit, in between marvelling, "That's a 51-year old man!" I wept several times. MJ was like some creature from another planet that we got to borrow for a little while. What a loss.


International Paper -- Drunk on Black Liquor

Last but not least before I check out and go to bed...if you want another group of corporations to be angry with, I say, go with American paper and pulp manufacturers. Not for the expected reasons (decimation of forests, replacing them with those heinous "managed forests") but because they are pocketing your tax dollars, to the tune of billions -- yes, that's billions with a "B" -- by exploiting a loophole in a bad piece of legislation. They're getting checks written to them by the IRS -- that's BILLIONS, folks -- for something called "black liquor." I suggest you check out a blog called Dead Tree Edition. And if you were wondering how Baucus and company got Snowe, just consider that the loophole is scheduled to close at the end of 2009, and Maine happens to be where an awful lot of pulp and paper is maufactured. Congressional back-scratching at its finest, folks. It makes me feel dirty.

Well, that's all I've got for tonight, folks. But just remember, black liquor.

Oh wait, one last thing: that 16-second "surprise kitty" video may be the cutest video EVER posted on youtube. I think it even beats the NY Lottery Sweet Millions commercials.