Requiem for a Team
After exactly a month without a post in this blog, I’m back. A lack of time and a touch of post-traumatic stress syndrome kept me away, but I think I’ve recovered enough to post now.
So, the Sens’ season finally came to a bad end a couple of weeks ago. Was anyone else relieved? I got the feeling the players were, and who can blame them, really? It couldn’t have been much fun showing up for work by the time the playoffs rolled around.
The question is, of course, what went wrong? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the whole story unless someone who was with the team all year actually comes out and talks about it. The popularly accepted theory, however, seems to be that it all started with Ray Emery. I haven’t seen anything to make me think that theory isn’t largely true. The fact that Alfie publicly stated that Emery was becoming a problem, for me, indicates that he must have been a fairly big one. I think John Paddock’s failure to handle the Emery situation properly, which Paddock himself named after being fired as the one thing he would have done differently, then led to a host of other problems – poor work ethic, lack of a coherent system of play – which we regularly saw on the ice. By the time Paddock was let go, I believe he had lost the team. Murray’s comeback behind the bench seemed to help for a while, but by that time it was simply too late to bring the season back on track. The end result is a season that was nothing more than a giant step backwards.
What this season reminds me of more than anything is the movie Requiem for a Dream. Okay, none of the players lost an arm, went insane, or ended up whoring himself out for heroin (that we know of), but bear with me here. Requiem for a Dream is all about wasted potential. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone have this beautiful dream that they’ll sell drugs for as long as it takes to build up a nest egg which they can then use to escape their dreary lives. Instead, they never accept that they’re junkies, become more and more addicted to the drugs, and totally give up their dream. The Sens, meanwhile, seemed to coast through much of this regular season on the idea that they could turn it up a notch once the playoffs started, failing to grasp that they were turning themselves into a bad team. See, it’s exactly the same thing.
After I watched Requiem for a Dream, I sat on my couch and cried for a few minutes. Then I got up and moved on. Unfortunately, the Sens’ season went on for almost eight months, unlike the movie, which only lasted about two hours. My reaction to the season has thus been a bit more drawn out. I have a lot of rage to work on, but I’m taking yoga classes and hopefully that’ll help.
Given the fact that the Sens did not end up in situations quite as horrifying as the characters in Requiem for a Dream did (… that we know of), I am still able to come away from 2007-2008 with hope for 2008-2009. I think with a few key player changes (goodbye, Ray) and the right new coach, this team can bounce back. It’s going to be okay.
In the meantime, I’m going to shift my focus from Requiem for a Dream to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind territory and see what I can do about repressing some disturbing hockey-related memories.