Sens at Land’s End

Road to the Final: a team with a few superb offensive players breezes through the East, facing no real competition, and then finds itself overmatched when it finally meets a powerhouse Western team that proceeds to dismantle it piece by piece. The Eastern team loses the first two games on the road, becoming more and more confused, feeling that it can’t play its game anymore but not really knowing what to do instead. They manage to win their first game at home but fail to follow it with another victory, and end up in that deep 3-1 hole that no one ever seems to climb out of.

… wait, what year was I talking about again? The similarities between the Penguins getting stomped on by the Red Wings this year and the Sens being shut down by the Ducks last year are obvious. If the Red Wings can end things tonight, and I’m betting they will, this year’s Final will have exactly the same outcome as last year’s.

One thing I’ve enjoyed about it, though, is that I think the Sens acquitted themselves quite well in the first two games compared to the Pens, who looked utterly lost right from the opening faceoff in game 1. At least the Sens scored some goals! The Penguins actually looked worse in games 1 and 2 of the Final than the Sens did against the Pens in the first round this year, and that’s saying something. Assuming the Pens lose tonight, the Sens will officially not be the most pathetic team to lose the Stanley Cup in the last five years. Hooray! I’m hoping the Pens will really go down in flames and have an even more horrific game 5 than the Sens did, if that’s even possible.

Despite all the similarities, there is also a major difference between this year’s Final and last year’s, and that is the nature of the Western team. It reminds me of a song:

There were Swedes to the left of him
Russians to the right
A Czech at the blue line looking for a fight
Brains over brawn — that might work for you
But what’s a Canadian farm boy to do?

Well he hits somebody, of course! The Ducks, who were celebrated for their physical style of play last year, are the farm boys in this case while the Red Wings are praised for their “brains over brawn” approach to the game. You will probably recall that the media started pointing out the number of Canadian Ducks once it became apparent that they were going to win, trying to make the argument that they were a more Canadian team than the Sens anyway — an argument I found particularly irritating — while we’ve been hearing a lot this year about the Red Wings’ European flair, and Nick Lidstrom will likely become the first European-born captain to hoist the Cup. Last year, Big Canadian Goons were all the rage. Now it’s Flashy Europeans. I simply can’t keep track!

I don’t buy this Canada vs. Europe thing anyway. The Penguins have 12 Canadians and only 5 Europeans on their roster (the rest are Americans) and I don’t think you could call them gritty or physical. The Red Wings do indeed have a lot of European players — 13 — but by my count they also have 11 Canadians. The fact is that they’re beating the Penguins by playing really intelligent defensive hockey and doing a lot of little things right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team that was so good at keeping pucks in the offensive zone, and that 5-on-3 kill in game 3 was just amazing. Holy Henrik Zetterberg!

And so, as much as I have hated this entire season — and I have really, really hated it — if what comes out of it is that a bunch of teams start trying to emulate the Red Wings, then I’ll see it as a positive thing. I’d much rather see a league full of Detroits than a league full of Anaheims. They’re more fun to watch, and the Sens, if they can get back on track, are better equipped to compete with the Detroit-type teams than the Anaheims, as was made painfully obvious last year.

At this point, I’m mostly just waiting for the season to end, finally, so we can get to the business of sorting out next year’s Sens. I will be attending the NHL Draft in June, which should be fun! Hopefully the new coach (Hartley? Tortorella? I’d prefer Hartley) will be in place by then and Ray Emery will be but a distant memory.

So, Stanley, I think it’s time for your grand entrance. We’re all ready to see you. Well, all of us outside Pittsburgh.