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Arrogant? Hell Yes. Still. Always.
by IwoCPO on 11/01/09 at 06:53 AM ET
Comments (108)
Just when you thought Pittsburgh fans and media had settled into comfortable acceptance that the Pens are actually Stanley Cup champs? In rides another idiot to prove that this particular community of “fans” and media has no concept how to deal with success.
Nill added that “it goes on and on” with the Red Wings, but he’s wrong. History suggest it just ends one day for dynasties — often when they least expect it.
After all, it takes a lot of arrogance to believe that what goes up doesn’t eventually come down.
Paul posted a lot more at the main page, but it really boils down to that closing passage.
Cup champs. Best record in the league. Living in a city that has had more pro sports success than any other the last two years…and still their inferiority complex is so severe that they can’t stop focusing on the Wings. It’s what we’ve said it would be and it’s awesome.
I guess, though, when you have a “captain” like this….
So in a crucial point in the game, Zidlicky took Crosby off the ice for seven minutes. In the third, Brent Burns got away with snapping Crosby’s stick in half (Crosby was called for the same thing earlier in the game on Mikko Koivu). Crosby was furious there was no call, threw up his arms and got a new stick with play stopped. Then, he kept on yelling at the ref after the linesman blew his whistle. So on a PP, the linesman dropped the puck and the Wild cleared the zone. And then Crosby was upset at that.
Antics like this are the reason why many people say Crosby doesn’t get superstar calls. You can’t be throwing up your arms and screaming at refs all game long. I respect the tremendous stardom and competitiveness all the time from Crosby. He’s a phenomenal player, but he definitely lost his cool tonight.
What’s amazing is Crosby played 23 minutes, 46 seconds and took nine penalty minutes, meaning he spent less than half the game on the Pittsburgh bench.
No one here has ever doubted Rosby’s ability. He’s a phenomenal talent, an amazing player. He’s also a little bitch. A whiner who disgraces the C worn by actual leaders.
Back to Red Wing arrogance. Yes. It is a staple of this organ-I-zation and it’s deserved. Nobody, not a single franchise anywhere, has had the level of sustained superior performance the Wings have displayed for nearly twenty consecutive years. That’s a dynasty. Put that in quotes and throw it back at me if you want, even if you claim to be a Wing fan. It is what it is. A dynasty.
And you’re damn right…we, the fans, are just as arrogant. Don’t like it? Too bad. Don’t want to hear about it? It’s not a law to read this blog or any other Wing blog.
Just how arrogant? Arrogant enough to scoff at the legions of bitter Wing haters who point to our current circumstance and predict the Wings will actually miss the playoffs. We’re stockpiling that stuff. Stowing it away.
The Wings are 5-4-3, 11th in the conference, nine points behind Denver. Are we nervous? Yes. But more because it’s just an unusual scenario and we’re not eager to accept it. Want to know why the realists among us are sitting back, silently watching the riots? Because the Wings have Ken Holland and Jim Nill and Mike Babcock and Steve Yzerman. Even Jimmy Devellano. The greatest collection of hockey minds anywhere.
But Fil’s down, Franzen’s out..we’ve lost 130 goals. Osgood’s inconsistent, the defense is leaky, Brad McCrimmon is still employed.
Don’t care. The ship will be righted. Take a look at last night and tell me. Was that a fluke or was that the way this team can, and eventually will, consistently play.
Arrogance is not stumbled upon. It doesn’t take you by surprise and it’s not misguided. It’s earned and it’s healthy and it’s ours.
Again, as we said yesterday, climb off if you want. Seek another wagon. Those who stay on this one will be rewarded, as usual.
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Watching SJ/CBJ. Heatley is now 1/7th of the way to his eventual goal total to end the season.
*thump*
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/04/09 at 08:08 PM ET
Just because nobody watches the Devils doesn’t make them less successful. Also, the Canes making the ECF should be considered a success for them.
I know, I know, anything less than a cup is a failure for everybody, but I don’t see it that way. Despite not really having the free agent clout, they’ve been competitive.
Hitchcock was run out of Dallas two years after the cup due to a terrible management decision. They were never as good with Tippet as they were with Hitchcock. I said that we could go ahead and use your determination of what makes a bad coach for that decision, you just have to defend it. I think Dallas was stupid to get rid of Hitchcock. I’m not sweating the BJs this year, but that’s because they lack the overall talent to be a threat, not because they’re poorly coached.
The concept is that the Rangers are proof that having talent alone won’t get you success without a coach who knows what he’s doing, whether you pay for it or you draft it. Your Penguins fit that mold before they wisely canned Therrien. It takes a good coach to get performance out of star guys. It takes a good organization to allow the coach to run a star guy out of town because he won’t buy into the system (like Babcock did with Robert Lang and Brendan Shanahan). Yes, the Wings had a big payroll and lots of talent and yes, it meant they had a better chance to be competitive, but there are plenty of stories of teams with as small a market as Pittsburgh that didn’t have to go through bankruptcy or four straight years of top two picks to get to the finals and win it all.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/04/09 at 08:39 PM ET
In fairness, no large market team save for the Red Wings has had that sustained level of success either over this same period of time if we’re talking Detroit, Boston, New York, Montreal, and Toronto as the big markets. We could also use the Blues, as they had a very long streak of consecutive playoff appearances, but they never really got close to sniffing a cup. Other Arguments could fly for the Oilers and Islanders, as Edmonton is a rabid, but not large market.
I’d say running Shanny out was a big deal, he was and still is loved by Wings fans. With Lang, eh, yeah we were all ready to get rid of his ridiculous hair and frustrating work ethic. I agree you couldn’t do it with Ovie, but I think Babcock would do a better job of making Ovechkin a complete player than the Caps organization has done. Ovie is bigger than his team and the Caps haven’t done much to dissuade that thought from growing in his own head. In Detroit (among other cities), the team is bigger than any of the players. Malkin may not be as flashy, but he’s arguably as dominant a force on the ice as number 8, but nobody talks about how he’s selfish.
I do think Tortorella isn’t a bad coach, but his fire and brimstone gets old after a while and I think the primadonnas in New York tuned him out or outright rebelled against him because they were too full of their own egos. That talent pool they collected there had nary an ounce of heart between ‘em.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/04/09 at 09:41 PM ET
nobody talks about malkin being selfish because he isn’t as selfish as OV. malkin does tend to get sidetracked with himself though sometimes on the ice, but its paid off so far…and im only here because pensblog commented on how A2Y had a ridiculous article making fun of that joke Rossi. Then I scrolled down and saw a bunch of Crosby whining and stuff by frustrated Wings fans and some arguments so I thought I’d give my two cents.
Posted by unemployed in the d from jim leylands crib on 11/05/09 at 01:41 PM ET
I scrolled down and saw a bunch of Crosby whining and stuff by frustrated Wings fans and some arguments so I thought I’d give my two cents.
I’ll give you a wooden nickel for your two cents. Do you really expect Wings fans not to Crosby bash?
What’s your Pensblog name? I haven’t been there in a few weeks, but rest assured you’ll recognize me when I do comment. It’s the benefit of not being a trolling shitstain, I don’t have to hide behind a different fake name everywhere I go on the Gore.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/05/09 at 02:17 PM ET
my bad, im stangarang on tpb. i dont comment too often, just an avid reader since beginning of last year. the crosby whining gets old though, if you know hockey, you know he does what he needs to do as a captain. besides, half of talking to a ref is getting the next call. getting an extra powerplay is worth bitching. the guy up there who said the pens fans on here dont know what offsides is must be challenged. Obviously if they are posting on a hockey blog, they know what offsides is. some people are too unintelligent for their own good.
Posted by unemployed in the d from jim leylands crib on 11/05/09 at 07:19 PM ET
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I’d argue that the Devils are not considered a large market and have enjoyed sustained success. Despite my hatred for the team, the same holds true for that team in Denver, which is another mid-size market to have enjoyed a sustained run of success. Also, Tampa Bay and Carolina make up 20% of the cup winners over the last decade. That’s a big sample size to say that smaller market teams were doomed to mediocrity, especially since Carolina had a pretty good run going during that era.
I disagree about Hitchcock being a bad coach. I’d say the work he’s done in Columbus recently attests to that, despite having a team that’s not very good. Hatcher was a tard; Modano and Zubov was the real driving leadership force behind that cup team. But, if that’s your only example, I’d like to introduce you to the real anomaly, not the Rangers.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 11/04/09 at 07:59 PM ET