I have to add this edit from the start. I intended to have this up before the series was over, but alas that was not to be.
If you know me at all, and know how much I love the sport of hockey, you had to know this was coming. This will be long, and may be painful for some to read, but bear with my ramblings, diatribes and rants. If you do, you just might take away a new appreciation of the sport I love, and the stories that make hockey the amazing sport I believe it is. This will be a two-parter (spoiler alert!!!) simply because I cannot be short winded when it comes to hockey.
David felling Goliaths:
Where to start. Where else, but Nashville (David) and the Goliaths they have felled to reach the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Finals birth. To get there we need to step back to the off-season. Nashville made a bold move to trade one of the most imposing and most well-rounded defenseman in hockey, Shea Weber, for an equally skilled but slightly less imposing defenseman, P. K. Subban. Both blue liners had there usual Norris Trophy (best defenseman) caliber seasons, but It seemed as though Shea’s impact was felt more. Montreal plowed into the playoffs as a favorite. Nashville limped into the 8 seed. However, as is usually the case come playoff hockey time, all that went out the window. Nashville stepped in against one of the recent dynasty teams, the Chicago Blackhawks. Everyone expected Chicago to have their way with Nashville, but four games later Nashville completed the seemingly impossible. They swept the vaunted Blackhawks in four games, and World Class goalie, Pekka Rinne proved to the world that he’s no longer just a great regular season performer. He proved that he can put a team on his back and win a series against a juggernaut. The first stone was flung, and it hit Goliath number one square in the head to fell the first giant.
On to Goliath number two. Nashville next faced the St. Louis Blues, an equally imposing number three seed, who had been a mainstay of the later rounds of the last few playoffs. Once again Nashville walked into a series most believed they had no business being a part of. Six games late, David stood over Goliath number two holding the severed head of the giant aloft in victory. It was then that the hockey world really started to think “these Predators from the Country Music Capital of the world could actually win the whole shebang.” Furthermore, fans of small market hockey teams all over the league started to get behind the Predators because they all wanted to see Gary Betman have a conniption fit.
Goliath number three was next on the agenda for the Predators. This time Nashville faced a team I, as a die-hard Stars fan loathe with a ferocity I can’t easily explain. Nashville had to face the Anaheim Ducks, and one of the dirtiest players in the game, Corey Perry (aka” Scorey Perry” for Ducks fans, and aka “Corey Perry, you suck” for fans of every other team). I will dive into my distaste for Mr. Perry and his cohorts later, but for now suffice to say that I knew Nashville had one heck of an uphill struggle ahead of them. In back to back games the Ducks attempted to and were successful in injuring two of the Predators top forwards, and when they took Ryan Johanson out for the rest of the playoffs (two to three months in total), Everyone who had jumped on the Predators’ band wagon suddenly thought the wind was completely removed from their sails (including me). But the Predators found a resolve buried deep down in the bowels of their collective unit. To paraphrase one of my favorite films, Braveheart, “The Predators faced a more powerful foe. They were wounded, exhausted and their energy was spent. But they fought like warrior poets, and they won the day.” That was game five, where Nashville went up 3 games to 2. Game six came, and once again everyone said there was no way they could beat the Ducks twice. They say an animal is at its most dangerous when it’s wounded and backed into a corner. The Ducks backed the wounded Predators into a corner and gave them no other option but to lash out at anything that moved toward them. When the dust had settled, it was the Ducks who laid on the ice, bloodied, beaten and savaged from the Predator’s relentless attack. The hockey world’s collective jaw was once again rendered agape because the impossible was once again possible. Goliath number three lay at the feet of David, and David’s legend continued to grow.
The Dirty, Dirty Ducks (And the Joy of Duck Haters Everywhere):
I said I would talk about the Anaheim Ducks, their dirty style of play, and my utter loathing of everything Anaheim Ducks (except Patty Eaves: former, beloved Dallas Stars forward), well here we go. For years I have watched the Ducks kill Dallas. Even when they were a league doormat, they always seemed to beat Dallas. That’s honestly not why I hate them though (and yeah, I’m using “hate” because it’s appropriate. Ask any Stars fan). My dislike of the Ducks goes well beyond that. Most hockey fans disliked the Mighty Ducks, as they were once called, because they were formed from the success of the Disney film franchise of the same name. I was among those fans, and up until they finally dropped the “Mighty” part in the early 2000s, my dislike continued. When they changed to the just the Anaheim Ducks, I wanted to like them. I even tried rooting for the 7 seed Ducks as on the back of Jean-Sebastien Giguere they made their own improbable run to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. I tried, but I just couldn’t because they’re the Dirty, Dirty Ducks!
That distaste in my mouth has lingered for the Ducks for a long time, and I have seen it grow exponentially over the years. There are players I actually like and semi-respect on the Ducks, but they are few and far between. As I mentioned in the previous section, The Ducks have one player in particular who is widely hated across the league. This happens with enforcers and bottom line guys who are basically considered to be “goons”. Corey Perry, however, is a superstar forward with too much goon in him. Perry has made a career of flopping at every opportunity, and poking, prodding and injuring the top forwards on other teams. Anyone who’s a hockey fan knows this is a widely accepted (albeit reluctantly) part of the game. The difference with Mr. Perry is that he’s a superstar, so he gets away with plays enforcers would be suspended for. This makes him far more than just a thorn in the side of hockey fans on every other team than Anaheim.
Fast forward to the series against Nashville, and the hockey world saw first-hand just how despicable the Ducks can be. Guys like Corey Perry and Ryan Kessler repeatedly took cheap shots at Nashville superstar Ryan Johansen’s groin area, popping him with a strategically placed stick whenever the referees weren’t looking. What came of that was Mr. Johansen needing surgery that shelved him for 2 or 3 months. The silver lining in this is that the chip on the shoulder of the Predators was of such a size that they were not about to lay down and simply die. The fact that they won two games in a row to fell the Ducks, was made all-the-more wonderful because they did so after Anaheim nearly crippled them.
I’ll let this be the end of post number one. Stay tuned for the next episode.
The Random Musings of a Nerdy Christ Follower 