TL; DR:
There will be plenty of time to discuss the off-season in the coming weeks, but for now I want to reflect on what this fleeting moment is, and how the efforts of mountains have produced just a funny little mouse.
RANT:
The thing that feels so bad about this loss in particular is that it isn't just an under-manned team putting in a lackluster effort facing difficult odds. There is so much more to it. This is 12 years of building slowly unraveling. This is a streak of 3 straight elimination games met with efforts. This is the rise and fall of our first draft pick, a dramatically unraveling elite center man. This is Buff abandoning this core of players, only to reveal bare cupboards and poor scouting (pro and amateur) in his wake. This is two lost years of Hellebuyck's prime wasted on non-playoff teams. This is the amazing sweep of the Oilers followed by the embarrassing sweep by the underdog Habs. This is rebuilding your d-core only to allow them to be coached by a guy who hadn't had this team playing with integrity for several years. This is that coach inexplicably quitting on his team, an unprecedented event, and flushing another season down the toilet (one that was already circling the drain). This is winning the draft lottery, drafting the most exciting young sniper in a decade, only to continue the downward metamorphosis, trading him for an inconsistent, seemingly spoiled, centremen who doesn't want to play for your team, who cannot drive a line, and who has shrunk when the team most needed him (yes, Laine was clearly flawed as well). This is finally again getting a coach that seemed to draw the best out of his players! ...for half a season before a cratering 21 game slide that revealed all the old issues that plagued this team for the previous 6 years. This is a remarkable game 1, where our elite players looked like elite players, followed by injury after injury after injury. This is the last chance of a core that we have discussed and argued about for over a decade, following their World Juniors performances, stat watching their amateur seasons, watching them play for the Moose. Everything seemed to be coming together again, for a final charge, but it all ended with a soft, whimper. A shallow gasp at a stroke of bad luck. There is so much threaded into this one loss it's making my head spin.
I don't post much, but still say thanks to all you fellas and ladies for sharing the insanity of pro sports in a small market with me.
