What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

Let me start by saying I generally do not dislike the Montreal Canadiens. They're generally a likable group, playing a fast, whistle-to-whistle game. It's impossible not to love everything P.K. Subban does. And in their recent 2nd-round matchup against the Bruins, it was easy to feel like the good guys won, with Milan Lucic playing the role of "a bully scorned."

I will even go so far as to say the on-ice stuff, if you squint hard enough, has been pretty reasonable so far this series. Yes, Prust's hit on Stepan was unacceptably late, and referees Marc Joanette and Kevin Pollock have no imaginable excuses for missing it entirely, but even Prust has said publicly that the hit was late and that he deserves his suspension. Notwithstanding that hit, it hasn't been particularly one-sided: a few late or high hits here and there (Weaver's hit on Brassard in Game 1, Pouliot's hit on Emelin in Game 2), but nothing you wouldn't expect from a conference finals. That Weaver's hit was unpenalized and resulted in injury, and that Pouliot's was penalized and didn't, speaks more about inconsistent officiating and luck than it does about either of these teams.

(And lest anyone think I'm ignoring it, yes, linesman Scott Driscoll inexplicably manhandled Carcillo on his way to send him to the box, but Carcillo pushed back. Twice. And you just can't punch a cop. Even if he is being a dick to you. He's got a badge. And a gun. Et cetera. And if 10 games is excessive (it is), it's at least in part due to Carcillo's reputation for being a fuck. And in fairness, while he has been great for us this season, he has been a fuck in the past. So it's hard to see that call and not, on some level, kinda get it. (Carcillo is appealing the length, and I would hope it will be knocked down a bit, but it will likely remain long enough that we won't see him in the Blueshirt again.))

So, with the exception of Prust's hit, about which he seems legitimately contrite, the biggest extracurricular problems this series have come from the on-ice officiating crew (particularly that of Game 3, all of whom should be taken off of every remaining playoff game this season), and not from the Habs or the Rangers on the ice. With all of that said, with the appropriate capitulation to the opposing team, I am thus left with the question:

What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

This entire goddamn series so far, what the fuck are they talking about? Let's start with the Price injury in Game 1. Kreider comes in hard, gets slashed from behind, goes down, and collides with Price. On his way back, Price's skate catches the pipe and his knee bends in a way knees shouldn't bend. Here is a helpful reminder:



That sucks! And after the game, Canadiens coach Michel Therrien reacted appropriately, by making the other team look like bad guys and standing up for his guy, without saying anything too crazy. Specifically, he said, "I reviewed the incident and obviously it was accidental contact, but let's put it this way: He didn't make much effort to avoid the contact." Sure, fine, I guess. But then, as you know, it was discovered that Price was seriously injured and would miss the remainder of the series. And then we all got on a train headed to Crazytown!

Once the injury was announced, Therrien, apparently unaware that microphones can remember things you said a whole day after you said them, reported to the press that "looking at the incident, you know, it's a reckless play. That's the truth. And Kreider, this is not the first time he's going at goalies, so you end up losing your best player." Look, dude, I get it. You lost a really valuable guy (not your best player, but when your backup is Peter Budaj, possibly your most valuable one). And making that a storyline is a really good way to get people's emotions high and distract the media from the 7-2 drubbing that was the only game result thus far. But seriously, one day ago you said it was "accidental contact." Those balls on sticks those people hold in front of your face at press conferences record this shit!

Anyway, on its own, this isn't that crazy - for all the above reasons, this is a smart move by Therrien. But it turns out that the train to Crazytown runs express, and you can't get off until you've actually reached Crazytown. After Game 2's loss, Therrien was complaining again, this time about the officiating, saying "You know what, to win a hockey game you need some breaks and we didn’t have any breaks yesterday. The Rangers got their breaks and they capitalized on their breaks. We didn't get some calls yesterday." Obviously merely counting penalties doesn't tell you the full story, but at a glance, the Canadiens had 4 power plays in Game 2 (they went 0 for 4) to the Rangers' 3 (1 for 3), and the Rangers' penalty list included one diving call.

Again, on its own, this isn't too meaningful, and the statement isn't too crazy. But rather than analyzing a game's worth of calls and non-calls, let's fast forward to Game 3, the game where Prust broke Stepan's jaw on a late hit and Carcillo got 10 games for shoving a linesman. 'Cause this is where the train crosses the county border from the Questionable Territories into the Lunatic Protectorate.

First, the Habs themselves get into it, by calling bullshit on Stepan's jaw being broken. Seriously. Because the Rangers hadn't yet announced Stepan's status as of yesterday (the surgery itself was last night), these ding-dongs decided that the "Stepan's jaw is broken" storyline was a lie. Speaking to the media, Danny Briere said that the Rangers' lack of report on Stepan means that the center's injury "seems a little fishy to [him]. It seems like a little bit of a game." (Vigneault's "fishy" report, incidentally, was "He's in the hospital right now recovering from surgery, so that's all I've got.") Brendan Gallagher (who, ironically, led the NHL in goalie interference penalties this season with 8, to Kreider's 2) doubled down with the clever diagnosis "He got up and he was yapping and yelling [after the play], so, I'm sure the jaw isn't hurting too much."

For the record, Stepan had a metal plate inserted into his jaw, and he will be unable to play tomorrow night. And for those of you with very slightly longer memories and a penchant for hypocrisy, after Price was injured in Game 1, he stayed in net to finish out the period. And when he was replaced, Therrien said it was due to the score. And the Canadiens didn't announce his status for Game 2 until a couple of hours before Game 2. I don't remember any Ranger claiming that Price's injury was fake there, when Therrien was doing what absolutely every professional sports coach does for absolutely every playoff injury, playing it close to the vest.

But Michel Therrien, captain of the Crazytown Express (do trains have captains?), was not about to be outdone by his players, and came to bat today with a strong showing of unprovoked threatening of an injured player! When asked by the French media about Brassard's possible return tomorrow night, Therrien acknowledged that Brass would likely be back, and then editorialized a bit, responding (in French), "We expect Derick Brassard to play and we know exactly where he's injured."

That's...like...a threat, right? There's no way that isn't a threat? Like, "yes, Brassard will be back [from the 3 games he missed after our guy's late hit], but don't worry, we will be targeting his injury"? Thinking this makes me feel like I'm being biased, but is there some non-disgusting way to interpret this that I'm not thinking of? I'm fully open to suggestions here.

Anyway, from there, it just gets weirder, with reports today that Therrien kicked (or tried to kick?) Ulf Samuelsson and later Glen Sather out of the Habs' practice at the Garden today, citing some "Gentlemen's Agreement" that team personnel never watches their playoff opponent's practice on an off-day (though it's allowed on a game day (?)). It appears the Rangers didn't know anything about this "Gentlemen's Agreement"? Is that possibly because it's a thing Therrien just made up? I honestly have no idea what is happening here.

So what is going on? Was the hockey itself not interesting enough for Coach Therrien's standards of a conference final series? Is he jealous of the better hockey being played in the Western Conference final, so he's trying to spice things up? What is going on? What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

Which roster is stronger?

So, this morning, my girlfriend's father emailed my girlfriend and me a copy of the 2013-'14 playoff roster (and basic stats) side-by-side with the 2011-'12 edition, accompanied with a simple question: "Which roster is stronger?" A normal person would have replied with a sentence or two to start a conversation. Instead, I wrote this.

Oh, wow. Great question. Strap in.

Let's start with an easier one: which team is better? I don't know how much of hockey's "advanced stats" you're familiar with, so here's some context. If you already know what "Corsi For Percentage" is, then please skip this paragraph. For our purposes, let's accept some basic things the "advanced hockey stat nerds" have been more or less statistically proving for a few years:
1) The best way to measure how "good" a team is is to measure its puck possession. Scoring goals (and not allowing goals) is how you win, but goals are sometimes fluky, and "how much you have the puck" is a better long-term indicator of likelihood to win than actual past goal differential. Put another way: scoring goals may or may not mean you're likely to keep scoring goals; having the puck is a pretty good indicator you're going to be scoring goals.
2) Measuring "how much you have the puck" is really hard given the stats the NHL tabulates. No one tracks actual zone time or possession time. So, we have to try to represent possession time with what we do have. And what we do have is shots on goal, shots blocked (meaning shots you take that the other guys block), and shots that miss the net. Adding these up gives us a crude but decent indicator of how much you have the puck: you can't be attempting shots without having the puck. In a just world, we would add these 3 things up and call them "shot attempts," but instead we call them "Corsi," to confuse everyone.
3) So, a really good simple dirty way to tell how good a team is is to compare its Corsi to its opponents' Corsi (in games against them). To make it easy to compare across different games, we represent it as a percentage: (our Corsi) divided by (our Corsi plus our opponents Corsi). We call that "Corsi For Percentage," or "CF%." All it means is: what percentage of the total shot attempts in the games were taken by our team? For example, in one game, I attempt 10 shots and you attempt 30 shots. My CF% for that game would be 25% and yours would be 75%. This is very simple, it works as a good stand-in for possession time, and so it works as a good indicator of how good a team is. As a rule of thumb, anything under 50% means "worse than their opponents," and above 50% means "better than their opponents."

So, the first thing to measure is: which team is better? At 5-on-5, the 2011-'12 Rangers had a CF% of 47.7%. The 2013-'14 Rangers had a 5v5 CF% of 52.4%. That is a very significant improvement (for reference, the range tends to be from mid-to-lower-40s to mid-to-upper-50s for a team for the season). The stat "Fenwick" is like Corsi but it subtracts out the shots that were blocked. The Rangers' Fenwick For Percentage saw a similar increase: 2011-'12 had a 5v5 FF% of 49.4%; 2013-'14 had a 52.6%. Finally, the 2013-'14 Rangers' 5v5 shooting percentage (percent of shots on goal that go in) was an abysmal 6.66% - third-worst in the league. Meanwhile, the 2011-'12 squad shot at 8.30% 5-on-5, for 8th-best in the NHL. It's generally accepted and statistically supported that shooting percentage, except in a few rare cases, will regress to the mean over time, and is largely attributable to luck. So, there's an argument that the 2011-'12 team was luckier than this year's team, in terms of goals actually going in the net, which means their success was a little less based on skill than 2013-'14. All in all, yes, it's clear that the 2013-'14 team is better.

But that's not exactly what you meant, right? The interesting question is "is the new team better because of the new roster?" The alternative, I suppose, is "is it better because of improvements in the players who were on both squads?" Let's start by looking at the roster changes you sent:

2011-'12 F: Callahan, Gaborik, Anisimov, Fedotenko, Prust, Dubinsky, Mitchell, Rupp
2011-'12 D: Del Zotto, Bickel, Eminger

2013-'14 F: St. Louis, Brassard, Zuccarello, Pouliot, Carcillo, Moore, Nash, Dorsett
2013-'14 D: Klein, Moore, Diaz

(I am throwing out Miller and Fast because they played so little time compared to the rest of the list.)

At a glance, the lists look pretty even, with a slight advantage to 2013-'14 squad:
Scoring up front: The only pure scoring talent on the 2011'12 list is Gaborik, while this season boasts both St. Louis and Nash. Advantage: 2013-'14
Middle of the pack: Callahan, Anisimov, Fedotenko, Prust, and Dubinsky stack up pretty evenly with Brassard, Zuccarello, and Pouliot. 2011-'12 has more of those guys, and they hit more, but we know how good the Brass-Zucc-Pou line has looked. Advantage: Even
Guy who's better than everyone thinks he is: Dominic Moore is our new John Mitchell. Advantage: Even
Dumb idiots: 2013-'14 has 2. 2011-'12 has 1. Advantage: Even
Defensive scoring: Michael Del Zotto was sometimes an actual threat from the blue line, when he wasn't a liability. 2013-'14 has no equivalent. Advantage: 2011-'12.
Defensive actual defense: 2011-'12 boasts 3 occasional liabilities. 2013-'14 is 3 completely adequate guys. Advantage: 2013-'14
Net advantage: 2013-'14

But let's see how true that is by looking at the 5-on-5 CF% of each player on these lists. This is just like the team's 5v5 CF% calculation, but it only counts when that player is on the ice. Much like the team calculation, as a dumb rule of thumb, above 50% is good and below 50% is bad.

2011-'12
53.4 Mitchell
50.3 Dubinsky
48.4 Anisimov
47.9 Gaborik
46.8 Callahan
44.7 Prust
44.2 Fedotenko
41.4 Rupp

47.9 Bickel
47.2 Del Zotto
45.1 Eminger

2013-'14
55.1 Pouliot
54.2 Nash
53.8 Zuccarello
53.5 Brassard
51.9 St. Louis
50.5 Dorsett
48.2 Moore
47.5 Carcillo

58.0 Diaz
51.6 Moore
50.5 Klein

Wow! Those numbers are not even close. On the 2011-'12 squad, only Mitchell and Dubinsky had scores above 50; only the 2013-'14 squad, only Dominic Moore and Carcillo were below 50. To explain those numbers further, we can look at a statistic called "Zone Start Percentage." This measures what percentage of your shifts you start in the offensive zone. The lower the number, the more often you're on the ice in the defensive zone (which may, in some cases, explain why your score is lower). If your ZS% is high AND your CF% is low, then you're used in the offensive zone all the time but your opponents still attempt more shots than you whenever you're on the ice. That'd be really bad.

Dominic Moore's ZS% was 25.2% this season, meaning he started 3/4 of his shifts in the defensive zone. In that light, his 48.2% CF% doesn't sound so bad. Similarly, Carcillo's ZS% was 32.6. So, Moore and Carcillo may not have been dragging their team down as much as it seems. (On the flip side, this helps explain Diaz's high score - his ZS% was 75.6%.) Over on the 2011-'12 squad, Dubinsky's ZS% was 41.7%, and Mitchell's was 45.8%, meaning they both started more in the defensive zone than the offensive zone: their higher scores are not explained away by their zone starts; they really were that much better than the rest of their team.

But something smells in this analysis: if the numbers on the changeover players are that much worse, the numbers on the common players are probably worse also. Maybe the changed players aren't entirely to blame. So let's look at the 5-on-5 CF% numbers for the roster players who stuck around, from 2011-'12 to 2013-'14

Boyle 48.1 -> 46.9
Hagelin 52.6 -> 54.5
Richards 48.2 -> 54.1
Stepan 46.5 -> 53.1

Girardi 48.4 -> 49.9
McDonagh 49.0 -> 51.1
Stralman 48.3 -> 56.5
Staal 44.0 -> 54.4

(I'm eliminating Kreider here because I don't know what to do with him. He didn't play nearly enough in 2011-'12 for his numbers to be useful, but it doesn't seem fair to count him as a "roster change" for 2013-'14, since he was on the team in 2011-'12. So, I just left him out entirely.)

Remember, what we're trying to learn is how much each of these players is now bringing the team up, as compared to the roster change. Boyle's CF% went down (requisite with getting harder zone starts), so it wasn't him. Hagelin, Girardi, and McDonagh each improved a little bit, but probably not enough to make a huge difference - and, all three of their changes were aligned with getting significantly more offensive zone time. Hagelin's ZS% went from 51.9 to 62.1, Girardi's from 44.7 to 47.1, and McDonagh's from 43.1 to 48.3. Those are right in line with their CF% increases, so it's probably not them either.

That leaves Richards, Stepan, Stralman, and Staal. All 4 improved significantly, quite possibly pulling the rest of the team up with them. A look at Richards's ZS% shows an increase from 54.1% offensive in 2011-'12 to 66.4% in 2013-'14. That's a healthy boost, and it probably explains some, but not all, of Richards's CF% increase. The other 3, on the other hand, all saw harder zone starts in 2013'14 and nonetheless but up significantly better CF%. So, the team's improvement can certainly at least be attributed to an improvement in Stepan, Staal, and Stralman, and probably also, to a lesser degree, to Richards.

This brings up a question for me. Stralman and Staal are paired together this season, so I'd expect their numbers to be pretty similar. But, because we watch the games, we feel like Stralman is probably dragging Staal down, and Staal bringing Stralman up. This could help explain why they're both on this list. Are we right? To help find out, we can look at each player's 5-on-5 CF% when he's on the ice without the other one, compared to his CF% with. When we do that, we find a surprising result:

2011-'12
Staal without Stralman: 43.9%
Stralman without Staal: 49.0%
Together: 45.0%

2013-'13
Staal without Stralman: 48.6%
Stralman without Staal: 56.1%
Together: 56.2%

I did not see that coming, and I don't immediately know how to explain it. Regardless, the original point stands: improvement has come from within the retained players, in Stepan, Staal, and Stralman, and to a lesser extent Richards.

So, how much of the Rangers' improvement can be attributed to these 4 dudes, and how much to the roster changes? That's a harder question to answer, but we can make some smart guesses by comparing the individual players' CF% to the team's. If the player's individual CF% is higher than the team's, it stands to reason he is bringing the team up; otherwise, he is bringing the team down. So let's go back and look at the roster changes again, with the team average for that season inserted into the list.

2011-'12
53.4 Mitchell
50.3 Dubinsky
48.4 Anisimov
47.9 Gaborik
47.9 Bickel
47.7 Team Average
47.2 Del Zotto
46.8 Callahan
45.1 Eminger
44.7 Prust
44.2 Fedotenko
41.4 Rupp

2013-'14
58.0 Diaz
55.1 Pouliot
54.2 Nash
53.8 Zuccarello
53.5 Brassard
52.4 Team Average
51.6 J. Moore
51.9 St. Louis
50.5 Klein
50.5 Dorsett
48.2 D. Moore
47.5 Carcillo

Counting the players on each side of the line doesn't do us much good, but looking at who is on which side does. In 2011-'12, outside of Mitchell and Dubinsky (who were genuine assets, as we saw), the only 3 players bringing the team up were Anisimov, Gaborik, and Bickel. Guys whom we thought of as producers on that team - Del Zotto, Callahan, Prust, Fedotenko - are all below the line. In 2012-'13, the main names bringing the number down are Dorsett, Dominic Moore, and Carcillo. All 3 of those guys had ZS% below 35%, so we expect lower numbers. (To contrast, Rupp, Fedotenko, and Prust averaged a ZS% of 37.8; Dorsett, Moore, and Carcillo averaged 30.8).

St. Louis's number is weird, because it was generated mostly on a different team. Tampa Bay's 5-on-5 CF% this season was 51.0%, which St. Louis actually brought up. So it's hard to measure him against the Rangers' average meaningfully. That leaves only John Moore and Kevin Klein as the new roster guys bringing us down. Compare that to the list of guys bringing the 2011-'12 number down, and I think it's safe to conclude that 2013-'14's roster is better.

So, I'd conclude that the 2013-'14 team is definitely better than the 2011-'12, and that that's due in part to the improvement of Stepan, Staal, Stralman, and Richards, and in part to the improvement of the roster, which is itself on average better.

What It Means to Be a Fan (Or: The (A?) Melodramatic Post)

"Fan," short for fanatic: a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal.

I don't know what I looked like from the outside as I watched the final minutes of Game 3 from one of my favorite local bars here in Pittsburgh. I am rarely self-aware enough to know what I look like from the outside at the best of times, and Monday night, as I watched my team slowly lose the 5th playoff game they'd played in 7 nights, despite dominating possession time, scoring chances, shots on goal, etc. and having the better goalie, was not the best of times.

What I know is that when I looked up after the game ended, I saw two friends of mine, Pens fans both, staring down the table at me with pity on their faces, because I looked so goddamn distraught it was depressing them, even in the midst of their team's win. I'm not sure what that means, but I think it's safe to say that it probably puts me in the "excessive and single-minded zeal" category.

Being a fanatic is a double-edged sword. It means we get real emotional highs and lows from every game, which is why we do it. Doubly so in the Second Season. But that passion can also get in the way of our actual understanding of the sport we love to watch. It clouds our judgment. So it's a balancing act: how do I get to get up and scream and completely deflate with my team, without it making me so wrong that I'm crying "cheap shot" any time the opposition comes within 3 feet of my team captain?

So it's with attempted self-awareness that I make the statement: through 3 games in this series, despite being down 2 games to 1, I believed that the Rangers were the better team. Going into the series, I believed that the Rangers, being a better possession team than the Penguins, would ultimately have an easier time of them than they did of the Flyers, who beat them up for 2 weeks. I believed that Game 1 was a real triumph over a bad schedule, and was ultimately an evenly matched game. I believed that following that game, the Rangers would only get better. I believed that Game 2 was a disappointing bump in the road, a game the Rangers would respond to at home the following night. I believed that Game 3's result was a fluke. I believed that if you offered Dan Bylsma the opportunity to play Game 3 four more times to finish out the series, he would reject the offer, because more often than not, if the game goes like that, the Rangers win. I don't know how true these things were, but as a fan, I believed them.

Rationally, I have felt very positive about these Rangers this season. They had the puck more often than their opponents, and they turned that into success more often than not. They finished the regular season with a FF% of 53.6% and a CF% of 53.2%, both good for 6th overall in the league, behind only fantastic teams (Bruins, Kings, Sharks, Blackhawks) and the New Jersey Devils, which I have no good explanation for. Their PDO was 98.7, a tie for 5th-worst in the NHL, suggesting that their results had room to go up from there. All of which ultimately resulted in a team that finished in 2nd place in its division (and that ranked 3rd in its conference in goal differential), and with me feeling relatively good about its chances.

And so, because Ranger fans, having been treated to the Stanley Cup at the literal once-in-a-lifetime rate of once in the last 73 (going on 74!) seasons, do not know how to feel good about their team, I've found myself defending the Rangers to Ranger fans a lot this season.

"No, John Tortorella was not a better coach just because he was an angrier coach. Yes, 'score goals' is a better coaching strategy than 'block shots.' No, losing in Game 7 of the Finals doesn't mean you don't have 'what it takes.'"

"Yes, Rick Nash is a better hockey player than Brandon Dubinsky. Yes, 10 times out of 10. Yes, even if he has never thrown a Gatorade cooler."

"No, Ryan Callahan is not worth 6 million dollars 6 years from now with a no-trade clause. No, not even for his Heart. No, 'intangibles' are not a real thing."

"Please stop spelling Brad Richards's name with a dollar sign like he's Microsoft and you're a 15-year-old in the 90's."

And so on. Sports narratives like these appeal to our fandom. They make big story lines out of what are often just statistical aberrations. And that's why they're so, so prevalent despite being so, so wrong. None of this is ground-breaking. Everyone rational already understands this, and everyone else is hopeless. So what's my point?

My point is: tonight, all that went away. Watching tonight's game, I felt like all of the Ranger fans I've been calling wrong all season. Like Al Trautwig said post-game, "I cannot believe how badly the Rangers played tonight." This Game 4 loss looked to me like so many other losses always seem to look to so many other Ranger fans.

Tonight, I watched the Penguins out-possess the Rangers like crazy in "as close to a must-win [as it gets]," despite holding the lead. Tonight, I threw around words like "gutless," and I just wanted to see the Rangers throw around their damn bodies. Tonight, I wanted Ryan Callahan to take the place of Martin St. Louis, and I speculated about Ryan McDonagh still being injured from Burrows's cheap shot. After a Flyers series I spent dismissing the "can't win a playoff game when they're up" "statistic" as small sample size garbage, tonight I feel like the Rangers are a team that "just don't have what it takes to win when it counts."

(Exception: The Ranger-fans-booing-Rick-Nash thing. Guys. Seriously. The dude leads the league in shots on goal in the playoffs. He leads the Rangers in Corsi differential, Fenwick differential, and shot differential. He is, basically, the only forward consistently doing his job. Guys, you are watching a game in which your team only directed 38 shots anywhere toward the net, and you are booing the guy who was single-handedly responsible for 29% of them. What are you doing.)

The Rangers picked a very bad time to play their worst game in months (and yes, this game was significantly worse than Game 6 of the Flyers series, by every reasonable measure). And while that doesn't mean it's any more rational to fire Vigneault and go hire Barry Melrose or to buy out Rick Nash at the end of the season than it was 6 hours ago, it's still important, and it still fucking blows. The Rangers were awful tonight, to a man, to a degree that would sound exaggerated if I heard anyone else describe it the way I would describe it. As a fan, I watched this game and I believe that the Rangers' effort and desperation were not where they needed to be. I believe that, results notwithstanding, the Rangers are in very serious trouble if this is how they look through 60 minutes of a game like this one. I don't know how true those things are, but as a fan, I believe them.

The numbers don't tell a much better story than the emotions tonight. Despite trailing for all but the first 2:31 of the game, the Rangers never even had the damn puck tonight, posting a Shots For Percentage of 35.7%, a Fenwick For Percentage of 35.2%, and a Corsi For Percentage of 36.5%. Those numbers wouldn't be great if they were the team that had led all game; as it stands, they're atrocious. Oh, and the Rangers haven't scored a power play goal in over 66 minutes of power play time - more than an entire game's worth. That's plainly, objectively awful.

So now, my team is coming back to the city where I live. In all likelihood, I am going to once again pay way too much money for the privilege of seeing them live. And now, thanks to tonight's debacle of a "contest," I'm approaching it with the dread of what now feels (to my irrational, fanatical heart, at least) likelier than not: that, just like I did 6 years ago, I'll be sitting in the Penguins' home arena (which was a different arena last time), watching Game 5 of the Rangers-Penguins second-round playoff series end in a handshake line that sends the Penguins to the conference finals and the Rangers home for the summer. Some things just don't change. And maybe for certain teams, that's what it means to be a fan.