"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.
No comments:
Post a Comment