Celebrate a Legit Cup

Big wins again for the Nattos, sweeping the Pittsburgh just like the Caps this year. Clearly the better teamed prevailed in both instances. I also wanted to congratulate the Blackhawks for winning the Cup, it was nice to see a team earn it this year instead of having it given to them like the year previous. Philly fans did not disappoint, booing the Cup as it was hoisted by the Hawks and repeatedly giving the finger, but that is par for the course there. Toews was a gentleman, celebrating with his teammates and then leading them over to shake hands with the Flyers quickly, instead of classlessly leaving them out on the ice awkwardly like last year's "winning" captain did. I was jealous as a Caps fan, of course all year I expected that to be us with the trophy. Unfortunately, we were cheated for the second year in a row. First with the take back of Ovechkin's game 7 goal, we all knew about that. But one other story was swept under the rug by the NHL that not a lot of people have heard of. The Canadiens were cheating. Essentially they were putting down rock salt on the ramp leading up to the bench, warping the opposing team's skates. I don't believe for a minute that they were not doing this all along to beat even more talented and fleeter of foot teams than the Flyers like the Caps and yes even the Pens. Here is one of the links that Gary Bettman and his cronies did not want you to see from nhlsnipers.com. I still think the Canadiens put forth a great effort and the Caps let them hang around for too long, but we were not cheated as badly as we were in the '09 playoffs.

Look I know I pick on Crosby a lot, and quite frankly it is because I hate him. He is a whiner, the antithesis of a great player like Gretzky, Howe, Orr, Ovechkin and Lemieux. He has not won anything, but acts like he is one of the best because the Cup was handed to him last year as a PR stunt. Last night's coverage only solidified my view of the hockey media trumpeting their over-hyped Canadian. No, surprisingly, Crosby's name was never brought up, but Toews was over and over again. There was not a whole lot of mention of Patrick Kane, who scored the game winner. (Strasburg was on the Top Ten on Letterman tonight, and one of the "little known things about Strasburg was that he scored the game winner for the Blackhawks last night.) It was literally a joke. Kane, a fine American like all Buffalonians, was largely ignored in favor of the Canadian Toews, who to his credit played fantastically in the playoffs. He also was the MVP of the Canadian team in the Olympics, but largely went ignored the Canadian hierarchy in favor of Crosby, who while dormant most of the tournament, was lucky enough to chip in the final goal. Why? Because that is what the Canadian-controlled hype machine wants you to believe unless you actually follow hockey and know the details.

So for the last time on this blog, I will spell out how the Caps, while obviously cheated in the 2010 playoffs, were absolutely robbed in the 2009 playoffs. Then I will promise to put this to rest until the next Penguin fan tells me that they have won three Cups. The fact that Crosby's name is on there with Lemieux's, essentially besmirching it should be enough for them to be quite. I will also put it to rest as long as "pundits" stop putting Crosby anywhere in the same breath as Ovechkin who is the clearly the better player anywhere outside of the hype vacuum that Bettman and folks have created for him. Just because Wilbon saw a Pacquiao fight does not mean he is a boxing expert. So for the last time, to sum it up, here we go.............

First off, the Penguin's television productions were witholding camera angles from replay officials that did not favor the Pens for a long time. They were only caught red-handed once, and yes people were fired, but if you did not believe it was used several times before that instance then you probably believe the Patriots only filmed the Jets that one time during Spygate. Secondly, you have to understand the TV contract that the NHL has with NBC. For all other major sports television in America, networks bid X amount of dollars to broadcast games and then get all of the commercial revenue from said broadcasts, as well as an opportunity to plug their own programming. For example, ESPN paid a billion dollars to broadcast Monday Night Football and a Super Bowl every four years, and they make all the money off of the ads within those games for the duration of the contract. With the NHL, NBC has paid nothing for the right to broadcast those games. The NHL gets half of the advertising revenue after NBC has recouped their production costs.

While the Caps-Pens '09 series was going on, the NHL and NBC were negotiating this contract. The Caps had the best young team and player in the league and were and are a great TV draw. The NHL has pitted Crosby versus Ovechkin since they both entered the league, and to this day they still draw the highest ratings in the league when they play each other. Unfortunately for the league in the midst of these negotiations, the Caps were leading the series 2-0 and were on the cusp of making the series unwatchable to the average fan and pundit, and negating any such hyped "rivalry" between the two players. No other major network would negotiate with the NHL at the time, and the NHL had to find a way to show that hockey could still be sold on TV. And that is why the already shoddy officiating turned downright atrocious in Game 3 and continued for the rest of the series. It was the only way the hapless Pens could keep up. In fact one of Montreals' papers The Globe and Mail wrote an article on the attempted extension between the NHL and NBC during the playoffs, and was not even acknowledged until a month after the playoffs ended. Why would the NHL sweep that story under the rug for so long?

Maybe because they did not want people to form a connection between the Caps getting whistled for looking at a Pen, and the Pens not being whistled for things like this. Plays like this occurred all series but this was the most damning. That is the Pittsburgh broadcast; the very people who were caught cheating for the Pens could not bite their tongues when it came to the interference on Boyd Gordon. So instead of the Caps killing off a power play, essentially demoralizing the Pens and going on one of their own deadly power plays to win, the game was given to the Pens. The cheating Penguins announcers pointed it out, the equivalent of Bellichek instructing the refs to ignore the tuck rule, Brady really fumbled. However, all four refs on the ice missed it. Maybe they were tired; it was the second of back to back games on May 8th and 9th, which was only done to accommodate the Penguin's schedule per league orders. Back to back playoff games almost never happens in the NHL otherwise.

We all know the end result. The Caps lost the series in a game 7 that never should have been played while most of the team suffered from illness. As a footnote, the Pens beat the Hurricanes in four, dominating them much the way the Caps have and would have if given their rightful opportunity. The Pen went down 2-0 in the series to the Red Wings as well, and would have been crushed if rule 47.22, otherwise known as the instigator penalty, was enforced instead allowing the Pen's best player Malkin to play in Game 3 of the Cup Finals. Logic goes to show that the Pens were beat by the Caps, and if they were better than them they would have beat Detroit as well after handling a Carolina team that hasn't been a problem in DC in a long time.

Bettman and Crosby got what they wanted. The NHL was not relegated to Versus only, they got their contract with NBC as viewership across the country went up 42% in '09. All the Caps ever wanted was a fair shake. So I will put this to rest finally, a year after the stolen Cup that never was. Now that it has been wrested from Pittsburgh hopefully someone will sandblast Crosby and his cronies' names right off of the great trophy. Consider the issue closed until someone tries to say Crosby won a Cup or is in the same ballpark as Ovechkin or even Toews in both skill and honor. Then you can have a chuckle to yourself about their hockey ineptitude or even point them to this post if you want to show them how wrong they are. I've been blogging about it for a year, and if they insist it is another raving, biased blog, tell them to pick up The Fix is In by Brian Tuohy that came out this year. Its a book listed on Amazon, you can hold it in your hands, and it has the '09 Penguins as the biggest fix in NHL history just behind the Gretzky trade from Edmonton to LA. Its not another blog conspiracy. As a hockey fan, not a hype fan, I am just glad a legitimate team won the Cup to start off the 2010s. It is a shame that 2 years went by in the decade of '00, the Lost Decade, without a deserving team to claim it.