Why Pittsburgh?

The sports world has been funny the last couple weeks. The Bills look good, the Lions look great, and we won't talk about baseball. What I may understand least however, is why all of the experts think the Pittsburgh Steelers are a good team.

This article won't be a statistical analysis and this isn't even coming after watching all of their film. This is a reaction to the parts that I have seen, and the parts that I have seen are telling me that the Steelers are a bad football team. I understand that they've been there before and they're always good blah, blah, blah. That doesn't matter for this year. What does matter is that they have one of the league's oldest defenses and their offense struggled against a god awful Colts team last week. Some members of the ESPN community (read Bayless, Skip) see it as a gutty win, I see it as a struggle to beat Curtis Painter. Fucking Curtis Painter, who honestly may be the worst quarterback to strap a helmet on in the last decade. He was throwing balls in the dirt, constantly giving the Steelers second chances. On offense, they struggled against a Colts D that should have been run off the field with the amount of time they played. The week before, they had the luxury of playing against Tavares Jackson. Stellar competition. They may count as wins, but they don't show that the Steelers are anything other than a .500 team. That's what I expect them to be at the end of the year.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they'll come out and beat a good (not great) Houston team today and destroy this blog after less than an hour. I doubt that though. This is not Pittsburgh's year and, once again, the Super Bowl hangover will hold up.

Rangers Make the Playoffs!

The Rangers make the playoffs with their win over the Devils and the Hurricanes loss to Tampa Bay. Clutch doesn't even begin to describe Drury's first goal of the year and McDonagh's career first. The Rags could have panicked following Kovy's goal, but Captain Clutch willed the puck into the net, picked up his team, his crowd, and completely changed momentum. He didn't play too many minutes, but he dominated in the faceoff circle and made it clear that the Rangers are a better team with him in the lineup. More on them in a minute.

Choke doesn't even begin to describe Carolina's effort last night. Tampa Bay started Mike Smith in net. Mike. Smith. If any NHL goaltender deserves to be unemployed it's him. He thinks he's a forward and fires the puck end to end whenever he gets the chance (he tried to score on the empty net but failed. Close though.). Carolina made Smitty look like the second coming of Ken Dryden. They couldn't take advantage of his patented "I'm going to lay down in a stack pad while the puck's at the point and hope it gets blocked on the way in" style of play, and let a superb first period effort by Cam Ward slip away. They looked nervous, scared, and fully aware that they were blowing it. After going down 3-0 early, they gave a good effort to try and get back into it but came up short. Good season Canes. I like that group down there and the Caniacs are great, but there was no way the Rangers could possibly get screwed out on game 82 two years in a row.

Now on to the important matter at hand: the playoffs. Rangers-Capitals, round one. Unlike in recent years, this Washington team seems better prepared for the playoffs. They also have played the Rangers in the postseason enough to know that Henrik can't catch and they can beat him up top. Our chances may be slim, but this Ranger squad does nothing but battle. Maybe Washington's young goaltenders will feel the pressure. Maybe Ovechkin tries to do too much again and kills his team in the process. Maybe injuries to their defense corps will slow them down. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but no matter what, we're heading to the best time of the year and the Rangers are still in the picture.

Number 82

Hello, old friend. It comes down to this. Rangers-Devils. Madison Square Garden. Game 82. Playoffs on the line. Captain Clutch is back. Fate would not be so cruel as to screw us out on the last game of the season again would it? ....Would it? A win this afternoon, a Carolina loss tonight and we're in. Let's Go Rangers!

The System Needs to Change

Disclaimer: I'm writing this between periods of the Ranger-Bruin game that currently stands at 3-2 Bruins. I do not know what will happen but, assuming this game ends as is, a tremendous flaw in the NHL point system may be exposed.

Going into every game, the goal is to win. If you lose, you have failed to reach your goal. The team that meets their goal the most should be considered the better team. This is true in every sport except for NHL hockey.

If the Rangers (2 games remaining post tonight) and the Carolina Hurricanes (3 games remaining) win out in regulation, they will both finish with 93 points. The Rangers will finish with 44 wins, compared to Carolina's 41, but they will miss the playoffs. The Hurricanes will finish with a .500 winning percentage compared to NY's .536, but somehow, the Rags will play golf earlier. Why? Because, after points, the first tiebreaker is regulation wins. Because on 11 occasions the Hurricanes received a point for a loss compared to 5 for the NYR. How does a system that rewards losers exist?

Shootout games are supposed to disappear in that first tiebreaker, but that doesn't mean those points for losses weren't critical. Consider a system where teams receive 2 points for a win, 1 point for a shootout win, and 0 for a loss. For this system to work, one must accept the fact that playing longer doesn't necessarily mean you earn a point. If this system were in place, the Rangers finish 35-37-9 and the Hurricanes 36-41-5. That's 79 points for NY to 77 points for Carolina. That's a playoff birth in NY. In the current system, a shootout win is punished more severely than a loss. Even a system where total losses is the first tiebreaker makes more sense. Teams shouldn't be rewarded just for losing later.

At least last year, the Rangers missed the playoffs because they lost a game. This year, if they miss because of a technicality, it will be worse. Change the system.

God Damn Gers

Holy shit! Gabby scored?! And it was a close game too?! I'll be damned. I've looked pretty bad several times this year. The Panthers. The Giants. BU. But look at these Rangers. Yea, they suck, but at least they're starting to come on at the right time. Fuck the Devils' hopeless hot. I'll take a shot at the playoffs any day of the week. The Flyers may look like the class of the East but they'll choke like they do every year. It's between the Gers, the B's, and TB. It sucks that Rolly the goalie is that much of a contender but that's the way it goes. The Rags are built for the playoffs in a way that most other squads (including Pitt right now) are not. We'll see how things shape up but after this two game winning nub I've got my hopes up.

Giants Win at Dallas on Monday Night

NY Giants beat Dallas Cowboys 41 - 35.

It's a good thing that the Rangers are in the World Series or the people of Dallas may have collectively hung themselves tonight. After the Cowboys lead 20 - 7, Eli Manning decided to play like a Manning and pick apart their defense while Tony Romo sat in the locker room with a broken clavicle. Jon Kitna and Dallas made the score close in the fourth quarter but by then it was too late to save their season. While the Cowboys are finished, the Giants established themselves as the class of the NFC. Manning had a tough start but looked like an elite quarterback the rest of the way out. With Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs getting the ground game going again and the defense injuring every quarterback they come up against, Manning and the Giants are poised to make a run. Their only issue may be getting hot at the wrong time like the 2008-2009 version of the team but only time will tell.

Rangers-Giants World Series

Well... Couldn't have been more wrong about a Yankees Phillies rematch. The Giants seemed done after blowing it at home with Lincecum on the mound in Game 5, but Bochy worked his magic and got his boys through to the World Series. Gutsy effort, but I'm still picking the Rangers to win. San Francisco may have a better pitching staff (Brian Wilson is the man) but their bats can't match up with Texas's lineup. Either way, it should be a great series featuring poor tv ratings and two fan bases who have no idea how to handle this type of situation. Tim Lincecum and Cliff Lee go head to head in Game 1 on Wednesday.

Other news of note:

• Oklahoma and LSU were eliminated from the National Championship race this weekend (at least I was right about Oklahoma losing) and Auburn looks like the team to beat. An Oregon - Auburn title game would be a spectacle but unfortunately it won't happen. Both teams have too many challenges ahead of them to make it through unscathed and instead we'll probably get Boise State and TCU or some other asinine combination of schools.

• Rangers have won three straight without Drury or Gaborik. If their young D matures over the course of the season and their secondary scoring keeps coming through then maybe they'll turn into a contender after all.

• This weekend, Charger fans learned that Kris Brown sucks after he booted a potentially game tying 50 yard field goal off of the upright in the last minute against the Patriots. Welcome to the club.

• All of the head to head fine talk in the NFL is complete crap. If the league didn't want its players to get hurt they wouldn't be pushing for an 18 game schedule that will exploit its players and its fans. Players will potentially work more often without an immediate increase in pay because they are already tied to their contracts and ticket prices surely won't go down even though each individual game is devalued. Sounds like a league that really cares about the individuals that make it work. Stop being hypocritical, fine only for actual malicious hits, and let the boys play.