C'Mon Party Like It's Your Birthday

Ding Dong, the Rangers are dead...

Nice one(s), Marty...

I'm going to petition the ruling body of Philadelphia hockey fans to have April 28 hereby declared a holiday.

Imagine, having both New York-area teams eliminated, in Game 7s. New York blows a 3-1 series lead to a superior opponent in the final minutes of regulation. New Jersey allows two goals in the final 80 seconds and blows Game 7 at home.

My heart has been lighter than a feather for the last 16-plus hours. I had a front row seat for both games at work last night. I wrote the Rangers game, then sat back not watching the Red Sox and yelled my ass off for the 'Canes.

I'm sad because the Devils really had a legit shot to win the Cup. All they had to do was not give up a one-goal lead in the final minutes. They could have had an easy time using the Capitals as a rag doll and I liked their chances against either Boston or Pittsburgh. The Martin Brodeur of old would have come up with the saves. The Devils of old never could have allowed Carolina the puck movement they enjoyed throughout what should have been a tighter-checking contest.

You can't really pin the loss on the Devils more open style of play. You can't pin it on Marty, really, since it was mano-a-mano with the shooter on both goals and the goal-scorer managed to thread it into places good goal-scorers do.

I'm not sad because the Rangers lost. There was no real reason they should have won three games in the series in the first place, then they went out and played as they did all season with Tom Renney behind the bench in losing the last three.

Sean Avery was not the reason New York bombed, despite his attention-grabbing behavior. Henrik Lundqvist wasn't either. John Tortorella, maybe, for forcing his psychologically-taxing method of coaching on this team of underachievers so late in the year. They just weren't going to jell the right way fast enough.

In the end, the result is that the better teams won both series because they came up with the right solution at the right time.