Edit note: Um, yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are dark days we're living in. Dark, awful, apocalyptically dark and awful days. Did I mention the dark part? What about the awful part? I'm pretty sure I did.
The Chicago Blackhawks are Stanley Cup champions. Again.
Okay, deep breaths. Easy, now. We're all going to get through this together, alright? I promise. Just....breathe. Think calming thoughts. Happy thoughts. Like Peter Pan is teaching you to fly, right? Exactly. Happy. Thoughts.
The Blackhawks beat the Boston Bruins, the last and best hope of humanity to prevent the nightmare we are now living. They won the Stanley Cup. Dark days, man. Dark days.
But, hey, there are more disappointing things, right? Of course, there are. Here are five things more disappointing (to me) than the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup.
5. The Blues Not Hoisting the Cup
It really sucks watching the Chicago Blackhawks celebrate their second Stanley Cup in four years, but it wouldn't be nearly as awful if it wasn't for the ignominious way in which the season ended for our own boys in blue. This was supposed to be a great season for the Note; an historic season, even. Maybe expectations were a little inflated coming in, but can you really blame us for that?
A full season of Ken Hitchcock at the helm was supposed to spell dominating defense from the get-go. The whole team was supposed to continue gelling into a cohesive, coherent whole. The best goalie tandem of, like, ever was supposed to hold opponents to a goal and a half per game. Vladimir Tarasenko was supposed to light the world on fire with his secret Soviet goal-scoring training. This season was supposed to be different, damn it!
To be fair, some of those things did sort of happen. Not many, but some. And the end result? Another first-round playoff exit for the Blues. They even lost to the same team as last year, the increasingly-hated Los Angeles Kings.
I'm old enough that, for me at least, the St. Louis Blues are the team who literally always made the playoffs, every single year, and literally never, ever won a series once they got there. Year in and year out it was first round losses, with only the opponents changing.
Watching the 'Hawks win another Stanley Cup sucks. But watching the Blues make yet another early exit from the postseason, with Jonathan Quick and the Kings delivering the killing blow, that is most definitely more disappointing.
