Bob Lobel: Not a Bang But a Whimper

By Bob Lobel

In hockey you can always count on the least probable thing happening. 

It is now one thing Toronto fans and Bruin fans have in common. Although I suppose it is possible all those Maple Leaf fans are still standing outside their arena waiting for something good to happen, whatever that might be. 

If misery loves company in hockey world, I’m missing the point. It's not the fall that hurts so much, it's the sudden stop at the bottom. An, old line, but it seems to feel right here. It all happened so quickly that sometimes the way you lose is better or worse than others. 

Two goals before the first one is announced is bad enough at any point in the game, but not ok in the last minute and a half of an elimination game.  I mean it's ok if you’re the one doing the eliminating, but Monday night the skate was on the other foot. 

This will be investigated, dissected and plenty of blame assessed. Tyler Seguin will be hit hard, both for individual moments and overall play. I'm sure Rask will take his share (At least he won't have to decide whether or not to go to the White House). Claude, always the foil, will be held accountable. 

Hey, you win as a team, you lose as a team… Unless you work in television.

I always said during those wonderful days at channel four "win together, lose alone!”  

This does up the ante on winning, a brutal loss always does that. Ask the Red Sox, who invented the concept back in the "days when…"

My daughter’s boyfriend told me when we watched Monday night that the subject of fog on the ice came up. Hey, kid, I was there back in the “days when.” One thing, no matter if there was a game Wednesday in Chicago or not, it was time. Soft ice, 90 degree temperatures, thunder storms, blah, blah, blah, were all a pretty good clues that this lockout induced longer season was overdue to end. 

We all seem to agree that this was one great sporting event (the 6 games that lasted as long as 7) and a  gift to be part of. Those things are rare, very rare for most towns. Hopefully, we wont find out how rare, but you never know. My philosophical question is to try to comprehend the difference in the joy of winning and the pain of losing in this instance.

Every title has its pain quotient. This one doesn't seem like the end of the world. Maybe it was the suddenness of it all. I'm sure it would have been much worse if it happened that way in Chicago Wednesday night.  If Boston had been ahead 2-1 with two minutes to go to win the Cup etc, but that dynamic wasn’t there. 

The chance to get there dynamic was in play.  This I know. This we all know. Stanley Cup hockey is the mother of all tough sports played by really, really tough men.  Somehow, it's all done in in a semi-civilized manor with actual rules and rituals.

Let's acknowledge something and move on:  We witnessed something special that brought us together. I don't think that’s a bad thing to hang on to. It works for me.  

To transform to Doc Rivers and Aaron Hernandez is not the easiest thing. Putting them both in the same sentence isn’t right either so lets talk about Doc. His actions do call into question our previous belief that he was all those wonderful things that Rick Pitino wasn’t. Maybe they all are from the same cloth: Smart and selfish. 

Aaron Hernandez is another matter with so many unanswered questions. There are a couple things we can conclude to date: 1. Don’t hang around with punks, especially if your one, and 2. If he were a mediocre or weak player at your position, no one would really care. 

However, since he is potentially a great player, people do care and it’s a much bigger story. But remember, it’s a big story, no matter what, to the family of the man that died. Somehow we all seem to forget their pain when we have our own trivial things at stake. 

Enjoy the 4th.