Christmas is Canceled

Surprising though it may be, I went to college and actually accomplished getting one of those fancy degrees in History. Even more surprising was that I was allowed to write about hockey for my big thesis in order to graduate. The red and green Christmas jerseys of the New Jersey Devils brought back all those memories from my research and writing. So, all I could think about for most of this game was Alexei Kasatonov, Slava Fetisov, and perhaps the greatest Sports Illustrated cover of all time:


[SI]

It's so deliciously early nineties. Vests, denim jackets, Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts, so fucking awesome. And, in all truth, these two might have been playing with how badly the Penguins were playing offensively:





What a pair. A better defense pair you will be hard pressed to find, arguably the best pair to ever play the game. It's too bad Kasatonov was a stooge of the hockey system in the Soviet Union and he and Fetisov had a falling out because of it.

Wait, what? Oh, the game is already over. This is how bad the Penguins played in this game, waxing nostalgic for a few moments caused you to miss the entire game to be missed with Marc-Andre Fleury being hung out to dry time and time again. But, as per usual, you can read about the particulars on many another blog.

This game, surprisingly, didn't have the venom that the game before had. Considering it was a very short time after the previous game that was full of shenanigans, it comes as an even bigger surprise. Up until Rod Pelley boarding Alex Goligoski, there had been only 3 minor penalties.



Good on Kris Letang coming to the defense of his teammate right there. Pelley's a little bit lucky Mike Rupp wasn't the first one to arrive on scene, but still, you like to see your guys sticking up for eachother. People don't forget.

Here was a chance to get back into the game for the Penguins. Three minutes to score as often as we want. Alas, the board and the following fight didn't wake anybody up on the Penguins and the Devils defense continued to play like a bunch of Fetisovs and Kasatonovs.

0-6. Something to remember should we run into New Jersey down the road. Remember how much that record pisses you off.