Laraque With the Assist

The only way I'd ever call Philadelphia a "sister city" to Pittsburgh was if I had a sister who was knocked up three times by the time she was twenty, had a raging addiction to methamphetamines and was on her third stint as greeter at Wal-Mart. You don't really want to admit you're related. Anytime a Pittsburgh sports team defeats one from Philadelphia in any sport, it feels a little bit better than it should, because you know some innocent wives in the eastern part on Pennsylvania are going to bed with a black eye.

Fast Eddie is double-fisting to get through this loss.

Saturday's game was an instant classic. The Pens rallied from a three-goal deficit to win 5-3 and clinch the series in six games. Things weren't looking so rosy after 14-year old Danny Briere finally started earning his inflated paycheck and scored to make it 3-0 early in the second period. What transpired next will go down in Penguins history...

Let's set the scene...Daniel Carcillo, one-time Penguins farmhand and goon extraordinaire, decides to throw down with Max Talbot. Now most teams use an orchestrated fight to turn momentum in their way when things aren't looking so rosy. The Flyers choose to fight because they're talentless hacks who love to play up to their meathead mentality. According to the Pensblog:

"What was Carcillo thinking? In WPXI's post-game, Talbot said the Flyers bench was telling Carcillo to fight. Unbelievable."

Obviously, Carcillo and Talbot aren't the best of friends. Something must have happened in WB-S years ago to set this precedent. Perhaps you remember Game 1...

So anyways, the rest is history...the Pens take the momentum from the fight, score five unanswered goals and send the Flyers to a familiar place for the rest of the Stanley Cup playoffs...their couches. I'm sure you read the headline and are wondering what Georges Laraque has to do with all of this. Rewind to late in the 2007 season. The resurgent Pens were about to embark on their first foray into the playoffs in years. GM Ray Shero, in all his genius, noticed that teams were taking liberties with star Sidney Crosby, and addressed the need for an enforcer to protect Sid's head. Enter Big Georges Laraque.

Artwork by Georges Laraque.

Shero had to give something up to get BGL. And that something (or nothing, in my opinion) was one-time third round draft pick Daniel Carcillo. When acquired by Phoenix, Wayne Gretzky himself was so enamored of Carcillo, he proclaimed that one day he'd be a thirty-goal scorer in the NHL. After 2+ years of watching Carcillo, he realized that Carcillo would have a hard time reaching 30 goals for his career and shipped him to a place where thugs like him are loved more by fans than their own children, Philthadelphia. And the rest, so they say, is history.

When the Pens drafted Carcillo, they obviously imagined him contributing to the Pens in the future. It took a few years and a different jersey, but Carcillo's contributions propelled the Pens one step closer to that elusive third Cup.

One final note and then the Flyers are dead to me until next year...

I was checking out the excellent coverage (as always) at the P-G's Empty Netters blog and followed a link to a philly.com article chronicling the Flyers' most recent postseason failure. I clicked on the slideshow out of morbid interest, and couldn't help noticing a certain spelling error. The last time I checked, the captain of the Penguins' name is spelled S-I-D-N-E-Y, not S-Y-N-D-E-Y. I saw it and just figured that the editor of that site is a moron who doesn't know how to proofread his website, but when I saw the same error repeated again, and again, and again it was just too good to be true. Even the "journalists" in Philadelphia are jealous. To the second round...