Depending on your relative life balance, which is determined by your index of blessings on one side and your various malfunctions on the other, 17 years can be a very long time. I have it on some authority.
Some of the babies born in 2006, for example, are going to the prom in the coming weeks, and others have probably already been there, and if those people could count on one true thing in their young lives, at least the portion of their lives that intersect with the National Hockey League, it is that come springtime, the Penguins would be in the playoffs.
Well, there goes that.
Sorry, kids.
A Pittsburgh spring like few others arrived technically and brutally Wednesday night, with ridiculous warm temperatures, the stubborn winter aroma of rotting defeat in the air, and a startling dearth of those Stanley Cup lawn signs we thought God put there like dandelions and daffodils.
The last time anything like this happened, Mario Lemieux was a hockey player, Sidney Crosby was a rookie hockey player, the International Astronomical Union was about to trim their roster of planets from the traditional nine to the, wait, eight? (Sorry Pluto) — and Pittsburgh's general life balance/world view was generally positive because Steelers 21, Seahawks 10 in Super Bowl XL.
If none of those things about 2006 rustle your memory toward full clarity, maybe Rico Fata and Ziggy Palffy will help. OK, how about Colby Armstrong leading the Penguins with a plus-minus of 15?
Nothing?
The point is, this is the first spring in my failing memory when the tangible anticipation around here for the Stanley Cup playoffs was essentially non-existent. Maybe it was that this Penguins team seemed like it was trying to trademark the four-game losing streak. Maybe it was that it reliably played third periods as though they were an optional morning skate. Or maybe it was its stunning aptitude for losing in the most unlikely circumstances, perhaps mostly notable to the dreadful Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night. At home.
The Blackhawks, without being able to admit it, have long been in a position where they really don't mind losing. They were still, at that point, able to get the best odds of drafting Connor Bedard, the next "generational" talent. The fact that they beat Pittsburgh 5-2 demonstrated a number of things, most prominently that if these Blackhawks really didn't mind losing, these 2022-23 Penguins, with their season on the line, cared even less.
Even with all of that, it seemed to me the generally vociferous local hockey audience could not even generate a decent protest, not even a, "Hey, where's our first-round exit?"
Despite four of those in a row dating back to 2018, there was a sense among hockey cognescenti that each of those Penguins teams could, given some postseason providence, advance well into the playoffs and perhaps even to a sixth Stanley Cup. Not with this bunch.
This edition was probably doomed from the moment the foundational cracks began to open in the middle of last season. You can posit that this season was lost the moment Lemieux took his leave from any tangible role with new ownership, Fenway Sports Group, and that his lack of strategic hockey input at the end of last season could not be duplicated by new management. But the cracks were evident before that.
General manager Jim Rutherford, who'd helped construct two Stanley Cup champions, resigned in the middle of last season, resulting in a fairly frantic search for his replacement that somehow netted Ron Hextall. Then the Lemieux-Ron Burkle ownership decided to sell for reasons never made entirely clear, and ultimately longtime CEO David Morehouse left the building, as well.
This, as they say, is a tough way to play hockey, but the difficulties were compounded when Hextall failed pretty dramatically and when goaltender Tristan Jarry couldn't stay healthy long enough to become the goalie he needed to be.
You can further posit that Malkin, who should probably have the home penalty box at PPG Paints Arena named after him, should have been moved a number of winters ago for a haul of young talent, but it would have been hard for the Penguins' new ownership to make lopping off an icon one of its first gambits.
Mike Sullivan, still the head coach as of my deadline, used to like to point out that it was hard to make the playoffs in the NHL. What's just as hard is to miss them, and missing them for the first time in 17 years has a way of conjuring forgotten Penguins imagery off the past, of the flightless waterfowl of spring, and the Boys of Whimper.
The good part of all this is your life balance is the monumental blessing. We've just experienced the longest playoff run in the four major North American sports, 16 years, a staggering accomplishment for a franchise that's won five Stanley Cups.
At the other end of the Turnpike, babies born the last year the Flyers won it aren't going to any proms, unless as chaperones. They're losing their hair, their hope, and a ton of hockey games annually.
