And Just Like That .... It's All Over

A series.

A season.

A building.

A dream of repeating as Stanley Cup Champions.

I know everyone in Penguin Nation -- myself included -- had grandiose visions of this season ending in June with the Penguins closing out the fabled Mellon Arena by winning the Stanley Cup back-to-back for the second time in their franchise's storied history, BUT for the first time on their home ice.

And after the top 3 seeds in the Eastern Conference unexpectedly bowed out of the post-season in round 1 this year, things appeared to be lining up for the local hockey club.

But then ... all of that ... everything ... it came to a crashing and violent end last night in the last hockey game ever to be played at The Igloo when the cinderella Montreal Canadiens refused to turn into a pumpkin and instead crushed the hopes of the Pittsburgh Penguins and their fans by ending their season -- and their building -- with an indescribable 5-2 defeat in game 7 of their Eastern Conference Seminfinal.

Montreal prevailed 4-3 in the series.

You know, when I first started following hockey about 28 years ago, the team I hated the most was the Montreal Canadiens.

And that was even though the Canadiens didn't have a big rivarly with Pittsburgh.

The Habs were a perennially strong outfit back then. They won cups in 1986 and 1993. 24 in all in the history of their franchise.

That was about 25 too many for me.

Over the years, my hatred for Montreal waned, largely because they weren't as successful, and because the Penguins built big rivalries over the years with their hated division and east coast foes -- the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Rangers, and Washington Capitals, to name a few.

But now, after being the team who dealt the Penguins their first ever home loss at the now-Mellon Arena and the club who closed the buliding forever in the fashion they did with a final road victory over the Flightless Birds, my hatred has, not surprisingly, returned in great earnest.

That's not the only emotion I and Penguin players and followers are surely feeling this morning, though.

Disappointment, is another.

Dispair.

Disbelief.

You name it, the Penguins and their fans are feeling it, but what is undeniable is that Pittsburgh earned those emotions honestly by the way they played last night in game 7 -- and in the series as a whole, for that matter.

Pumped up in front of their own raucous crowd at the drop of the puck last night, the team went out and promptly let the air right out of the ballon.

It started 10 seconds into the game when Pens' Captain Sidney Crosby was whistled for a 2-minute boarding penalty -- and a rather questionable call, in my opinion, too -- and continued about 20 seconds later when forward Matt Cooke also was called for a high-sticking infraction.

Unfortunately, the Penguins couldn't even touch the puck to stop the action after Cooke's penalty before Habs' blueliner P.K. Subban tossed a wrist shot on Pens' goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury from a bad angle low in the left wing circle that Montreal forward Brian Gionta meekly deflected and somehow squeezed it by a post-hugging Fleury.

That's right ... 30 seconds into game 7 and the Canadiens were again up 1-0 on a bad break and a horrible effort by the Penguins' goaltender.

Fleury simply can't let that one in there. Plain and simple.

#29 seemed to bounce back a little over the next 10 minutes as Montreal had a few other good chances -- including one by Maxim Lapierre that hit the post -- but it turned out not to be enough when the poor puck management that has plagued the Penguins like malaria the whole series bit them in the rear again.

After Habs' rearguard Roman Hamrlik pinched in on the near boards to try and keep the puck in the zone as it was coming around, he met Pens' forward Matt Cooke. The puck obviously didn't want to be there, because when the players met, someone deflected it and it caromed up in the air out to the high slot.

No matter, I thought. Pens' defenseman Sergei Gonchar was right there. But instead of corraling it with his hand first, he tried to whack it out of the zone.

Unsuccessfully, unfortunately.

That allowed Montreal 3rd line forward Dominic Moore to approach from the left, pick up the bouncing puck, and turn and whip a wrist shot from about 45 feet that beat Fleury low to the far post from the inner edge of the top of the right circle.

That 2-0 lead carried into the second period and, while unsettling, didn't put the Penguins out of the game.

But what happened next basically did.

3 minutes into the 2nd frame, Chris Kunitz somehow ended up being the last man back with the puck on his stick in the Penguins zone. When he moved up on the breakout and tried to get the puck out, Habs' forward Andrei Kostitsyn deflected his passing attempt. Montreal beat Pittsburgh to the lose biscuit and, in a nightmare I could see unfolding in slow motion, Tomas Plekanec got the puck to a wide open Mike Cammalleri in shooting position to the right of the slot. He beat Fleury easily for his league leading 12th playoff goal and a 3-0 lead.

That was bad. Unfortunately, it got worse. Quickly.

With the Penguins on the power play just 2 minutes later, Kunitz again showed awful puck management when he attempted to pass the biscuit back to Gonchar at the point in Montreal's zone, but watched as Canadiens' LW Travis Moen easily interecepted it. Things seemed innocuous enough at the time as Moen was shorthanded and not in any apparent urgency on his rush up the ice.

Moen then ossed the puck behind Sarge over the Penguins blueline and went to chase it. Gonchar eased up on the play -- and he's taking a lot of unjustified heat for that in my opinion, since he did what he should have done on the play, which was run slight interference so defense partner Kris Letang can come in from the opposite side to get that puck.

But Letang was late getting there and Moen got to the bouncing puck first. When he did, he wristed a shot from around the left dot that again beat Fleury to the far side for a 4-0 Habs' advantage.

Stunned doesn't begin to describe what I was thinking and feeling at that point.

Penguins Head Coach Dan Bylsma had to feel the same way because that's when he decided to yank Fleury -- the defending Stanley Cup champion goaltender with all the game 7/elimination/bounceback statistics I laid out yesterday -- in favor of backup Brent Johnson.

When your starting goaltender has a history of stepping up in big games, but gets chased in game 7, you know you're in a predicament.

To some credit, the Penguins didn't wilt. Kunitz helped make up for at least one of his previous aggregious mistakes when he scored at the 8 minute mark of that period after getting a fortunate bounce off the referree's skate and whipping the puck past Montreal goaltender Jaroslav Halak.

Notice I haven't mentioned Halak yet?

Exactly.

Jordan Staal kept Pittsburgh in the game by deflecting the Pens' second goal past Halak at the 16 minute mark of the second and then, when Montreal took a penalty with 9 seconds left in the frame that left them 4-on-3, the Penguins had their chance early in the 3rd to really make things interesting.

Unfortunately, they failed on that man-advantage chance -- and two others in the 3rd period -- when they really needed to score. And that was largely accountable to Halak's work in that final frame.

The Montreal netminder stopped several prime, grade-A scoring chances in that period -- including opportunities from both Crosby and Evgeni Malkin (notice we haven't mentioned his name yet either ....... uh huh) -- and, despite how solid he was in pretty much the whole series, might have played his best 20 minutes of it in the 3rd last night.

After failing to convert on those chances -- and not hitting the net on other glorious opportunities, including one from Letang that comes to mind -- there was no other possible result but to let Montreal finish things with a power play goal of their own by Gionta, who deftly tipped a cross-crease, flip pass right out of the air past Johnson at the 10 minute mark for a 5-2 final.

And so, after another contest playing to script with the Penguins outshooting the Canadiens by almost 2-1, outhitting them by a large margin, and watching Montreal block 26 shots to the Pens' 3, it was over.

Just like that.

No more hockey this year.

No more hockey ever at Mellon Arena.

Like I said, the Penguins deserved their fate in this series. Pittsburgh could have gotten more contributions from several players, but in the end, they are making golf reservations this morning and mourning a bitter end to hockey at The Igloo because their stars simply didn't get it done.

When Crosby and Malkin combine to have only one ... ONE ... even strength POINT in the whole 7-game series, the Penguins aren't going to win.

When Fleury plays as unevenly and inconsistently as he did in this series, letting up multiple early goals and several soft ones along the way, the Penguins aren't going to win.

When the opponent's best player scores more goals in the series than your top 5 forwards COMBINED -- including two of the world's best players -- the Penguins aren't going to win.

Considering all that, the fact that the Penguins were even in a position on their home ice to advance shows how much of a better team they are than a Canadiens outfit that I said eariler in the series didn't belong on the same ice as Pittsburgh.

I stand by that. The Habs won this series by one game. While there's no question Montreal deserves a lot of credit for sticking with their system, playing sound team defense, getting strong goaltending, and scoring opportunistic goals almost every chance they got, they played at their peak almost all series.

The Pengins did not.

If both teams play at their peak, it's not even close.

BUT, that's why they play. And why the failure of the Penguins' big guns to get it done in this series is the single biggest reason why the Habs defeated Pittsburgh.

So a long, disappointing offseason now begins in earnest for the city who is no longer the official home of the Stanley Cup champions.

Ugh.

I'll have more post-mortem in the days to come. AND, even though it's officially the offseason in Penguin nation at this point, there will be plenty worth coming back to this space for on a regular basis --- including my end-of-season player grades, a look at what the Penguins may do in the draft, and an examination of what the Penguins are facing heading into free agency on July 1, and a lot more.

It should be an interesting next 6-8 weeks.

For now, depression prevails.