RICHMOND, Va. — Ye gods, what a nightmare.
In hindsight, the story of the 2013 Penguins is an example of Ray Shero, Dan Bylsma, the team itself and even the fans at the height of hubris. I remember the taunt: “We have all your captains!”… and the jabs at the Bruins for having stolen Jarome Iginla right out from under their noses. The team was about to complete an undefeated MONTH of March, and now they were adding a living legend, aging and hungry for his first championship, to the potent mix? Go ahead and start engraving the Stanley Cup now, I thought … all that’s left are the formalities.
But from almost the moment Iginla arrived in black and gold, it didn’t seem right. For whatever reason (and everybody has a theory), he and the rest of the Penguins never clicked … and thanks to a shaky, harder-than-it-should-have-been first-round victory against the Islanders, it seemed like the entire fanbase was waiting for the bottom to fall out. And fall out it did, against the aggrieved Bruins, no less, with a thud that echoed around the franchise for the better part of two years.
I myself, no stranger to playoff heartbreak, can scarcely remember a feeling so bleak as to what enveloped me late in the night after the double-overtime loss that saw the Penguins go down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals. Not the abrupt, five-OT loss to the Flyers, not the Cup Final loss to the Red Wings. This was supposed to be THE TEAM. It’s the kind of loss that had me thinking, unable to sleep and mind still racing at 4:30 in the morning, “I should probably take hockey a little less seriously.”
So, as glorious as the Iginla era in Pittsburgh was supposed to have been, it almost exists instead as a cautionary tale, a reminder that winning the trade deadline and winning the Eastern Conference are vastly different things. In hindsight, it almost had to happen as it did. And as a Penguins fan and an Iggy fan, I will always think that’s a damned shame.
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
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