There is always a little something emotional when you witness the beginning of something, and the end of something else.
Updated yesterday at 10:28 p.m.
In this regard, there are many examples.
Many people have remembered David Lee Roth’s end with Van Halen in the mid-1980s, the kind of cataclysmic event from which you never recover. Same thing for the time when Eric Carr took the place of Peter Criss behind the drums of Kiss, and also, to a lesser extent, for that hot day in August 1988 when Wayne Gretzky chose to move from the Oilers to the Kings, because that Madame was thus going to be able to accumulate the Oscars like Wayne the Cups under the palm trees (none of that happened, by the way).
It’s a bit of all that we thought Thursday night when we saw the New York Rangers dominate the Pittsburgh Penguins by a score of 5-2, on the ice of MSG.
Of course, this series is tied 1-1, and nothing is decided. In fact, if it is, we are in the most total uncertainty because these two teams are unpredictable, because they are capable of the best as well as the worst; besides, isn’t it what Axl Rose used to say, when he walked, hidden under his blindfold, that the only thing that can be foreseen is the unforeseeable?
That pretty much sums up this series.
Time waits for no one
In a not-so-distant world, it might already be 2-0 Pittsburgh after two games, with the Penguins going 10-1 combined, and no one would ask any questions.
But these Penguins aren’t the Penguins they used to be.
Of course, Sidney Crosby is still there. (By the way, who else still has Maurice Richard eyes? Nobody.) Malkin and Letang are there too. But the representatives of Pittsburgh must face an observation, the same that led to the end of the Blackhawks and the Oilers and the Islanders and also the Canadian Guy before them: time waits for no one.
Crosby had a goal on Thursday night, but his longtime teammates were very quiet, including Malkin (no points, -1) and Letang (no points, -3). Goalkeeper Louis Domingue, the hero of the first game with his spicy pork and broccoli, allowed 5 goals on 40 shots.
The Rangers are at the other end of the spectrum. They are young, they have just come out of a reconstruction (it was even announced in the media!), and it is a bit surprising that they presented themselves in the table of the current series. In short, the Rangers play with the money of the house, as we like to say between insiders, and they have the wind in their sails.
Is this case already closed? Of course not, and of course anything can still happen. By the way, did you know that David Lee Roth and Van Halen ended up getting together? It’s good to say.
But for a few minutes, Thursday evening, we felt like we were witnessing something.
Something like a handover.