So the Islanders, huh? I’ll be honest, I really don’t have any feelings about the Islanders. I kind of feel bad for them for being the Islanders, but that is probably a holdover from a few years ago when they were absolute trash. Aren’t they kind of good now? Who knows? Who cares?
My only real memory of the Islanders is from a couple of seasons ago. Rick DiPietro was in rare form — healthy and playing a game. It was against the Penguins, and it ended up getting messy because there was a pretty big brawl. DiPietro for some reason decides that despite his inability to stay healthy, he should go and fight the Penguins goaltender. I think it was Brent Johnson or some shit. Anyway, Ricky skates up to Johnson, gets rocked in the face, and misses the rest of the season or something with a broken face. I could probably look all of this up and confirm what I just wrote, but research is against my religion.
That memory is what I think of when I see the Islanders.
Anyway, given my feelings (or lack thereof) about the opposing team, this shouldn’t have been a game I was looking forward to watching. And if this were a normal time in a normal world, I probably would have had it on in the background while I knitted a sweater or something.
But this isn’t a normal time and it certainly isn’t a normal world. No, the world we live in is one where the Flyers haven’t scored a goal in ages. A world where Shayne Gostisbehere is scratched for no particularly good reason. A world where the goddamn Domino’s app doesn’t let you tip your delivery driver with your credit card (more on that later).
So with the big news of the night being Gostisbehere’s return from purgatory, I decided to intently watch this game in the hopes of something good happening in my life for once.
I’ll cut right to the chase — this team looks completely different with Gostisbehere on the ice. This week on BSH Radio, Bill and Kelly and Steph and Charlie all talked about how boring the Flyers have been recently, and they correctly attributed that to having their most dynamic defenseman sitting in the press box. Throughout the first period, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Gostisbehere — he was defensively sound, created a bunch of offensive chances, and just looked like one of the best players on the ice.
And if that wasn’t enough, he directly contributed to the Flyers’ first tally of the night, assisting on a power play goal by Wayne Simmonds. Simmonds may have been the one who put the puck past Thomas Greiss, but it was Gostisbehere’s ability to get it through traffic and to the net that did the bulk of the work there.
All in all, the first period was pretty good for the Flyers. They really did look like a much more exciting team than we’ve seen lately, and did a great job of controlling play for the most part. The first did end up tied, however, after John Tavares beat Steve Mason on an Islanders power play. But even though they surrendered a goal, there wasn’t much to be upset with the Flyers about.
The beginning of the second, however, was a different story. A Flyers defensive breakdown about two minutes in led to Jason Chimera, who apparently plays for the Islanders now, going in alone against Steve Mason and scoring a goal. If I’m being honest, I kind of felt that goal coming on, as the Flyers really didn’t look too great since the start of the period.
And things really did not get much better after that. Folks, I’m not going to lie — the Flyers looked like absolute shit for the majority of the second period. It was a complete reversal from the first period, and it was making me extremely mad. I think something like 15 minutes into the period the Flyers only had two shots or something? It was stupid.
They were eventually able to get some of the game back towards the end of the period, but overall it was pretty damn ugly. Nevertheless, they walked away only down by a goal, so I guess that was kind of cool.
LOL that didn’t last long into the third, as Casey Cizikas scored an ugly goal about two minutes in. Gostisbehere was covering Cizikas well enough, but the Islander was still able to get a weak shot off that somehow beat Steve Mason. Really not a goal that should have been given up, but you know, sometimes that’ll happen.
I’d love to say there was more to the third period, but there really wasn’t. It was really freaking boring and the Flyers were not good and they ended up losing the game. Sad!
Al’s really good unrelated rant of the night
So today was International Pizza Day (I think), and my wife was out of the house this evening, so I decided the only proper way to celebrate this sacred holiday was to eat an entire pizza by myself. The only problem is that all of the pizza delivery places near me are absolute trash. Like, I’d rather eat a frozen pizza from grocery store trash.
Then it finally dawns on me — Domino’s delivers to my house, and they’re actually pretty good! So I download the Domino’s app and enter all my information. I pick out my food and am about to click “order” when I realize I didn’t add a tip. After about like 10 minutes of searching, I realize the app won’t let me add a tip to my credit card, which is complete and unmitigated horse shit.
Seriously, what is the point of developing an app and letting me order a pizza on it if I need to still have cash on me to tip the delivery dude? It’s 2017 for crying out loud.
Anyway, I ended up getting pizza and fries from one of the local joints and it wasn’t half bad. And yes, I ate all of it by myself.
