J. Quick reminds me why I’ve started to despise MPFPS games…
The Los Angeles Kings struggled and stumbled into the Stanley Cup playoffs with a regular season record of 40 wins and 42 losses (including 15 overtime losses.) The Kings entered the playoffs as last seed and had to face the Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the playoffs. The Canucks had the best overall record of the entire league in the regular season with 51 wins and 31 losses (including 9 overtime losses.)
If the Canucks had been the elitist Battlefield or Call of Duty crowd of puerile, overly competitive, ass-wipe, braggart, Bitch Ass Gamers, they would have told the Kings to stop playing hockey and making the game easy for them.
The Los Angeles Kings (8th seed) beat the living tar out of the Canucks (1st seed,) 4 games to 1. They then proceeded to beat the living daylights out of the St. Louis Blues (2nd seed,) 4 games to 1. Not finished with kicking ass, the Kings moved on to utterly demolish the Phoenix Coyotes (3rd seed,) 4 to mother f—ing 1, and take their rightful place in the final battle for Lord Stanley’s Cup–the oldest and most prestigious trophy in sports today. The last seed LA Kings finished their playoff run with a record of 16 wins and 4 losses. Only the 2nd team in NHL history to beat the top 3 conference seeds in the playoffs.
To place this into a gaming perspective… It’s like the person with a win/loss ratio of .096 and a kill/death ratio of .67 suddenly coming in first on the leader-boards in every single game, 16 games in a row and placing second for 4 games.
The LA Kings went on to beat the New Jersey Devils and the best goalie of all time, Martin Brodeur, and win the Stanley Cup 4 games to 2.
And at the end of it all, as the players congratulated each other on a series well played, the two goalies approached, embraced and exchanged words of encouragement, support and mutual respect for what seemed like an eternity. And as they separated, the reporter’s microphone picked up a glimpse of Jonathan Quick‘s parting words to Martin Brodeur…
Don’t retire, you’re still the best goalie ever. (paraphrasing)
A tear fell from the corner of my eye when I heard that. I wasn’t rooting for the LA Kings. I’m a huge Brodeur fan. I wanted to see him get a fourth cup to crown his esteemed career with. It was at that moment I realized Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jonathan Quick and his last seed team of regular season mediocrity had earned and deserved Lord Stanley’s prize in more ways than one.
I soon shed another tear for the FPS gaming community when I realized that no mater what happens in life, most of them will never be man enough to be as good as the LA Kings, the NJ Devils or any real athlete, no matter what their stats imply.
Posted on June 13, 2012, in Entertainment, Gaming, Gaming Harangues, The Dead Console and tagged Battlefield, CoD, First Person Shooter, FPS, Jonathon Quick, LA Kings, Martin Brodeur, multiplayer, New Jersey Devils, Sportsmanship, Stanley Cup. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Great article man!
Few nitpicks. Martin Brodeur isn’t the greatest goal tender of all time. Heck he wasn’t even the best goal tender of his time, Dominic Hasek pretty much owns that title. He’s played behind defensively strong teams, but that said he’s been remarkably consistent, and is probably in the conversation of great goalies for that fact alone.
Also on the Kings, they weren’t really a worthy 8th seed team. Their roster was just absolutely loaded, and all the advanced and micro stats showed that they were carrying the play in most games, but just not getting the bounces. Bad puck luck as it were, and given the percentages, were very likely to regress to the mean (i.e. normal percentages) and begin winning. The San Jose Sharks had a similar fate last season for example, and as an extreme example on the other side of the spectrum the Minnesota Wild had unsustainably high percentages (i.e. everything just seemed to go in for them, we’ve all had days like that) at the beginning of the season to top the NHL standings, but all the stats said they weren’t carrying the play and were in fact an awful team, and would regress to the mean and which they most certainly did and ended up finishing at the bottom of the league.
People forget the large part that ‘luck’ plays in sports, that’s why a really good player or team can only be judged over a long period of time, dangers of small sample sizes and all that. When your team has the lineup that LA had, you’re never really an underdog.
Also as an aside, the Canucks live and die with Kessler and to a lesser extent the Sedins. Either one of them takes a hit and the wheels fall off. The Sedins have by far the largest offensive zone start push in the league. Something like a whopping 60-70% of all their faceoffs or shift changes come when the puck is already in the other team’s zone each game. If nothing else that’s why they can post the points they do. They can do this because Kessler can be used heavily to play the zone starts in the defensive and neutral zones and on top of that he can push the play up ice and score. Maholtra helps here too but he doesn’t have any offensive ability and his zone start that’s the almost the exact inverse of the Sedins’ doesn’t help either. So with Kessler banged up the Canucks didn’t really have anything to take the pressure off of the Sedins. LA is 3 scoring lines deep with an excellent 4th line to spell them for 10 minutes or so a game and the Canucks couldn’t compete with that without Kessler near 100%. The Kings had an absurdly low number of injuries for the playoffs, I mean they really did luck out here, and pretty much iced their best lineup each night in the playoffs.
Also to correct your analogy, it’s not like they won 16 games in a row, they didn’t, it’s someone going from the middle of the leader board on your standard game play online stat aggregation, let’s say XBox live rankings, to enter an tournament and then post a 16-4 record. Winning 16 games in a row would have meant they had a 16-0 record to win the cup in 4 straight sweeps. The guys truly at the bottom of the leader board (we’re looking at you Edmonton) need not apply and wouldn’t even get invited to the tournament.
I love leaving these arrogant know-it-all gamer rants up. I offended this maroons sensibilities, now he has a novel to write.
Well, bored@work. First, look up and try to understand the definition of ARBITRARY, which your entire rant there is.
For starters your whole “people forget about the large part luck” in sports shit is so way out there I don’t even know where to begin. Not saying luck can’t have a card in the game but when it comes to sports it’s mostly talent, management, coaching and above all; TEAMWORK. But maybe you’re a Canuck fan and you’re butt-hurt your star player was injured. Here’s the thing, numbnutz, if your entire team is banking on one player for the win, you ain’t got much of a team. And it’s pretty much an established fact that any team that has ever won a Stanley Cup has a productive fourth line. In fact all their lines produce at key moments throughout the playoffs and in the final. You’re team didn’t want it bad enough, they had the players and the skill, they were not hungry for it. It’s that simple.
I’ve watched Brodeur’s career from start to near finish, and I can assure that he is one of the best goalies of all time; this is mostly evidenced by the respect he has garnered in every corner of the league. And I’m a Rangers fan. But my opinion here is arbitrary too and you are entitled to yours.
As far as the Kings lineup being stacked, you’re acting like they were the ’94 Rangers who where basically stacked with the famous Edmonton lines of the early ’80s (minus Gretzky). The Kings won because they played harder and wanted it more than anyone else. They won through perseverance and teamwork. Just like the ’94 Rangers did.
But I see the problem you have here. I see right through you. You’re a gamer and the whole point of this article bruised your precious, childish, narcissistic ego. You know why? Because deep down inside you know I’m talking about gamers like you. And you know how I know that? Because you opened your mouth and proved it, especially with the last paragraph and the last sentence.
“The guys truly at the bottom of the leader board (we’re looking at you Edmonton) need not apply and wouldn’t even get invited to the tournament.”
And this fool is utterly clueless to the fact that with that single sentence he went and proved my point, folks.