DaveZdyrko.com

Of all my sports teams, the one that I get excited about the least come playoff time would be the Philadelphia Flyers. The O’s haven’t made the MLB playoffs in something like 14 years (I’ve decided to include this season already) so they don’t really count. When the Dolphins actually make it, I get pumped even if I don’t expect them to go far. Same goes for the Celtics. The Flyers? Not so much.

This lack of excitement has nothing to do with the sport, either, cause I love me some hockey. The problem is that this team, more so than any of the others, have failed after getting my hopes up so many times that I won’t let myself get excited. A lot of this happened during the Lindros and “Legion of Doom” years where they’d dominated the regular season and then fall short in the playoffs, either because of goaltending or their 1st lines getting shut down.

All of the high hopes ending in failure has just taken a toll and as a result I can’t get excited. It’s a good thing because in years past I might have gotten excited by the team’s upset win in the first round. Thankfully, I didn’t and the fact that they’re now down 3-0 to Boston (the team playing in the city I currently live in) hasn’t phased me one bit. Hell, it didn’t even cross my mind to try and get tickets to see them play the Bruins in either of the 1st two games of this series. I may, however, think about getting seats to see the Bruins take on Crosby in the next round and if they win that series try and get tickets to a game in the Stanley Cup Finals.

As for Philly, I may get excited again some day. But it’ll take having 3 wins in the Stanley Cup finals and a multiple goal lead in the deciding game with less than 30 ticks remaining on the clock…

I keep reading comments and posts on ESPN.com saying that Boston sucks and that Celtics fans should be embarrassed that the lowly 8th seeded Hawks took them to a game 7. What the fuck ever. The team was 24-58 last year and had the 2nd worst record in the league. They added Allen, KG and a slew of other players, dominated the regular season and are in the process of humiliating the Hawks in Boston (currently up 36 points with 2:24 to go in the 4th). I’m proud of the  team and will be even if they don’t add another banner to the rafters in the Garden this year. I’m looking forward to an extremely difficult challenge going up against King James and Cleveland, as it should be an amazing series reminiscent of the times the Celtics took on Jordan’s Bulls in his early years. It should be FANtastic.

Speaking of fantastic, I’m even more thrilled by the fact that the Flyers finished off the Canadians last night putting them into the Eastern Conference Finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They finished 22-48-12 last season, which was dead last in the NHL with only 56 points, so making it this far has been a fun, albeit stressful, ride. I can’t wait to see them take on Crosby, Malkin and the Pens (assuming they don’t collapse against the Rangers).

Still riding on the high of having 8 vials of blood siphoned from my body (and the subsequent replacement of it with new and completely fresh blood not yet tainted by my devilish habits), I was given more to be joyful about in the form of a Flyers 4-2 win over the Canadians and a Celtics 110-85 throbbing of the Hawks.

The Flyers, as per form, got a 2-0 lead only to blow it and make things interesting before finally coming out on top. The finish is all that matters in the end, but if I start getting gray hairs or have a stroke the blame is going to be put on them. I’m really hoping they can close it out this weekend. My fingers are crossed and a blade isn’t coming anywhere near my playoff “beard” (if you can call the long scraggly hairs hanging under my chin a beard).

The C’s did exactly what they did in the first two home games — blow out the Hawks — so now it’s time to see if they can pull things together in Atlanta’s raucous arena to finally close out this series on Friday. I don’t want to see it go to a game 7 in either series, because I’m not sure if my heart could take it.

I’ve been busy both at work and at home, so the updates have been thin of late. Here’s a quick re-cap of what’s been going on. I’m honestly shocked that Atlanta was able to even up the series at 2-2 with my Boston Celtics. I knew coming in that they had some phenomenal young players, but I figured my boys would be able to turn it on in the playoffs after being in 2nd gear for the past two months and just roll them in four. While I’m still confident we can win this series, it looks like it’ll be a fight to get out of it and a mighty struggle to get out of the supposedly weak East.

The Philadelphia Flyers have been a welcome surprise, though I don’t want to get too confident because a 2-1 series lead doesn’t mean it’s a lock, particularly after they almost blew the 3-1 lead against the Caps. Still, it’s been awesome cheering them on and I’m hoping they can continue to play great and make it to the Eastern Conference Finals against Malkin, Crosby & the Pens (assuming they continue to dominate their series).

On a more personal note, I’ve been experienced what I’ve self-diagnosed as kidney pains. It might just my back muscles, but the signs and symptoms point more to the kidneys. I have a doctor’s appointment today, so I’ll find out more later this afternoon. Shit hurts, though, and really makes it hard to concentrate.

Luckily, amid the kidney pains that started Saturday afternoon after downing 12 diet Pepsi’s in 10 minutes and the struggles of the C’s and the stress of watching the Flyers get big leads, blow the leads, then either win or lose at the end, it was really nice to be able to release some stress killing random people in GTA IV. God, I love this game and this series.

I’ve only played a couple of hours of the single player (going through some really boring parts) and had a lot of fun playing with other 2K guys online multiplayer, but I can see why it’s gotten all the 10s. There’s just so much good too it. So much that you can forgive all the flaws such as the horrid animations, sloppy camera angles, god-awful AI, fucked up targeting issues, etc, etc. It is easily the most-flawed “best. game. ever” that I’ve yet played. I could probably write an IGN-esque 25,000 word review just bitching about the game. Then again, I could write as many praising the hell out of it. In the end, I’m sure the good will mightily outweigh the bad and I’ll love this as much as the previous games in the series and quite possibly more.

ESPN.com recently had a poll that asked which sport had the best Game 7 and the NHL finished 3rd with the NBA netting 2nd and the MLB coming in 1st. The results were obviously swayed by the overall popularity of each sport because if you’re an avid follower of all three, such as myself, then you’d agree that hockey deserved the top spot. And today’s contest between the Washington Capitals and my victorious Philadelphia Flyers was an excellent example of a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs at its finest.

I feel completely exhausted after watching that intense 3rd period and overtime. It was tied 2-2 going into the 3rd, so I was on the edge of my seat for every single one of the shots taken in the period and in OT. Not to mention the stomach-wrenching, heart-pounding, and nerve-wracking feeling I’d get every time Alexander Ovechkin handled the puck or took a shot. The man’s a beast and was clearly superior to everyone else on the ice. I’m just amazed we were able to keep him contained at all for a good chunk of this series. My hat goes off to Coburn and Timonen for their work in shutting him down because he’s everything I had expected Eric Lindros to be.

Anyway, the game was a blast and I’m triply excited about it because we were able to come out on top, especially after they played a game that made me HATE them as blogged about last night. For now, it’s time to celebrate this victory and then prepare for the potential for more heartbreak, hate and, quite possibly, more extreme joy in the next round match up with the Montreal Canadians.

Being a Flyers fan, I kind of get why sports fans in Philadelphia are angry all the time. The Flyers, much like Philly’s other teams, seem to always perform below what the team’s talent would dictate. After watching six games of this first round series with the Capitals, it’s clearly evident that the black and orange is the more talented team from top to bottom. We have legit scorers on practically every line and our defense and goaltending is solid.

Yet, because of mental lapses and lackluster effort once things seemed “in the bag”, the series with the Caps is going to game 7 in Washington tomorrow night. We might still be able to pull this out because home ice seems to matter very little in the NHL, but it shouldn’t have had to come down to this. We’ve let this series slip away, plain and simple. Then again, this inconsistency has plagued this team all year so it shouldn’t surprise me. I was just hoping it was a case of them just needing the motivation of something like being in the playoffs to get them playing at the top of their game. But, I guess I was wrong.