How 'bout them Blueshirts, hunh? Last night New York completed the playoffs' only sweep so far, ending the Atlanta Thrashers' season in four games, and outscoring them 17-6. Thrasher center Bobby Holik had this to say about his team's performance:
"We weren't even close to being competitive in the playoffs. There should be no sense of accomplishment whatsoever." What a Debbie Downer, that guy!
In 2002, after a fruitful decade in New Jersey, Holik came across the Hudson to the Rangers, whose chronic underperformance gave him countless opportunities to disparage his own and his team's performance. For two years, it seemed that whenever you saw Bobby on TV or in the papers, he was giving another unkind quote — criticizing Bobby Holik.
At first, it was refreshing. This is how a champion should think! He should expect success! Any result short of victory, he should greet with bitter disappointment! He should congratulate himself only when his opponents are vanquished (and not even in
all such cases)! The Devils won the Stanley Cup again in 2002-2003, that first year of Bobby's exile, and the Rangers failed to make the playoffs. Bobby's dissatisfaction seemed like exactly the kind of righteous fury they needed at Madison Square Garden, a cloister of complacency!
But as the seasons passed, and Bobby suffered further indignity, his continuing self-flagellation started to get kind of depressing. Now the two-time Stanley Cup winner languishes in Atlanta. Now his team is swept out of the playoffs by — oh, dear, the New York Rangers, who, before this post-season, hadn't earned a single playoff win since game two of the 1996-97 Conference Finals. Now it's Holik himself who's without a playoff win since departing the Devils. It's a long way to fall from the top.
Anyway, let's all hope Bobby's spleen ebbs a little over the off-season. He's had a long and productive career, the kind of which a less malcontented player would be proud. One day, maybe soon, the tranquility of retirement will finally allow him to unfurrow that jutting brow.