Watching Chris Phillips put the puck past his own goalie last night, I was reminded of an old joke:
A Scotsman is drinking in a pub and complaining to the bartender. "Say, you know that stone fence at the top of the village?" he asks. "I built that fence. Built it with my own hands. But no one calls me 'Duncan the Fence-Builder.'"
No, no one does, agrees the bartender.
"And I've made more chairs than I can remember — some of them are in this very pub! But no one ever calls me 'Duncan the Chairmaker."
Certainly not, says the bartender.
"And do you know that I've delivered milk and eggs to town every Monday for over thirty years without missing a single week? But no one calls me 'Duncan the Milk-and-Egg-Deliverer.'"
It's true, no one does, the bartender says.
"But you screw
one lousy sheep..."
Chris Phillips's playoff performance, solid as granite right up until the end, will be remembered for that one gut-wrenching moment at 15:44 in the second period. That was the moment at which, as the Edmonton Sun put it,
"Lady Luck elbowed him in the head."
"Now I know how Steve Smith felt," he told reporters. And — fighting back tears, according to TSN.ca —
"I felt bad obviously, it was a mistake, not something I wanted to do obviously. We were right there in the second period until my screw-up seemed to take momentum away."
Which is true, it totally did. But it's not as if the Sens ever accumulated all that much momentum in the first place, so it was no huge loss. Daniel Alfredsson's 14 playoff goals led all scorers, so he could afford to be generous: "It's just a terrible break," Alfredsson said. "I feel bad for him. He's had an incredible year for us. Those things happen."
Phillips's own goal, the eventual Cup-winner, seemed (understandably) to really rattle him. Television viewers could see him muttering to himself on the ice immediately afterward, and he was still at it on the bench after the next commercial break. What was he saying? Maybe repeating some kind of positive-thinking mantra? Maybe just calmly lecturing himself about what he'd done wrong? Where's that stupid
"Sounds of the Game" feature when we finally need it?