#24 – Not Sure If Serious or Playing Dumba

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This is the twenty-fourth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Comments

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

All the pens hate makes me sad. I'm sorry pens fans have been the worst and made you hate us nonnies - some of us are good people. I swear.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

I'm rooting for the Sharks because I'd love for a cupless team to get it and I'd love for their old guys to get a cup, but I won't actually be mad if the Pens win it, since I like them, too.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

I like it. There's a beautiful juxtaposition of a team full of scrappy misfits who love each other deeply being seen as some kind of villains or an evil empire. If the Penguins win, I will be very, very happy, but it adds something that so many people will be mad about it. :D

The Caps series was a microcosm of this. Lots of people rooting for the Caps; lots of salt when the Pens turned the Caps into the same old Caps. I just got some popcorn and added butter to all that salt. It was delicious.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

Are you seriously calling the Pens scrappy misfits?

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

na

I get where you're coming from, but it actually does fit this roster, which has been scraped together and built on the fly.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

DA
I disagree but I want a video of Kessel set to 'My Shot' because he's young scrappy and hungry.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

NA

PLEASE. Every "not throwing away my shot" is a goal.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

For 'just like my country,' I want his goals at the Olympics.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

Yes? They have an entire line that's literally acquired players from teams who had no use for them.

Their defense features someone often deemed the worst player in the NHL and (until he got hurt) a guy that Chicago gave away for a pylon playing their roles to a T.

The forward group is peppered with kids that everyone still considers nobodies.

And still fans of other teams have no idea who the fuck Brian Dumoulin is even as he's emerged as one of the best young defenseman in the league (look at his advanced stats and fight me if you disagree. He is stunning).

They are the definition of scrappy misfits, people are just blinded by the three stars.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think you know what "scrappy" or "misfit" means.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think you do.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

Just because the players didn't have places on other teams and are now doing well on the pens doesn't mean they're misfits or that the team is "thrown together", those were purposeful decisions by your GM that are paying off. It's not like they randomly selected these guys by spinning the wheel of fortune and are now surprised by their success. I can list you tons of players who weren't having success on another team and then were traded and did better. Sure, there are a few players like that on the pens this year, but that alone doesn't make them "misfits". And I still don't see any proof of scrappiness.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

na

Phil Kessel- misfit in Toronto, blamed for everything

Trevor Daley- misfit in Chicago, traded for Scuderi

Ian Cole- misfit in St Louis, couldn't crack their top 6

Justin Schultz- misfit in Edmonton, blamed for everything, still inspires vitriol from Oilers fans

And then guys like Bryan Rust, Tom Kuhnhackl and Matt Murray all started the season in the AHL- SCRAPPY

Idk, scrappy misfits works for me *shrugs*

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

More scrappiness:

- Zatkoff winning Game One when he had no business doing so.

- Murray, a prospect with very little NHL experience, coming in and owning the net like a boss.

- A defense that people were calling the worst in the playoffs holding it together and withstanding Letang's suspension, Daley's injury, and Maatta's rough patch.

- Maatta responding to his scratches by playing insanely good hockey.

- Conor Sheary, an undrafted undersizer stepping in and tearing it up against the best goalie in the world.

- Tom Kuhnhackl journeying all the way up from the ECHL to make an impact.

- Kunitz silencing some critics with an awesome Tampa series.

- Matt fucking Cullen, 39 years old and still stomping teams.

You can go on and on about Crosby, Malkin, Kessel and Letang but they're just a part of something bigger than them right now. These guys have had so much shit go against them and they keep on swinging. That's the definition of scrappy.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT
Dude, I'm a pens fan and you're confusing depth and scrappy. They're a great depth team, but they're not scrappy.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

That doesn't make them scrappy or misfits (a fact you should be aware of since your comment does not even describe scrappy misfits).

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Not fitting in is the literal definition of misfit, and certainly applied to Kessel, Daley, and Schultz. People thought we'd been fleeced when we took Daley! We were told Kessel was locker room cancer! Schultz would gnaw away at the team's possession numbers like some kind of metaphysical beaver!

I don't know about scrappy, though. How are we defining scrappy?

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

...that's every team under a salary cap, though. No one rolls a sleek, purpose-built four-line machine. Everyone's got a couple (if they're lucky) of stars at most and then has to build as best they can around them. Everyone's hunting and pecking for whatever they can get at the trade deadline. Everyone has injuries, everyone has to stick in a spare part from time to time.

But even if you had to name one team as the scrappiest, that's still not the Penguins. In reality, they're a perennial playoff team that's had some minor ups and downs; in narrative, they're a ~glamor~ franchise that Knows How to Win. They're hardly the island of misfit toys.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

+1 this is all so eyeroll-worthy. Of course they cap off a season of melodramatic pessimism with the belief their ragtag group of quirky characters magically pulled it together in the end instead of, I dunno, putting some trust into their team.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah I'm just going to assume OP doesn't know much about the roster of any other team. The Pens are what elite teams with good GMs look like.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

"in narrative, they're a ~glamor~ franchise that Knows How to Win"

I wouldn't say that. They've been labelled as chokers and underachievers - yes, they're a perennial playoff team, but that's expected of them. The narrative has been that with their stars, they should be going deep every year, and it's a failure of leadership/management/heart/grit that they haven't. Hell, they went 2-3 down and someone published a thinkpiece about how the Pens were losing to a lower seed again. They were one game down, for heaven's sake! But they were expected to bomb out embarrassingly, just like the Capitals were expected to "choke". (They didn't choke, IMO, but that's the narrative for you.)

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone has injuries

Look, I'm not invested in the fight about whether or not we're scrappy losers, but how dare you suggest our ability to get injured is of anything less than elite caliber. We went into the playoffs with our backup backup goalie. It was an absolute clinic in stupid poorly-timed injuries.

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

na

Yeah, "scrappy misfits" tends to mean in comparison to other teams as a whole. CBJ is scrappy misfits. A perennial contender with a long team pedigree, not so much.

(I'm torn on whether or not to call the Sharks scrappy misfits, since even their stars are all kind of weird outliers, but they aren't exactly a Cinderella team either.)

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

da

Well, there are a number of scrappy misfits/rookies, but yeah, there is also that core of three truly elite players. (Arguably four but Letang is controversial.) Still, considering two months ago people were arguing it would be better if they missed the playoffs as there was no way they'd make a deep run and it would be better if the team got the extra rest (and then Malkin, our starting goalie, and our backup goalie all got injured) it's still quite the overcoming adversity narrative.

I was the anon who said I was rooting for Pens to make the playoffs mostly to spite Rob Rossi, and my cup of schadenfreude is brimming, but I can still take more. Fuck you, Rossi! Pour me another glass of these top-quality pundit tears and garnish it with a hot take onna stick!

Re: SCF Predictions Thread

[(Anonymous)]

By all means I should hate you, and I did, deeply until that last game against late in the season.

But damn it all if the Penguins aren't a fun team to watch!

And some of your fans are in fact insufferable (still holding a grudge against anyone who made fun of my team making playoffs) , but so are some of any teams' fans and while most of my new found love is probably rooted in how happy your team makes one of my dearest friends, it's been a lot of fun watching them succeed!