It happens every year in the NHL, and it's happening again now.
Add the Edmonton Oilers to the list of "one hit wonders" who've sold their soul to the hockey Devil in exchange for a magical run to the Stanley Cup Finals. Theirs was last spring, when just about every bounce, deflection, and dribbling puck went their way. A spring when someone named Fernando Pisani went berserk as a playoff goal scorer. A spring when castoff goalie Dwayne Roloson joined the team late in the year and became the second coming of Georges Vezina. A spring in which the Oilers clawed their way to within one game of hoisting the Cup.
But now their agreement with Satan (the entity, not the hockey player) must have expired, because today the Oilers are four games under .500 and totally out of the Western Conference playoff picture.
It's a fate that has befelled team after team lately.
The Calgary Flames pushed the Tampa Bay Lightning to seven games in 2004, and neither team made it past the first round in 2006, after the lockout year.
Remember when the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, coached by Mike Babcock, dumped the Red Wings out in four straight in the first round in 2003? And remember when they went all the way to the Finals before losing to New Jersey? Then surely you remember the following season, when the Ducks didn't come close to making the playoffs, finishing six games below .500, costing Babcock his job?
How about the story of the Carolina Hurricanes? The 'Canes made it to the Finals in 2002, before being spanked by the Red Wings in five games. The next season, the Hurricanes were nothing more than a tepid rain shower, finishing an unsightly 21 games under .500 and nowhere near the playoffs.
This is my problem with the NHL. I'm resentful, frankly, of a playoff system that seems to lend itself to pretenders ascending to the penthouse temporarily, as if they were the borrowers of a key that had to be returned immediately. Where is the sustained success? Where are the repeat visitors to June hockey?
Contrary to Gary Bettman's belief, it's not a bad thing to have a few teams rotating in and out of the last round of the playoffs. It has worked in other sports, as far as interest goes.
Wasn't the NFL compelling when the Cowboys and 49ers traded Super Bowl appearances, meeting in the NFC Championship several times in the 1990s? Didn't the NBA benefit from the Celtics and Lakers duking it out for supremacy every spring? How about the Yankees and Red Sox battles in the AL playoffs?
These matchups repeated themselves -- and for their game's good, I might add -- because they were played out in an environment that rewarded talent and had no use for luck, hot streaks, and flukes. That's why there was rarely an ascending pretender in those sports. Very few "one hit wonders."
The NHL has a flawed game, if every year one of the previous season's finalists ends up in the toilet when the 82-game schedule has been completed.
I suspected, even as they were taking care of the Red Wings, that the Oilers might be a one hit wonder. Then when they got rid of Chris Pronger, I was even more convinced they would be. And now here they are.
The league has to do something to save the integrity of their game. Whether that's through officiating, rules changes, or whatever, something must be done. It's not compelling to have a different Cinderalla team playing in June every year. It's annoying at best, and a credibility killer at worst.
The way it's going, one of this year's finalists is going to rue its appearance next season.
And that's not how sports is supposed to work.
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