I'm Not Your Pal, Buddy

In case you missed it, "Danny the Great... May Make You Forget Alex."

Done laughing yet? I'll give you a minute.

I don't want to waste too much of my Saturday morning on this Sam Donnellon love letter to the diminutive Flyers pivot, so I'll just do a quick drive-by. Let's start at, well, the beginning:

For two periods last night, Danny Briere was rewriting the script to this Stanley Cup playoff series. Scratch out Alex Ovechkin. Insert Briere. The go-ahead goal. The back-breaking goal. Two even-strength goals by Briere's line within 33 seconds.

You want an explosive scorer? We have your explosive scorer right here, pal.

For some reason, I just can't get past that "pal." What the hell is that? Is this guy trash-talking... someone? AO? Eh, whatever.

The article slogs on for a while, and Donnellon even mentions that Briere took a couple of penalties, one of them costly. But title (and conclusion) aside, how seriously can you take an article that claims that Briere "impacted the game on every shift" and complains that he was pushed around a bit?

In fairness, Briere had a good second period. He even ended up plus-two on the night - quite the turn-around from his regular season minus-22 rating (which was only 949th in the League).

But Alex Ovechkin had the primary assist on the game-tying goal, then scored the game-winner, and ended up dishing out a game-high eight hits along the way. No one's going to be forgetting him any time soon... pal.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that you guys are all classless bandwagoners:

Let the record show that the Verizon Center fans - who discovered ice hockey about the time Ovechkin started putting up crazy numbers - cheered as Thoresen writhed in pain on the ice. No doubt the national media will be as harsh on the Washington fans as they would be if the same thing had happened in Philadelphia.

Right. We were cheering the injury and not the opportunity that a downed penalty killer created.

What's next from this band of classy Philly journos? I've got ten bucks on some kind of cheap shot related to crime and/or drug use in D.C. (hell, maybe they'll kill two birds with one hackneyed stone and mention Marion Barry).

H/t to TANK1 on the first link.