I was going to post a severly belated State of the Sharks thing first, but this just pissed me off and prompted me to post this instead.

The definition of the word “choke,” as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, is: “To fail to perform effectively because of nervous agitation or tension, especially in an athletic contest.”

Now yes, by that definiton, the Sharks choked. I’m not going to contest it – they did “fail to perform effectively” and lost in 6 games in the first round to the eighth seed. Not exactly the outcome I was hoping for. True, that eighth seed was probably the strongest eighth seed in the past decade and took the defending Stanley Cup champs (and this year’s favorites) to 7 games in the next round, but it doesn’t matter. The Sharks could have come out with more fire, or at least played Game 6 better, but didn’t. They failed, and that’s it.

But what about another #1 seed, one that fell in the second round to a #6 seed that wasn’t even expected to make the playoffs? Oh no, that’s not choking, that sixth-seeded team obviously has clutch playoff goaltending and goal-scorers, and the top seed has lots of injuries, so that’s not a choke. Right. Its not like Anaheim won the Cup two years ago or anything. What? They did? And virtually every top player on the Sharks had an injury they wouldn’t be playing through in the regular season? Okay, well then, fuck you.

The hypocrisy that the Sharks face astounds me. Every time they fail to achieve the level expected of them (i.e. win the Stanley Cup), they are labeled chokers. I mean, picture this: the second-seeded team in the conference is matched up against the fifth seed, who happens to be one of their biggest (if not biggest) rivals. The second seed falls behind in the series, but claws their way back in. However, the fifth seed ultimately wins the series in Game 7 (or the equivalent).

This has happened once this year, and once last year. Last year, the Sharks fell to the Stars in the fourth OT of Game 6, the equivlanet of the first OT of Game 7. This year, the Captials fell to the Penguins in Game 7 (in a blow-out, I might add). One of these was a choke, the other wasn’t. And while you can argue the semantics of a Game 6 vs. a Game 7, the fact is that essentially these two situations are the same, and yet the Sharks are the only ones stuck with the “choker” label.

Then there’s the whole issue with individual players being labeled playoff chokers, despite some performing just as well as those so-called “playoff warriors,” but I’m not going to get into that right now. I just wanted to get this off my chest, and so here it is. Wooo.

Peace. WAR