FanHouse

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (What is it with newspapers and long-winded names?) have jumped onto the blogging bandwagon by giving some white space to "Rawhide" Bill Tiller. His premise is simple: Rant and rave about the game from the perspective of ye olde average fanboy.

Well, a passionate fan's perspective is exactly what we get in his latest entry "No Excuses For This Loss".

Thursday night you took the ice in Raleigh, North Carolina after having ONE HUNDRED AN SEVENTEEN HOURS OFF between games!!! Between this and the last game YOU played your opponents played TWO GAMES! And you guys STILL let up FORTY-SIX shots on the FREAKIN' GOAL!!! Did you give up 20 in the first again? NO...YOU GAVE UP TWENTY-ONE!! The man who faced, and turned away, all 21 shots called it, "a big joke". Only...no one is laughing!

You gave up THREE %$#@! Shots LESS on Kari then you allowed the Islanders given NINETY-SIX more hours of rest!!! Hey...maybe if we give you a %$#@& MONTH off you can get it back down to, oh I dunno ... THIRTY-FIVE??

Now, I understand that watching your team get thoroughly outplayed is a rather frustrating experience. The one aspect that any team should be able to control is the amount of effort they put out while on the ice.

The average fanboy, however, seems to leap to the conclusion that when their team gets badly outplayed, it's simply a lack of effort on part of their home squad.

Why is it that we (I am guilty of this at times as well) so quickly jump onto the 'lack of effort' bandwagon, instead of looking at the real reason why our team got smoked like salmon?

So, the Atlanta Thrashers got badly out-shot by the Hurricanes. Let's step back and look at this from an outsider's perspective.

1. The Carolina Hurricanes have one of the best offence's in the NHL. They rank 4th in Goals For and 2nd in Shots on Goal.
2. The Atlanta Thrashers have one of the worst defenses in the NHL. They are 26th in Goals Against and give up the 2nd most Shots Against in the league.

So, you combine a great offence, a boisterous home crowd, and one of the league's worst defenses, and you'll likely get a lot of shots on goal for the Hurricanes. Why is it a shock that the Canes piled up so many shots on Lehtonen? Wouldn't have you expected that?

The root of the problem comes from the players and coaches, themselves, who refuse to acknowledge what really happened on the ice. Check out Mark Recchi's comments after his team got thrashed.

"It's pretty disappointing to be honest with you. To come out and play a game like this that means so much - we're just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole, and it's frustrating. We all have to take a look at ourselves right now."

Yep, nothing in their about how the Hurricanes played well and kept the Thrashers bottled up like a paper ship. Nothing in the quote about Carolina simply being THE BETTER TEAM.

Coaches, fans, players, their mothers, and broadcasters, are seemingly unwilling to admit that their team lost to a team that was simply better than theirs.

Why is that? Why is it always that you can only beat yourself in hockey? Would admitting losing to a better team really be all that hard to do? Is it so ingrained in the hockey culture that we'll always be subject to this ceaseless lying and self-delusion?

Really, if it was a lack of effort that cost the Thrashers that game, wouldn't it be an easy fix for the Thrashers to just come out and play their hearts out? Why didn't the Thrashers simply go balls-out in the third period?

Well, since we know the real answer really wasn't just a lack of effort, we also know what the true answers to shoe questions are. The Canes simply outclassed the Thrashers, and that is the end of it.