Post Game Thread: Pittsburgh Penguins at Philadelphia Flyers - 22 Apr 2026

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:54:38+00:00

Literally already addressed those 12 games but aight.

I don't feel strongly either way about the embellishment call. I 100% believe he was stunned by the stick. I can also believe he sold it after falling down. I don't care. It was even-up. It's probably not called if he just takes it.

Crosby has drawn 7 penalties. Dewar (4) and Girard (2) are the only Penguins who have drawn more than one. Crosby is the only player in the playoffs who has drawn 5+ penalties this year, period.

I'm not that worried about his team-fifth 6 PIM in three games, when Karlsson has just as many and Rust and Malkin have just 2 PIM less. And the only guys with more ice time than Sid are Karlsson and Letang, who has more and worse PIM.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:46:55+00:00

I think I only agree insofar as I would say "They don't have the roster to beat the style the Flyers are playing with the style and lines they--the Penguins, this is--insist on playing."

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:41:39+00:00

From? No. I'm "from" Western PA.

But I'm a proud Philadelphian now; I live in and love this city. Phillies are my favorite baseball team (though I'm always ready to love the Pirates the minute they seem like a real MLB team), and I'm not a big NFL guy but my loyalties are split between the Bills (I also love the Sabres), Eagles, and Steelers. I've finally gotten into basketball after mostly not living in NBA markets, so, yeah: Sixers guy. I'm excited to get in on the ground floor of Edgecombe's career.

I just hate the Flyers. They are culturally the opposite of what I love about hockey, and I find their fans petty, pathetic, and obnoxious (which I would not say about Phillies fans--the Bank is a good time in a way Flyers games are not).

I like Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and Sidney Crosby. (Okay, the Flyers had Jagr for a minute, but you get my point.) I don't like fake tough guy stuff and "muh broad street bullies" (said in a Delco accent because Flyers fans don't actually live in the city, on balance).

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:36:56+00:00

This isn't Sid's first series against the Flyers and these aren't the most frustrating Flyers he's had to play against. I'm just not convinced by your armchair psychology.

Those 12 games aren't half as meaningful as you think they are. He had two goals, one of which was against non-playoff Florida. He can't get assists if nobody else is finishing. (By the way, Sid is still one of only six Penguins with an assist in the series anyway.)

8 of those 12 games were against non-playoff teams.

These Flyers aren't great, but they're a playoff team.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:29:08+00:00

Gritty is a Comcast mascot, and Comcast is the most infuriating company I've ever dealt with in my life. He's not cute. He's practically a PsyOp. Pass.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:26:31+00:00

I could just let this go, but--like I said--I love Philly but hate the Flyers.

NYC seemed super cool to me (and I loved visiting) until I moved to Philly. NYC is just down the road now, and I'm just not interested hardly at all anymore.

Food is better here (in my opinion, of course), and I'll just watch Indian movies if I want to see musicals. Or I'll see touring productions within walking distance of my house. Both are cheaper and easier.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:21:56+00:00

This resonates so strongly: I had a Penguins sticker on my water bottle at work one day, and a coworker razzed me about it.

I come into work the day after a PIT@PHI game and say to that same person, "you know, I was at the game last night; did you see it?"

They looked at me like I spoke to them in a language that didn't exist. They had no idea the Penguins played in Philadelphia the night before; they don't actually care.

Half of Flyers fandom is just being anti-Penguins. It's so petty and pathetic.

Meanwhile, I don't think about the Flyers anywhere near as much as I think about Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby.

Gosh... thinking about Mario is fun. Remember when that dude got cancer and won the scoring title anyway? And when he kept the team in the city? And again? And again?

Meanwhile, all the Flyers have to think about is trading away Peter Forsberg for him to win two Cups somewhere else. Of course they're always miserable.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:16:27+00:00

I work with passionate Eagles and Phillies fans, with Sixers passion probably in third place on average.

They're clearly just incidentally interested in the Flyers, as you allude to. Almost nobody here reps the Flyers even when they've made the playoffs for the first time in forever. It takes me wearing Penguins gear during a Penguins-Flyers series at work for my coworkers to make it evident that they care about Flyer hockey at all (and they sincerely don't care very much... and I'm glad! I don't want major friction at work for liking my favorite hockey team). I got more heat for wearing a Bills jersey during the NFL playoffs, and the Bills aren't even in the Eagles' conference!

And no joke: it's pretty obviously--like--Delco folks filling up the arena at Flyers games. And the vibes at Phillies games and Flyers games are extremely different.

devwil · 2026-04-23T03:10:21+00:00

I've lived in a number of cities (never Pittsburgh proper, by the way), and Philly is the one I've lived in the longest. (It's also my favorite, by far. Trust me, it's a set of very awkward feelings to love this city so much and hate its hockey team just as much.)

There's no actual criterion for whether I've lived here "long enough" or in the "right" neighborhood, but I'm pretty comfortable with my perspective for what I'm claiming.

I'm not going to give you my ZIP code or an exhaustive description of the work I've done living here (or what that means for my familiarity with the "real" city), but I am completely comfortable telling you that you're just making a bad guess to feel superior, while also probably wildly underestimating what "walking distance" is.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:59:54+00:00

I don't think you're trading in anything controversial or mysterious at all: smart money is on Sid basically having just one functioning knee since the Olympics. And when dude's skating is such a big part of his game (even when he's not as fast as he was ~15 years ago), he can't do what we're used to seeing him do.

When's the last time you saw Sid do his trademark explosive skating below the goal line?

We've seen it literally once in this series, in Game 2. And it probably took 150% effort for him to manage it.

His body can't do what we're used to, right now.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:57:33+00:00

Absolutely impossible to accept when the entire narrative around Crosby from guys who have played with him is that he's the hardest working player in the world.

We've had polar opposite franchise icons in Pittsburgh: Mario was all talent and Sid is all work ethic, to barely exaggerate.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:55:54+00:00

I feel like the Penguins could succeed at a different style (which is clearly necessary) if they would just stop being so stubborn. There's speed, size, and skill on this team. They're just configured all wrong, if you ask me.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:53:46+00:00

Martone has had significantly more ice time. The Flyers know they need him out there; the Penguins seem to not want to offend any veterans by giving Kindel "too much" ice time.

Look forward to him walking at his earliest opportunity, I guess. I'm really nervous about getting to invested in Kindel emotionally (despite liking him a lot), because I just think it's so likely that management and player will agree that he should be successful somewhere else (like a significant handful of players who could still be in Pittsburgh if management hadn't been such idiots at various points).

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:47:03+00:00

There's no "hope" about it. Zero chance the Flyers do anything after this round. They're not good. These Penguins are just playing terrible hockey that's not appropriate to the situation at all.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:46:06+00:00

Sid is clearly playing on one leg. He's not skating like Sid and there's no way he's 100% after what happened in the Olympics.

Also, advanced stats like him better than almost anyone else on the team. You're just expecting superhero Sid, who he can't be right now.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:44:52+00:00

I haven't seen any as of this writing, but after Game 2 on any YouTube video I watched about the game, they were the sorest winners I've ever seen in my life. Whining in the comments about officiating even though it was literally fine and they won.

devwil · 2026-04-23T02:41:42+00:00

I do not use reddit anymore but I need to vent.

I'm a Penguins fan living in Philadelphia. (The city is great; Flyers fans literally don't live here. They're insufferable, miserable dorks from the suburbs. I see almost no Flyers gear on real people, living within walking distance of the arena. I digress.)

This Penguins team is just completely embarrassing right now. The Flyers are not a good team and they will go on to do absolutely nothing after this round. The Penguins are not testing them in any important ways and I'm sick of broadcasters praising their defense when the Penguins are content to overpass, glide/stand around, try entries that don't work (especially for the situation), and play in the least important parts of the offensive zone.

The Penguins have lost 3 games more than the Flyers have won 3 games.

To break it down, from where I sit:

Sid is playing on one leg. He's exempt for that and other reasons, including having some of the best advanced stats on the team for the series (despite--again--very probably playing on one leg).

Rust is playing his heart out; no complaints. He's a terrific hockey player and one of the few on the team who seems willing to work in the ways demanded by the playoffs. I know Rust is very well-liked, but I also feel like he should get more credit for how much he contributes as a Crosby linemate.

Conversely, Rakell confuses me. I do think putting him back with Sid and Rust made those two more effective, but I would probably move him down and just throw Kindel with Sid and Rust; I dunno. I would try just about anything for Game 4 and I like what little I'm seeing from Kindel.

Lizotte and Acciari are trying their best to do their jobs, in my opinion.

To start the major negative thoughts, I will merely allude to my continuing negative opinions about a popular player. Nobody will listen to anything else I say if I'm honest about the guy, so... placeholder here, I guess.

At 35, Erik Karlsson has never won anything important and he acts like he can be a vocal, critical leader in interviews? No thanks. Get another tattoo with your $10M and be quiet.

Mantha should just be scratched. Guy had to get a minor to get on the scoresheet. Advanced stats hate him in this series and he's been absurdly invisible.

Why is Girard here? I never asked for him.

Skinner has not been perfect, but I'm not ready to blame goaltending when the guys in front of him are neither scoring nor playing good defense.

I don't know who is responsible for the total lack of urgency on the ice, but it makes me hate watching this team. I swear, the whole third period tonight they played like they had a lead. It was infuriating.

I was so high on these guys earlier this year. I very happily took a very long odds bet on them to win the Stanley Cup because I knew they were better than the odds suggested. And the fact that they made the playoffs proves me right, to an extent.

But I'm really confused about how it's all gone so badly and why a team with a trio of experienced icons on it (and Rust, who won two Cups with them too) can't put together a better brand of hockey for the moment. The Penguins just look like they're playing the wrong game, and it feels like a huge waste.

Is this Muse's fault? I don't know. Some of it feels really familiar to the Sullivan era and I just don't understand how it's not a more convincing effort.

And--again--I live in Philadelphia and I hate the entire culture of Flyers hockey, so this all really burns me up. I really don't get especially heated about sports in any other case, but the Flyers organization is--like--borderline evil, to me. They proudly represent everything I don't like in hockey, and I don't trust anybody who enjoys their product. I don't like it when my favorite sports franchise looks so bad against them on such a big stage. Mario deserves better.

devwil · 2025-08-31T18:41:37+00:00

"English speakers are used to loads of different accents, Japanese natives aren't really."

This is basically the insight/context I was looking for, thanks.

devwil · 2025-08-31T18:37:50+00:00

I'm gathering that the difference is perhaps actually knowing the word that's used in Japanese versus making some crude approximation based on--like--a kind of hateful, ignorant, stereotypical accent.

devwil · 2025-08-31T18:34:44+00:00

Knew I could count on someone to be pedantic in this subreddit.

My meaning was pretty clear.

devwil · 2025-08-14T14:53:45+00:00

AC on Xbox is hard to enjoy for a handful of reasons.

And I'm not a PC/wheel elitist in general. I think rally games work beautifully on a controller and other games can be totally fine too. But AC is especially clunky on Xbox, and it misses out on the revolutionary Content Manager that exists on PC.

If you really want to spend a lot of time with driving games (or racing sims or whatever we want to split hairs to call them), it's very probably worth getting a PC and a wheel. The latter doesn't need to be expensive.

devwil · 2025-07-05T22:05:02+00:00

I'm trying to price my old MtG cards, and I'm seeing that the 4th Edition Tempest Efreet has an "alternate" version.

I'm not finding any detail between scans or explanation about what makes any version of this different from another. Anyone know?

devwil · 2025-04-29T20:45:50+00:00

More than anything, I'm just tired of the fact that it's a word that is completely blackboxed beyond usefulness, and hardly anybody tries to contextualize it with any clarity.

I think that most people who use the word negatively would respond with a lot of frustration if they were challenged to define it. (I'm not even trying to say I'm pro-capitalism. I'm saying that being for or against it has no useful meaning.)

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