There I was, getting Chipotle and listening to Bullseye, when I get the notification above. Apparently, Alex Ovechkin has guaranteed a win in game seven, and Barry Trotz loves it.
The second part is true. The first part is not.
https://twitter.com/EdFrankovic/status/597783753805668352
Ian wrote about this last night. You can see the video yourself. Here’s what Ovi said:
We’re going to come back and win the series.
If he followed that up with a Men’s Wearhouse tagline or a “take it to #thebank,” that would be a guarantee.
Ya know, like Mark Messier did back in 1994. Except Messier didn’t make a guarantee either, darn it. He just said, “we’re going to go in and win game six,” but yellow journalists and blowhards warped that into a guarantee to goad the athletes in interviews and fill column inches.
Vigneault didn’t take the bait.
Rangers' Vigneault on Ovechkin guarantee: "I would expect both players on both teams to want to come in and win."
— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) May 11, 2015
A guarantee is a transaction. What Messier and Ovechkin and a thousand other stars on the brink of elimination did is what any human would do: have a positive mental attitude, a little P.M.A.
And it does not matter. Confidence is important, but guarantees don’t matter. All this bloviating means nothing.
Here’s what matters: Alex Ovechkin has been playing wonderfully, but can he hit the back of the net? Can Joel Ward follow up his monster game with another big game seven? Can Braden Holtby keep his inhuman rampage going? Troy Brouwer has been making plays, but can he score? Can the Caps play the first ten minutes with the same ferocity they played the last?
Those questions won’t get answered until puck drop on Wednesday night.
