I am sure somewhere in Philly Dave Schultz when he heard the exchange below ate his TV off the wall in anger. His Flyers would have never been reduced to being called “whiners” by an opponents coach. They played their game, took the consequences and the results and were Champions. This version of the “Bullies”? Well…….not so much
Philadelphia Flyers captain Mike Richards had a lot to say Wednesday night about the quality of the officiating in Game Four. He was stunned at receiving a five-minute major for elbowing Buffalo Sabres winger Patrick Kaleta. Why such a harsh penalty, he wondered, especially when the Sabres “are getting away with murder.”
“I just feel that they’re doing a lot of whining,” Ruff said. “They’re really doing a lot of whining. I didn’t hear any whining when they had 10 power plays in Philly and I don’t hear any whining when the power plays in the first game were lopsided. But all of a sudden there’s all this whining about we’re getting away with murder? That’s a bunch of crap. That’s for the media, that’s for the officials to read, that’s for ‘Here, let’s get the next call.’ That’s a bunch of crap. Let’s just play.
“We’re just playing,” Ruff said. “There hasn’t been one word about officiating out of us. If they want to cry about the officiating or whine about different calls, go ahead. Go ahead.”
We should point point out for non-hockey fans the Flyers were the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference and the Sabres #7
When I heard this I knew Flyers were in trouble. When somebody else is the reason you are not doing well, you have a problem. Now perhaps Richards ought to have pointed out it was a 1-0 game and Daniel Breire on this play below had enough time to order a pizza, have it delivered and the eat it before he had to shoot on Ryan Miller. He proceeed to shoot the puck righ into Miller’s glove.
Perhaps Richard’s himself was trying top deflect questions from the obvious….his “going turtle” in a tussle with 20 year old Tyler Myers. “Going turtle” refers to a playing curling up in a turtle like posture on the ice rather than taking on an opponent.
He was mad at getting a 5 min. penalty for the below elbow to the face of Patrick Kaleta:
Richards claimed he should not have received the penalty because he was simply defending himself. Right……except the problem with that is the NHL has said you cannot “defend yourself” with an elbow to the face of an opponent….so penalty rightfully called. In all reality with all the suspensions we have seen this post-season, Richards should be a bit relived his is playing at all in game 5 tonight.
Further the Flyers to a man in the locker room post game (and for every game of the series) have said they were the better team on the ice and controlled the play. Denial….. As Bill Parcells once famously said when asked if his team was better that the 2-5 record they had at the time, “You are what your record says you are”. The series is tied 2-2…….that means the two teams have been, um….equal? Unless the Flyers begin to stop blaming the refs and stop thinking the “better team” gets shut out in 2 of 4 games in a series, were I a Flyers fan, I’d be very worried.
Contrast that to Sabres coach Lindy Ruff’s comments on his teams power play execution…. “When it comes to the power play, it had some bad passing, bad decisions, where I think that part of the game got away from us, too, a little bit. But those are the guys that have to make a difference. Coaches can’t skate out there and say, ‘Pass it five feet ahead of the guy instead of five feet behind him.’ We had some tough passes. We had some tough decisions. We looked pretty bad on that five-minute major.” Who is to blame? Ruff and his team are taking responsibility for results, not blaming someone else or denying the problem.
So, what does all of this have to do with investing? How many times have you heard this? “If it was not for the Fed pumping in billions of dollars this economy would not be growing”? I think I hear it everyday. Problem is they are, and it has been. If you have missed it, or been short it and lost money during it, don’t blame the Fed. Blame yourself. You missed the wide open shot when the Fed said they would do everything they could to “foster growth” if you did not believe them or you got your elbow up and did not expect to lose money by being short this market, look in the mirror.
Have you ever said this? “I was right on the investment, just my timing was off so I lost on it”….no you weren’t “right” on it if you lost money just like one of two teams locked in a 2-2 series is not “better” than the other. You are what you are and the investment was what it was….
In either scenario you are bound to make the same mistakes again because until you take responsibility for the action (or lack thereof) and see the results for what they truly are, you have little hope of turning things around.
There are plenty of unknowns out there when investing. You could be long at 10am and at 10:30 some nut lets a nuke go and you lose serious money in a flash. Conversely you could buy shares of stock “A” at 3:30 pm only to see it get a buyout offer at 4:30 and you make a ton. Those are events we cannot predict and are beyond our control. What we can do, what we need to do, is eliminate the self-inflicted wounds. These are the wounds we inflict by straying from our discipline (whether it be fundamental, TA, momentum etc), blindly following some talking head on TV, do not do you homework etc.
Those are the wounds that are the same as missing the open net or getting the elbow up into an opponents face…… and then blaming someone else for the unpleasant end results. The beauty of both sports and investing is one can turn things around in an instant with a simple reality check. If you do anything long enough you are going to hit bad stretches, the people who are able to task themselves with changing the conditions they find themselves are the ones who persever. Those investors who cannot do it end up going bust or walking away from the market with what little they have left, never to returns. Those sports teams that can’t, get eliminated by teams they should beat.
LATE Update: The Flyers gave up two soft goals in period one tonight and ended up losing Game 5 4-3 in OT. They now head back to Buffalo for a game Sunday facing elimination….. I wonder who is to blame tonight????? The Zamboni driver?