It’s come to me to clean this one up. Oh joy. I made sure to have my new favorite snack before I attempted this (peanut butter and rib belly sandwich. Trust me, it’s the tits). There’s a few games every year where it feels like something has truly gone wrong. And then you take a breath, a moment, and realize you didn’t learn anything new. It’s just some things about that particular defeat rankle more than normal.

The Avs are the Hawks’ bogey team. It doesn’t matter where they are in the standings or how they are playing. They’re just going to play well against the Hawks. It’s been going on for three seasons now. Maybe even five.

And hey, that pisses us all off. Because by any measure the Avs are not a good hockey team. They are coached by a lunatic who isn’t very good at his job (so might the Hawks be, but that’s another discussion for another time). They’ve learned all the wrong lessons about last year. They have annoying players up and down the lineup who have been made more annoying by their dumbass coach. No getting around it, not pounding them into dust sucks.