Okay. So that was really ugly.

It's 5:30ish on Sunday. The game was over, like, 19 hours ago and I'm ready to stop reliving it in my head. The stupid penalties. The missed chances. The bad timing. It was all pretty gross to watch as a Penguins fan. It was hard to take. If I looked at it objectively, which I'm not quite ready to do yet, I'm sure it was like watching hockey school. There was red everywhere. But like I said, I'm not ready to be objective. We fucked up and we paid for it mightily. We need to get back and regroup. Because what else can you do? There isn't anything else... except maybe take an anger management class or two. It has to be put behind us. Daddy Gonchar said, when we were two games in and two games down, "it isn't over." And it isn't over now either. I know our D and our goalie will take the blame for this game. Our D did all they could to keep that puck out of our zone. There was no follow through. A few of our forwards played really well. A few. It left our D playing behind the wings for a lot of the game. And it left our goalie under a lot of pressure. I haven't watched any postgame or off-day things today. I haven't looked at the newspaper. I haven't watched the news. I haven't even looked at the photos on the Penguins site. (As much as I want to see if there's a picture of JStaal with his fist in some guy's face, it happened pretty much simultaneously with some guy's fist in Letang's face... and I don't want to see that.) I'm a fan. I have done all the reliving I need to do in my head. More than I needed to do really. It isn't my job to analyze the things that went wrong. It isn't my job to figure out what needs to be done to get things back on track. It isn't my job to regroup. Because I don't have to. I never stopped believing in this team. It is my job to have faith that they know what they need to do and to believe that they will do it.

Because you know what? Detroit took this one over and we let them. They got in our heads and they made a lot of us forget what we should be doing. BigFatGoalie got his shut out. The robot that is the Red Wings put on a show. Yay for them. Yay for Detroit. But we're back in Pittsburgh now. You're coming to our house now. As much as you probably like to think you might, you're not going to win in our house. No way that's happening again. And as much as I hoped that we'd win it here, it'll still be pretty sweet to win it in Detroit on Friday.

Regroup. Gather it all back up and keep it all together. Our boys are back home. We have to show them we have faith in them. We have to do our jobs and help them keep it together. Don't give up. Don't lose faith. Don't stop believing. This isn't over.

Let's Go Pens!!!