Well, it was unfortunate that the Caps lost in triple OT to the Rangers on Wednesday night. But as Jason Gay points out, there are so many more games to go. Gay is in a state about the lengthy NHL and NBA seasons (yes, even when it’s abbreviated).
As he notes in the Wall Street Journal,
Modern life may be swift and harsh, but the NBA and NHL playoffs just go on and on and on and on and on, like a Monday morning staff meeting, or a drum solo gone wrong. In the time it takes pro hockey and basketball to declare its winners, a reasonable person can get married, finish grad school, and learn the cello. A newborn baby can grow a playoff beard.
Let’s just take the opening round of the NBA Eastern Conference playoff between the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks. Anyone who watched the Heat’s 100-67 victory in Saturday’s Game 1 knows that the Heat are a determined basketball team eager to win a title, and the Knicks probably need a semester in Prague to find themselves. Still, the NBA will drag this thing out like an Oscar speech. Game 2 is Monday night. Then Game 3 will be played…Thursday night in New York, allowing both teams to hitchhike up the eastern seaboard, camping out under the stars. Game 4 is Sunday—you have to wait a week and a day, just for a sweep! Game 5 is Wednesday, May 9. Game 6 is in November. Should the Knicks-Heat series go all seven games, it will be completed at the same time as the Hilton Garden Inn on the moon.
Pro hockey dawdles even worse. The NHL has already completed its opening round of playoff action—some of it was pretty thrilling—but you have to keep in mind that the first round of this year’s playoffs actually began in February 1975.
And he’s just getting started.