Be bitter, boo Sens

I was in seventh grade, and there was this girl.

I think most of us have had a similar… I was in seventh grade, and there was this girl.

I think most of us have had a similar experience at some point in our lives.

She was the most popular, most beautiful girl in school (at least she was in seventh grade).

And don’t worry, this is actually a sports column — just hang in there for a bit.

But, about this girl – she was great. And for a long time, I thought I had a chance.

She’d let me take her to dances and I’d buy her flowers. She’d laugh at my jokes while we sat next to each other during the final minutes of lunch. As far as I knew, I was money.

But then, out of nowhere, I get a call on New Year’s Eve and I find out she’s going out with my best friend.

Now my best friend and this girl, who I had been obsessing over for months, are going out and I’m sitting home on Friday nights watching TGIF alone.

How am I supposed to feel about this?

I bring this otherwise-irrelevant story up because lately I’ve heard a lot of people saying that we – Penguin fans – should want Ottawa to win the Stanley Cup over Anaheim. And that pisses me off.

I’m sure a lot people just stopped reading this column because there was a mention of hockey and they realized hockey is, in fact, neither basketball nor football. But for the few of you, like me, who’d rather see the hard-hitting, sudden-death overtime finale of the deciding Buffalo-Ottawa game in the Eastern Conference Finals rather than a horse taking a stroll, let’s continue.

A lot of people I’ve talked to are under the assumption that the more games Ottawa wins, the better we’ll look for losing to them.

But that just simply isn’t a healthy, natural response.

As humans, we are inherently bad losers – every last one of us.

When you see millionaire athletes talking to reporters after the game and they say how much they respect the team they lost the big game to, we all know it’s a lie. Their publicist tells them to say that, because if they said “I want Tom Brady to choke on a broken window,” like they were thinking, they would get yelled at and maybe beaten up by a few linebackers.

From John McEnroe to Sidney Crosby, we all hate losing, and hate the team that beat us.

It’s the reason most of the world hates America. And why most of America hates the Yankees. And why most of the Yankees hate salary caps. We, as humans, are meant to hate that which limits our abilities and demonstrates that we are losers.

And regardless of how good of a loser we are, we still lost.

As much as we would love to look less like losers, revenge is in our blood.

That girl we were talking about in the beginning of the article, she’s still with my best friend. He’s no longer my best friend. And I don’t care about her anymore – she got ugly and annoying – but I still feel sour about that New Year’s Eve that I’ll never get back almost a decade ago.

And I’m sure that girl or boy you thought about that you lost all those years ago still lingers in the back of your head.

When it happened – when you got screwed over – you didn’t say, “Well, the longer they go out, the better I’ll feel about the heart-breaking depression and long-time distrust of the opposite sex.”

No, you wish them, deep down, a long and painful break up as soon as possible. You know, something to do with cheating, pregnancy or irritating STDs.

I’m kidding, of course – kind of.

My point is, it is our responsibility as Penguins fans to hate Ottawa, at the very least until the end of this season. I don’t care how much you hate the Ducks for being named after the movie that gave Joshua Jackson a career, it’s your duty to want the Senators to fail as embarrassingly as possible.

Ottawa winning will not give the Penguins a re-do. Regardless of what happens to Ottawa, we continue on to a new season in October. So why not get some cheap relief from the Senators’ agony and wish for the worst?

And trust me, no matter how many games Ottawa wins or loses, Evgeni Malkin’s going to feel the same way about sucking in the playoffs, Marc-Andre Fleury will still be underrated and Josef Melichar and Rob Scuderi will still not belong in the NHL.

So, as the Stanley Cup Finals roll on tonight, do the only thing you really can do for the Pens – wish some nasty karma on Ray Emery’s glove hand, curse Daniel Alfredsson’s right shoulder or throw stuff at Chris Neil’s head.

As for that girl or boy who stabbed you in the back in grade school – may I suggest sneaking dog manure under their driver-side door handle?