Hard Hitting Sports Analysis

 Max Talbot Sucks

May 11, 2023

Read time: 20 minutes

TLDR:

Max Talbot is the worst.

This is a story about heartbreak.

Ever since I can remember seeing things out of my eyes and thinking thoughts with my brain, I have been in love with the Detroit Red Wings.  The Red Wings and I have had our ups and downs.  Any relationship is subject to its ups and downs.  It’s totally normal. 

For me, sparks really flew during 2001.  I was five years old.  My grandfather was sitting at our kitchen table.  He was reading the Detroit Free Press and he sprung the news on me:

The Detroit Red Wings had just traded for future Hall of Famer Dominik Hasek.

This was amazing stuff.  It would be like the Detroit Lions trading for Patrick Mahomes or the Pistons getting Nikola Jokic.  One of the best of the best goaltenders in the league, a two-time MVP, and a six-time Vezina (Goalie of the Year) winner was coming to Detroit.

Then, the cherries on top.  They signed two more future Hall of Famers: Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.  Hull was famous for his Stanley Cup-winning overtime goal and his one-timer.   The puck would get passed to Hull, he’d drop to one knee, and rifle a laser beam at a goaltender’s head.  Luc Robitaille was a known stud who played most of his career with the Los Angeles Kings.  He played with Wayne Gretzky once upon a time and is one of the all-time leading goal-scorers in NHL history.  

In the Summer of 2001, the Red Wings were loading up and about to fire the league into the sun.  And fire away we did.  The Wings led the league in wins by a mile (six wins to be exact), stomped on the face of the entire league, and won the 2001-2002 Stanley Cup.  Confetti covered Woodward Avenue and the Wings won their third cup in six years. 

I was six years old.  These were my Gods.  This is how I became a total sports nutjob.

***

Granted, I barely remember anything.  And I was six years old, no matter how much my eyes and thoughts remember, it’s all kind of a blur. 

But I was ravenous about hockey.  I may have been six years old, but I knew these guys: Yzerman, Shanahan, McCarty, Fedorov, Lidstrom, Chelios, Draper, Datsyuk, Larionov, Holmstrom, Maltby, Hull, Robitaille, and Hasek…this was the season of all seasons to become an insane sports fanatic.  In the season’s wake, I got everything a six-year-old could dream of VHS tapes, t-shirts, mini sticks, and posters of everything Red Wings you can imagine.  Every day became about the Red Wings.  And my life was consumed by hockey. 

As a ravenous six-year-old who was madly in love with hockey, I had VHS tapes, mini sticks, skating lessons, and all the works when it came to hockey.  I knew these guys: Hull, Robitaille, and Hasek.  Now they were Red Wings.  We were all but certain, we were going to win the Stanley Cup.  And we did.  The 2002 Detroit Red Wings were Stanley Cup champions and today are considered one of the greatest hockey teams ever assembled.

At six years old, this was as maniacal as I had ever gotten in my life.  The Wings won.  I lifted a homemade Stanley Cup above my head.  Life was perfect.

***

Back then, this became a way of life.  Year after year, the Detroit Red Wings were one of the best teams in sports.  Even when old players left and new players came in, the Red Wings were always there to win almost every night and contend for the Stanley Cup. 

I didn’t realize it then, but what the Red Wings were doing was conditioning me for high expectations.  Expectations much too high for what reality actually is.  Cup contention every year for the better part of two decades isn’t a reality for most sports fans.  But it was for Red Wings fans.  Today, the Red Wings have missed the playoffs for seven straight years.  Those words come out of my mouth and I want to be sick.  If you told me at six years old, “The Detroit Red Wings have missed the playoffs seven straight years,” I would need a zamboni to clean up my vomit. 

So, it’s been a rough go the last few years.  It all started in 2009…well no, 2008.  And that’s where this story goes.

In 2008 and 2009, things were supposed to go a certain way until some maniacal fart-eater ruined it all.  Sorry, Max, this is all very personal to me.  So yeah, this third-line duster named Max Talbot ruined everything.  Max, simply put was one of the most clutch players in the history of the NHL.  And he ruined my life.  For all of his sins, his name is forever etched on the Stanley Cup.  It’s just too bad Max couldn’t be clutch in the 2004 World Juniors (with hugs and kisses, congrats on that silver medal).

Anyway, it’s time to dig deep into the recesses of my childhood for unforgiven trauma and the beginning of the end of my childhood. 

***

There is an obvious place where this story starts.  Any die-hard Detroit Red Wings fan is thinking the same thing:

“This story is going to start during the 2009 Stanley Cup Final, right?”

Nope.  I wish the story could start there.  But the fact of the matter is, Max Talbot has multiple offenses in this story.  On many occasions, Max has taken my sports fandom and crushed it.  He has spit in my face, reached into my chest, ripped my soul out, and stepped on it with his smelly hockey feet.  I bet he doesn’t even wash his jock strap.   

I will say, Max Talbot and all of his pine-riding ways deserves some kind words and some context.  For all intents and purposes, Talbot is a great hockey player.  Wikipedia.com has a neat quote about Max Talbot’s career.  It was a wild ride.

Here’s part of his amateur career:

“In the playoffs…he led the league in scoring with 44 points in 20 games as he captained the Olympiques to a QMJHL Championship.”

Great work, Max. 

At this point, I think all of us Red Wing fans would have been super stoked about Max’s personal development.  He was a young guy up and coming.  Max was getting points…a lot of points.  He was a captain.  He was a champion.  And he won the playoff MVP.  He followed these accomplishments up the next season…another championship, another playoff MVP, all while being captain.  It was all positivity and roses.  Max seemed like a real stand-up guy.  With two QMJHL championships and a gaggle of points, I think any one of us Wings fans would have loved to have had him on the team. 

By the time Max was winning championships in the QMJHL, Max was already drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins.  He was just waiting for his chance to get called up to the big leagues.  And during that time in the big leagues, the Pittsburgh Penguins weren’t on anyone’s radar.  While the Detroit Red Wings were contending for Stanley Cups, the Pittsburgh Penguins were scraping the bottom of the league’s standings.  No one could’ve thought that the plague disguised as a human being named Max Talbot would destroy the hearts of millions.

After the QMJHL, Max turned professional.  He started professionally for Pittsburgh’s minor-league team, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.  He played well enough to join the Pittsburgh Penguins for 48 games in 2005-2006 and 75 games in 2006-2007.  After that, he was in the NHL for good. 

The 2007-2008 season was the season for the Pittsburgh Penguins.  The famous franchise that was home to Mario Lemieux now housed a new generation of stars: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marc Andre-Fleury, and Kris Letang.  They helped build what currently stands in Pittsburgh.  The 2007-2008 season was the season they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final and were going to win.

They didn’t.  That is because the Detroit Red Wings were there.

In the 2007-2008 Stanley Cup Final, The Detroit Red Wings won their 4th Stanley Cup in 11 years and established themselves as the team, the best franchise, the example to follow for all sports over the prior decade.  Not the New England Patriots, not the San Antonio Spurs, the Detroit Red Wings were the best franchise in all of sports during this period.

The 2007-2008 Stanley Cup Final is where the heartbreak begins:

It was Game 5.

And I was there.  I was in Joe Louis Arena.  And Joe Louis Arena was ELECTRIC. 

It was happening.  The Detroit Red Wings were up 3-2 on Pittsburgh and there was one minute left in the game.  It was on everyone’s mind.  We were one minute away from seeing the fellas lift the Stanley Cup.  I was twelve years old and had just chest-bumped my mom.

Then the dream died.

With 35 seconds left in the game, Max Talbot dug into our hearts, ripped them out, and held them up to the crowd like a demented ghoul.  Joe Louis Arena died.  And Petr Sykora scored for Pittsburgh in triple overtime.  In that moment, I walked that slow walk back to our car and could not believe that we were 35 seconds away from pure sports ecstasy.  The top of the mountain was there and Max Talbot ruined it for everyone in that building. 

Then came the 2009 Stanley Cup Final. 

Once again, I was there.  I’m not sure how many Red Wing fans knew Max Talbot’s name at that point.  In 2008, he was merely a footnote in an otherwise Stanley Cup year.  Max was a nobody.  This year, he became the destroyer of worlds.   Max Talbot, once again, found a way to crush my spirit.  Max Talbot, a hockey terrorist, came out of nowhere to rip my heart to shreds again. He scored 2 goals in Game 7…the Penguins won 2-1.

And Max Talbot’s stupid face was happier than a kid in a candy store. 

If there is any rhyme or reason to this world at all, I am sure at the end of my life, when I stare the pearly gates or the fiery depths right in the face…either way, Max Talbot’s face will be there.  He’ll be eating Kit-Kats from his candy store and drinking champagne out of the Stanley Cup.  God will say, “This was the moment everything changed.”

And I’ll say, “No shit.”

***

I’m lucky that I’ve come to the other side in my relationship with Max.  I do forgive him for being a person who smells like rotten fish, but today he’s a-okay with me.  I have a respect for what he’s done to etch his name in time and space forever.  There is physical proof.  After the Pittsburgh Penguins won the 2008-2009 Stanley Cup, Max Talbot had his name engraved on the Stanley Cup.  His name will be in the Hall of Fame forever.  

He deserves it.  He may have been some feeble-minded dust muncher, but he also did his job when he was needed the most.  He was too clutch when the stakes were too high.  The Stanley Cup was there and he grabbed it and made it his.  When the spotlight burned the brightest, it was not the names we knew who came through (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, etc.), it was Max Talbot.  For that, he will always have my respect, no matter how much dust he munches.

For more information on guys who come seemingly out of nowhere to perform great in the greatest moments, Google these names:

Bucky Dent

Justin Freese

Buster Douglas

Aaron Boone

***

I have a strong distaste for unhappy endings.  Today, my love for the Detroit Red Wings is different.  It’s not that I love them less.  It’s that I am old.  We’ve come a long way.  I’m an old man and I’m waiting for the next great playoff run.  It’s been almost 10 years since the Detroit Red Wings’ last great playoff run.  And all I have is memories of broken dreams and crushing nightmares. 

Thanks, Max.

Even though Max Talbot found way after way to make me cry and cry and cry, I think he redeemed himself.  He did not redeem himself by becoming a Red Wings legend.  He did not redeem himself by curing disease and solving world hunger.  He did not even redeem himself by us shaking hands, saying a few kind words, and us getting on with our day.  None of that true and honest spirit of mankind stuff ever happened.  He redeemed himself in the same way this story began…he redeemed himself because I’m a total sports nutjob.

Here's the happy ending:

After Max’s glory years with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Max signed a contract with Pittsburgh’s in-state rival, the Philadelphia Flyers.  Yes, it is painful to see a player from your hometown team go to a rival.  But in this day in age, it happens all the time.  Us fans are all used to it.  It’s no biggy.  Today, most people have good-hearted feelings toward these players. 

“Go out and get your money, Max,” a fan might say.  “You’ve earned it!”

The relationship between Max and Pittsburgh was all holly-jolly.  In Max’s first season with the Philadelphia Flyers, he had a career year.  He scored 19 goals and 15 assists, the most goals and assists in his entire career.  A swell year for Max.  It was a well-earned contract indeed. 

Hey now, that does sound like a pretty happy ending.  Nope.  This is not a happy ending for Pittsburgh.  This is not even a happy ending for Max Talbot.  This is a happy ending for me.  Because again, I’m a total sports nutjob.  I hold grudges.  I have personal feelings towards people I’ve never met and idolize logos in cities I don’t live in.  I’m a halfway-loon and here is my happy ending:

In Max’s first year with the Philadelphia Flyers, Philadelphia made the playoffs.  Who did they play in the first round?  The Pittsburgh Penguins.  Who won?  Philadelphia.  Philly won 4 games to Pittsburgh’s 2.  Who scored 3 goals in 6 games, including 2 short-handed goals?  Max Talbot. 

That’s probably a 3/10 on the grudge-holding sports revenge satisfaction meter.  But I’ll take it.  It gives the story a happy ending.  Also, it redeems Max Talbot’s soul from the depths of the abyss. 

Thanks for the memories, Max.

Time for a Joke:

What do hockey players and magicians have in common?

Both do hat tricks