It has always seemed to me that the ultimate indignity in hockey, beyond all others by a fair distance, is to concede a goal after you've put your goalie back in following an empty-net goal.

To pull your goalie means you're trailing by a goal or two with a handful of minutes left, and for the other team to score into that empty net means the game is definitively over. For that opponent to then come down and put another puck past the guy they already beat only piles on the humiliation.

What I failed to consider, in retrospect, is this simple question: "What if the other team scored that goal-after-the-empty-netter to extend your season-opening losing streak to six games?"

And further, what if that season-opening losing streak came when you had more or less declared once and for all that any an