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Game 7: For All the Marbles. Do or Die. No Tomorrow
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems only fitting that we’d squeeze one more game of awesomeness from this year’s Stanley Cup Finals.
If you’ve been watching this postseason slate of hockey closely, it’s hard not to appreciate the exceptional ride it’s been — more so than in most years. There have been so many signature moments, so many unique story lines:
•The epic first installment of Ovechkin vs. Crosby/Malkin, a seven-game cliffhanger that saw all but two games decided by one goal.
• The coming-out party for Blackhawks prodigies Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane during Chicago’s run to the Western Conference Finals.
• The memorable aforementioned second round, with three of the four series going the seven-game distance.
• San Jose making yet another way-too-early playoff exit, likely their most spectacular flameout in team history, as the President’s Trophy winners bowed in six games in the opening round.
• And, of course, the hockey marvel that is the Detroit Red Wings, who just find ways to keep winning, no matter what.
I am by no means a Red Wings fan, inclined to dislike all the old Norris Division rivals of the Minnesota North Stars team I grew up rooting for. Those old prejudices have faded considerably over time (It still irks me that Gary Bettman and the NHL placed the Wild in a division with such obvious geographic foes in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Colorado … makes total sense, right?). At this point in my life I find myself simply appreciating teams and players for what they are, or at least I try to, and what the Red Wings are is the best team in North American professional sports, period.
The Red Wings have only three players on their roster who were first-round draft picks, and only one that they selected themselves (Dan Cleary, No. 13 overall in 1997). The other two, Brad Stuart and Marian Hossa, were drafted by other teams and acquired through trades. The other three teams that advanced to the conference finals had several more first-rounders on their rosters: Carolina had nine, Pittsburgh has eight and Chicago had seven.
Pavel Datsyuk and Nicklas Lidstrom are arguably two of the 10 most valuable hockey players to their team as there are in the NHL, and neither of them has played a healthy game in this series. Datsyuk has been outstanding the past two games, with two assists and a plus-2 mark in a 5-0 Game 5 shutout at home, and made some spectacular plays to set up scoring chances in both. But the Wings had to do without him in the first four games of the series, as well as the final three games with Chicago in the Western Conference Finals.
Lidstrom, on the other hand, has found a way to stay on the ice, missing only two games with his “lower-body injury” in the series with Chicago. The six-time Norris Trophy winner has two assists and is plus-3 in this series, but he’s looked pretty wobbly, and while defensively he’s been pretty solid, offensively he isn’t as spry as he usually would be.
Despite that, the Wings have hardly missed a beat. They have proven themselves to be the deepest team in hockey, that’s for sure, and even with a banged-up Datsyuk and Lidstrom, Detroit is the consensus favorite on their home ice tonight for Game 7, and for good reason.
Justin Abdelkader dressed in place of Datsyuk early in the series, and all he did was score a goal each in Games 1 and 2 — the first two goals of his NHL career. Darren Helm has been a revelation in these playoffs, scoring four goals and playing solid at both ends of the ice in all situations, including one of the greatest penalty-killing shifts I’ve ever seen in the Game 5 clincher against Chicago before eventually notching the winning score in overtime. Dan Cleary has stepped up with nine goals (three game-winners), and is fourth on the squad with 15 points. Valtteri Filppula is third on the team with 16 points in the playoffs (three goals, 13 helpers), and Lidstrom’s countryman, bruising defenseman Niklas Kronwall, has helped pick up the slack on the back line.
Prediction time
As the cliché goes, you throw out all the stats for a Game 7. So with that in mind, I’m picking the Penguins to win tonight, despite an avalanche of numbers that don’t support their candidacy. The key is Marc-Andre Fleury, who was absolutely brilliant in Game 6, not so much in Game 5 and several other contests this spring.
As I said a few weeks ago, I don’t fully trust Fleury, and he was awful in getting pulled from Game 5 last Saturday. Some people wondered if he’d be haunted by that performance in Game 6, but he wasn’t. To his credit he’s been at his best when the Penguins were in their most dire straits in these playoffs, and in 2008. The signature game of his career so far was his 55-save performance in Game 5 in Detroit last year, when he was the main reason the Pens were able to force a sixth game. He wasn’t able to reproduce that effort in Game 6, and actually knocked Henrik Zetterberg’s eventual game-winning goal into his own net, sitting on top of a relatively innocuous rebound in the crease after losing sight of it.
In the second round this season, Pittsburgh beat Washington 6-2 in an anticlimactic Game 7 on the road, but a nearly forgotten moment in that game came early when Fleury denied Alex Ovechkin on a stone-cold breakaway when the game was scoreless, flashing his glove hand and doing the full splits to rob the world’s most dangerous goal scorer.
Sometimes a lot is made of a team scoring the first goal, but I think the key for the Penguins will be if Fleury is sharp early and can make that first big save, because you have to think the Wings will come out flying, energized by what I’m sure will be an insane Joe Louis Arena crowd.
The thing with Fleury is he’s either feast or famine. He’s a former No. 1 overall pick — the first goaltender ever to be selected with the top pick — so the talent has always been there. If I were drafting an NHL team today, there’d be a lot of goaltenders I’d take before “The Flower.” But when he’s good, he’s really good, it’s just that he’s not always good. It’s simple: If Fleury can tame the bouncy “Flubber Boards” at The Joe (and you’d think he’d have adjusted by now, after three games this year and three last year), and is on his game, I think the Pens steal the first road win of this series and skate with the Cup. If he goes MIA again, they’ll be partying in the Motor City tonight.
• If the Penguins win tonight, Evgeni Malkin will be an easy choice as the Conn Smythe Trophy winner. He leads all players with 21 assists and 35 points, and trails only Sidney Crosby, by just one goal, for the top spot with 14. He’s got seven power-play scores and three game-winners.
If Detroit holds serve and wins their fifth Cup in 13 seasons, I think Chris Osgood wins his first Conn Smythe to go with his fourth Stanley Cup ring — third as a Wings starter. Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press thinks this is a huge game for Osgood beyond the obvious reason, and as I said a few weeks back, I agree.
“[I]t’s not a stretch to think that a victory tonight, with a good performance by Osgood, secures him: 1) a fourth Stanley Cup, 2) a Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs, 3) a historic footnote as the goalie who stymied Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and 4) the Hockey Hall of Fame.
And if the Wings lose, he might not get any of that.”
Now lets take a closer look at some of those “meaningless” stats and facts that will have little or no impact on tonight’s game.
• The Red Wings are 11-1 at Joe Louis Arena this postseason, and it took the Anaheim Ducks three overtimes to pin that renegade loss on them in Game 2 of the second round.
• Road teams playing in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Finals and World Series have not fared well in recent years, and in fact it has been 30 years since a road team won a Game 7 in a final series. It was, however, a Pittsburgh team that pulled it off, when the 1979 Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles.
• The Penguins have three players who have participated in a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals before: Craig Adams (Carolina, 2006), Ruslan Fedotenko (Tampa Bay, ’04) and Petr Sykora (Anaheim ’03). Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma also played for the Mighty Ducks when they lost to the Devils in ’03, and the coach of that Ducks team? Current Red Wings skipper Mike Babcock.
Brian Rafalski, a Dearborn, Michigan native and already the owner of three Stanley Cup rings, played for that Devils team and also the one that lost the finals in seven games to the Colorado Avalanche in 2001. He is the only Red Wings player to appear in a Game 7 championship tilt.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Dear Brett: Please Stay Home
Posted by: | CommentsI have to admit it: as a Vikings fan, I’m very torn on my opinion of the latest Brett Favre saga that has been unfolding over the last month or so. My opinion swings back and forth depending on the day, my mood, the weather. I know that’s not necessarily a great foundation for an opinion piece, but I think Vikings fans should be — and in few cases, are — more conflicted on this than it seems they are.
On one hand, The Purple don’t necessarily have an obviously better alternative to the future Hall of Famer on their current roster. The Vikings drafted (and most certainly, reached) for Tarvaris Jackson in the second round in the 2006 draft, thinking he would be The Guy, and he hasn’t been. Then in February, they traded for journeyman backup Sage Rosenfels, who it is assumed (hoped?) will be the starter once the season begins — in a Favre-less Vikings world. My favorite description of Rosenfels at the time of that deal was that he was a “rich man’s Gus Frerotte,” referencing the backup QB who eventually took the starter’s job from Tarvaris after the young Alabama State product had two dreadful games to start last season. Frerotte led them back to some moderate respectability before eventually giving way in time for TJack to oversee a first-round playoff exit. “A rich man’s Gus Frerotte” is not an inspiring comparison.
It’s pretty widely accepted that the main issue handicapping the Vikings — owners of the NFL’s best running back in Adrian Peterson, a stout offensive line and a rock-solid defense highlighted by arguably the best defensive line in football — is the lack of a bona fide starting NFL quarterback. That certainly makes Favre an appealing option.
On the other hand, there are all sorts of ways this thing could turn out badly for the Vikings if Favre ends up in the fold. And furthermore, it’s kind of degrading waiting on him to make up his mind, knowing that the main reason he’s interested in playing in Minnesota in the first place is revenge. He wants to stick it to the Packers, and playing for their cross-border rivals in Minnesota is simply the most effective vehicle to do so. It’s kind of like dating a girl you know is just going out with you to get back at an old boyfriend, but she’s hot (or at least she used to be, you remember, when he was dating her) so you just ignore her empty kisses and passionless company and enjoy it while it lasts. But inside, you feel dirty.
And this Princess is turning out to be pretty high-maintenance in the waning of her hotness (and if you turn the lights on, she’s really not all that attractive anymore anyway). Everything is going to be done when Princess is good and ready, if at all, and don’t expect her to come visit you for organized team activities (perhaps stretching the analogy a little bit there).
All the while, we don’t much like the old boyfriend either, so we’re more than willing to go along with the ruse, even though the old boyfriend dumped Princess because she was past her prime, and ultimately not worth waiting on every year to hear whether she was going to dump them first. Now the ex has a new flame, and there’s little question in my mind Aaron Rodgers is a better catch right now than Favre.
But none if this messiness changes the fact that the Packers are going to retire Favre’s No. 4 some day, and when they do their fans will all stand and applaud, the lovefest will resume, and with time the indignity of his playing for the Vikings will be forgotten — even if he were to win a championship in Minnesota.
And therein lies the main problem I have. The Vikings’ judgment is being clouded by their eternal yearning for that elusive championship. If you could guarantee the Purple would go to the Super Bowl and lose with Favre under center, a lot of Vikings fans would sign up just for that chance; but many Vikings fans older than I have been there, done that before. Once upon a time, nobody lost Super Bowls as effectively and as often as the Vikings, but now even those modest, empty successes (some might call them epic failures) are a distant memory (and nothing but a fuzzy rumor to someone my age). But if you make this move, it’s Super Bowl or bust. Because if it doesn’t work, suddenly you’re left with even fewer QB options on the other end of this experiment as you have now.
Vikings fans have long since given up on Tarvaris — some of them before he even took an NFL snap — but the organization says it hasn’t. Trading for Rosenfels and committing to a two-year contract for him isn’t exactly the biggest vote of confidence for TJack, but he really hasn’t done much to warrant one. If the Vikings weren’t convinced in March and April that these two guys were the answer though, why not go after Jay Cutler, a quarterback who at least has a future in the NFL, something that can’t really be said of Favre (or, many Vikes fans will argue, Jackson or Rosenfels)?
Under the Favre-in-purple scenario, in two years No. 4 will hopefully (mercifully) be retired, Jackson will have atrophied on the bench for two seasons he couldn’t afford to do so, and Rosenfels will be an unrestricted free agent. John David Booty, the former USC quarterback whom the Vikings drafted in 2008, likely would be looking for a job this fall as the fourth QB on the depth chart right now. The Vikings didn’t draft a quarterback in ’09, so what the team intends to do in a potential post-Favre era is unclear.
I would have less of a problem with the whole situation if Favre weren’t being so maddeningly selfish. If you want to play fine, go for it. But if Brett Favre truly didn’t know in February that he wanted to play football again in 2009, he was the only one. So he waited until May to have the operation on his shoulder, mathematically guaranteeing that he would be unable to participate in last month’s OTAs while he waits to see if his arm is healthy enough to play. Of course nobody, even Favre, is that indecisive. He just doesn’t want to put in the work before he’s good and ready. He thinks he’s good enough to just stroll into training camp, shake some hands, give a few sound bites and go out and be The Legend that John Madden and so many other media folk have been breathlessly telling him that he is for most of the past two decades.
So once again, he has put an entire organization (never mind a fan base) in limbo. Now Jackson and Rosenfels are working out and doing their due diligence to make sure they’re ready if called on, with the knowledge in the back of their minds that Favre could swoop in and render all their preparation meaningless at his own personal whim. It means that receivers will be busting their tails in workouts with a quarterback who may not be throwing the ball to them when it counts.
Make no mistake, if Favre’s shoulder is healthy, he will be quarterbacking the Minnesota Vikings this season. And Vikes fans will smile, bury their self esteem and welcome the aging beauty with open arms.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Dream on Yankees Fans: Mauer Will Be a Twins Lifer
Posted by: | CommentsJoe Mauer may single-handedly force me to order the MLB Extra Innings package if he keeps hitting like this.
The Twins catcher is on one of the all-time great hitting tears I’ve ever seen — certainly among players belonging to my favorite baseball team — and sadly I’ve missed much of it so far.
Of course, one of the crosses to bear of being a Twins fan, or of any other small-market baseball franchise for that matter, is that any time a player on your team enters the conversation among the best players in the game, it comes complete with speculation about which Country Club franchise that player will end up with once he hits the open market as a free agent (see Santana, Johan).
Indeed, there was already no shortage of Yankees, Red Sox and other teams’ fan forums and bloggers licking their chops over Mauer’s impending free agency following the 2010 season, and that speculation has increased dramatically now that Joe has added home-run power to his great batting average and exceptional defense. Remember, this is a guy who is the only catcher in the history of the American League to win a batting championship, and he’s already done it twice at the young age of 26.
But as far as Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Cubs and Dodgers fans are concerned, speculate all you want — you can’t have Mauer. The sooner you all accept this reality and move on, the easier it will be. He will never hit that free-agent market.
Here’s a prediction for you: Joe Mauer will someday be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and when he does he will be wearing the hat of the Minnesota Twins — the only Major League team he’ll have ever played for.
Yeah the Twins are scrooges, and they have time and again let their fans down by failing to lock up popular, star players in time to stave off their free agencies (see Hunter, Torii), thereby being forced to either let them walk away for nothing or trade them for whatever they can get (see Viola, Frank). But mark my words, Mauer will be different.
Twins fans are still smarting over Santana’s departure two winters ago. It’s very difficult to accept the fact that my team traded away the best pitcher in baseball, and possibly a future Hall of Famer himself, in the sweet spot of his prime. The fact the Twins seemingly didn’t get much value in return only makes it sting worse. Twins fans had trouble accepting that both Johan and Torii were lost in the same offseason, but the truth of the matter is the team’s brass was looking a few years down the road in letting them leave. Because there’s no way the Twins could have afforded to have big fat contracts for Santana, Hunter, Mauer and former AL MVP Justin Morneau on the books all at the same time. They chose, presumably, to focus on the latter two components of that equation.
The Twins are penny-pinchers, make no mistake, but they’ve also shown in the past that they will occasionally spend the dough on their cornerstone players. In this case, there were just too many cornerstone players to accommodate at once, so priorities had to be set (Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually sticking up for Twins GM Bill Smith).
Remember, Kirby Puckett became the first $3-million man when the Twins gave him a three-year deal for $9 million in 1989. At the time, it was the richest contract in baseball history. The Twins recognized that Puckett was an extremely valuable commodity who was worth the investment, and they did what they needed to do.
As popular as Puckett was in his day — the most popular Twins player in Minnesota in my lifetime — Mauer is more popular still. One of my favorite Twin Cities radio personalities, KFAN’s Dan Barreiro, long ago labeled Mauer “The Baby Jesus,” because the man can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of most Twins fans and Minnesota media members. He is “One of Us,” born and raised in St. Paul, taken with the first overall pick in the draft of 2001, and he was already on the radar of Minnesota sports fans while winning high school state championships in baseball, football and basketball at Cretin-Derham Hall long before the average guy in the rest of the baseball universe knew who he was.
There are only two scenarios I envision where Mauer ever hits the open market. One, the Twins upset him by trying to low-ball him when negotiations begin on his next contract extension, and I don’t believe that will happen. The other possibility is that, having lived in Minnesota his entire life, Mauer decides he actually wants to sample life in the spotlight of New York, Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles. But it’s hard for me to imagine the seemingly humble Mauer, with his “Aw, Shucks” persona, yearning for that kind of attention.
Because I don’t think money is going to be the driving force for Mauer. That’s not to say he’s going to sign for nothing, all for the love of playing in his home state. But I believe that he would accept less money than the market might bear to stay home, close to his tight-knit, baseball-loving family, and continue playing with his buddy Morneau.
Oh yes, don’t underestimate the deep friendship between the Twins’ top two sluggers. The two of them shared a bachelor pad in their younger days with the Twins, and Mauer stood up as a groomsman in Morneau’s wedding this past winter. That friendship doesn’t guarantee anything, but if the two wish to continue playing together for the same team — and I believe they do — it would obviously be far easier to do so by staying put. Morneau is already locked up long-term, and the word around the Cities is he is an active lobbyist in convincing Mauer to do the same.
As Star Tribune columnist Sid Hartman wrote in a column earlier this week:
The Twins have Morneau signed to a long-term contract through 2013.
But what about Mauer? Like Jerry Bell, president of Twins Sports, Inc., said the other day, “The Yankees have already got him measured for a uniform.”
But then Bell added, “Rest assured, we will find a way to keep Joe.”
(Wow, I can’t believe I just quoted a Sid Hartman column. I feel dirty.)
In addition to being the best catcher in baseball — and if he continues to hit at anything close to his current clip, one of the best hitters in the game, period — Mauer, with his GQ good looks, has made baseball fans and Twins fans out of thousands of women who would not otherwise have embraced the team. Let’s acknowledge a reality here: While there are legions of women in this world who love baseball and sports for the competitive aspect and the game itself, there’s also plenty of women who enjoy sports simply because they enjoy watching good-looking, athletically-built, genetically-blessed and extraordinarily wealthy young men. And Joe Mauer is a lot of all those things (so is Morneau, for that matter).
In every way a pro athlete can be marketable and valuable to his team, Mauer is close to the ideal. So with (insincere) apologies to the blue-blooded fans of all of baseball’s power élite teams, time to move on to the next man crush. Minnesota’s version of the M&M Boys are going nowhere.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Blame for Blackhawks’ Game 4 Fiasco Falls on Coach
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s rare that I’ve ever seen a player lose control of his emotions during a playoff game as badly as Kris Versteeg did in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals on Sunday afternoon. With his team already trailing 4-1 in the second period, teammate Matt Walker was spotted for an interference penalty, and the referee’s arm went up for a delayed penalty. Before Mr. Walker could be escorted to the box though, Versteeg decided to join him for his 2-minute breather, and cross-checked a Detroit player after the whistle about five feet in front of a referee, giving Detroit a full 2 minutes of a five-on-three power play, on which they scored, of course, to make it 5-1.
Walker returned to the ice following that score, but Versteeg served the rest of his 2 minutes, then returned to the ice and immediately took an interference penalty of his own about five strides out of the box to give the deadly Wings power-play unit yet another man advantage. He ended up with 12:41 of ice time for the game to go with 14 penalty minutes, 10 coming on a misconduct call in the third period.
Coach Joel Quenneville should have benched his talented young scorer to teach him a lesson — don’t do that kind of stuff, don’t lose your head. Alas, that might have been an awkward conversation, coming so soon after Quenneville himself was seen launching a profanity-laced tirade at the officials as cameras scanned the player benches to start the second period. I’d link to it, but even without a microphone to capture the sound you can clearly see a rapid-fire succession of F-bombs tumbling from his mouth. Good stuff.
Everybody knew the Blackhawks had their work cut out for them entering the series against the defending Stanley Cup champs. It would have taken the best they had to knock off Detroit — from goaltending to team defense to the continued stellar play of young forwards Versteeg, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. But I don’t think anybody counted on their coach letting them down like he has. Sunday was not the first time in this series Quenneville could be seen screaming at the officials.
To quickly set the scene, there was a minor scrum after the horn sounded to end the first period, a pretty ordinary nothing-to-see-here sort of dust-up that is very common this time of year. To the astonishment of many — obviously including Quenneville — Walker was the only player assessed a penalty, 2 minutes for roughing. Quenneville, clearly, did not agree with the call. Detroit predictably scored on the ensuing power play, making it 3-0. To be fair, it was a pretty bad call from looking at it on TV, and Quenneville certainly had a point.
As if his shouting and swearing and carrying on during the game — when theoretically his team still had the power to affect the outcome of the game — wasn’t bad enough, he elaborated on his reasoning for the temper tantrum after the game by calling the penalty “the worst call in the history of sports”, a comment for which he was fined $10,000. It was a pretty bad call, it certainly came at a critical point in the game, and the results were devastating for the Blackhawks. You could probably view the fact Quenneville didn’t receive a bench minor for the tirade as acknowledgement from the refs they shouldn’t have given the initial penalty. Whatever the case, the coach set the tone for his team for the rest of the game, and Chicago took 48 minutes of penalties in the final two periods — not recommended when you need multiple goals against the best team in hockey to avoid staring into the abyss as the ’Hawks now do.
I think Detroit wins Game 5 tonight on home ice, even with Pavel Datsyuk and Nicklas Lidstrom — two of the 10 best hockey players on the planet — missing from its lineup. That certainly levels the playing field a little bit, though it obviously didn’t seem to bother the Wings much in the 6-1, Game 4 pasting of Chicago on their own home ice. Incidentally, the Blackhawks will be without Nikolai Khabibulin in goal, and Martin Havlat will sit out with post-concussion symptoms.
• Speaking of Havlat, Brian Campbell was one of the most outspoken players on the Blackhawks roster in calling Niklas Kronwall’s goodnight kiss of Havlat in Game 3 a “gutless” act. Let’s pretend for a moment that Kronwall’s hit was a cheap one, though it certainly was not. Havlat had his head down, and Kronwall was given a 5-minute major for interference — not roughing or high-sticking — but interference, despite the fact that you can see on the replay that the puck is in Havlat’s skates when Kronwall delivers the blow. Campbell’s claim it’s a dirty hit because the big Swede “jumped” to hit Havlat is off the mark because if he had left his feet, the call would have been for roughing, which it was not. It’s ridiculous to think that a defenseman at any level is going to pass on that hit and wait an extra split second until Havlat actually touches the puck, because if he were to do so, the winger would probably have skated past him and created an odd-man rush. It’s counterintuitive for a defenseman, and Kronwall actually made a great read in noticing Havlat wasn’t paying attention to him, and he stepped up and eliminated him from the play. It was a smart, clean hockey play.
But just for fun, let’s pretend it wasn’t. Of all people, Brian Campbell is going to be the moral compass on this issue? Yeah that’s right, the same Brian Campbell who, while playing for the Buffalo Sabres in the 2006 playoffs, lowered his shoulder and knocked poor R.J. Umberger into la-la land on a strikingly similar play in the first game of the first round against the Flyers. If you say so Brian … hypocrite.
Around the hockey world
The Windsor Spitfires may have been the favorites coming into the 2009 Memorial Cup, but the rout they took to capture their first-ever Memorial championship was not an advisable one. The Spits lost their first two games at the tourney in Rimouski, Quebec, needing to rattle off a four-game win streak where if they’d lost any one of the contests they’d have been eliminated. But they pulled it off.
Greg Wyshynski over at Yahoo! did a great job of chronicling the many different and fascinating storylines that surrounded the Spits’ triumph, including winning for a fallen teammate and providing an uplifting distraction for a town ravaged by the slumping auto industry.
• The Phoenix Coyotes’ battle to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, sell then move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, has some pretty far-reaching implications, explains the Wall Street Journal. There are only losers in this mess, no winners. First off, how would you like to be part of the Coyotes’ season-ticket sales team these days? If the ’Yotes were hugely successful selling tickets to their games in the first place, the team probably wouldn’t be in the predicament it is, but now these poor folks have to entice fans to buy tickets to games that may or may not even take place in their community several months in advance.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Chris Osgood, Hockey Hall of Famer?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat do you think of when I mention Chris Osgood? What is his trademark? Me, I think of the plain red Bauer helmet he’s played with his entire career — no fancy paint job for Ozzie.
Of course, Osgood has three Stanley Cup championship rings, including two as a starter with the Red Wings — and he’s making some pretty good headway toward another.
You might be surprised to know that the 36-year old netminder has quietly built up a pretty impressive resumé over his 15 NHL seasons, and stands among some pretty heady company among the game’s all-time goaltending luminaries. Osgood is signed with the Wings through 2010-11, so he will almost certainly finish his career with more than 400 victories. Right now he stands at 389, which places him 11th all-time in NHL history — in any era. He’s won 27 and 26 games, respectively, over his past two seasons with Detroit, so I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to put him down for 25 each over the remaining two seasons of his current contract. That would give him 439, which would bump him up to sixth place all-time — assuming he doesn’t play beyond his current deal.
But that’s not all. His 2.47 career goals-against average ranks fifth in NHL history among goaltenders with at least 500 games played, and his .906 save percentage ranks 11th.
How about the playoffs? As I mentioned earlier, he’s got three rings total, and two as a starter. His career numbers for wins, shutouts, goals-against average and save percentage all rank in the top 10 all-time: He has 68 wins (ninth all-time); 14 shutouts (sixth); a 2.14 average (sixth among goalies with at least 50 games played); and a .915 save percentage (10th).
Entering this year’s playoffs, the biggest question mark for the Red Wings was their goaltending, as it was last spring. Osgood essentially split starting duties with Ty Conklin in the regular season, and his stats for 2008-09 were rather mediocre. There was some doubt as the regular season crept to a close as to whether Ozzie would draw the starting gig in the postseason, or Conklin. But give credit to Wings coach Mike Babcock, he knows that when the money is on the table, Osgood is his man. And Osgood has delivered. He’s won 10 games so far, and posted a solid 2.32 GAA and .925 save percentage. If he finishes his career with three rings (or more?) as a starter, with those kind of numbers, how can you possibly build an argument against Chris Osgood as a Hall of Famer?
• One of the biggest factors in the Red Wings postseason success over the past decade and more is the contributions they invariably seem to get from their role players. Guys like Darren McCarty, Martin Lapointe, Larry Murphy, Igor Larionov, Tomas Holmstrom and Slava Kozlov (among others) were instrumental to the 1997 and ’98 championship squads. Detroit is the best at getting contributions from everyone when the games mean the most.
Last year, Johan Franzen emerged as more than a secondary scoring option in the playoffs, potting 13 goals, tied with Sidney Crosby for the league lead, and five game-winners, after scoring 27 in the regular season. He’s got nine in the playoffs so far this spring.
The biggest hero to emerge from seemingly nowhere in 2009 — especially over the past week or so — is Daniel Cleary. The former Blackhawk now has four goals over his past three games, and leads all players in the playoffs with a plus-13 rating. Cleary’s goal that gave the Wings a 2-1 lead in the second is a perfect illustration of why the Wings are so lethal this time of year: They are the best at making teams pay for their mistakes.
Brent Seabrook wound up to take a slapshot from the point but instead shot right into Cleary’s equipment. From there, it was simply a matter of Cleary winning the race to the puck, and the next thing you know he was loose on a breakaway, made an effective but simple deke to beat Nikolai Khabibulin on his blocker side and that was it.
Mikael Samuelsson is another example, as he’s now scored the game-winning goal in each of the first two games of the series.
• The Blackhawks played much better in Game 2 then in the opener, outshooting the Wings by a slight 39-38 margin, and they probably deserved to win. Jonathan Toews scored both of Chicago’s goals, and both could probably be described as “ugly” scores. His first marker came on what was probably intended as a centering pass for a teammate, but instead it bounced off Jonathan Ericsson’s skate and past Osgood for a 1-0 lead. On his second goal he camped out in front of the net and stuffed home a rebound off a Kris Versteeg shot from the point.
Toews’ playoff beard is starting to grow on me. He looks kind of like a Civil War general.
Around the hockey world
There was no resolution to the Coyotes bankruptcy situation to come from Tuesday’s hearing, and the judge overseeing the case ordered the two sides to mediation. The main question as judge Redfield Baum sees it is whether the team should be allowed to move to Hamilton, Ontario — a solution the NHL claims is a logistical impossibility for the 2009-10 season with only four and a half months before opening night.
• The OHL’s Windsor Spitfires won their first game at the 2009 Memorial Cup, handing the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets their first loss. That means with one game to play in the opening round robin, all four teams are alive for the championship. The two QMJHL teams — the host Rimouski Oceanic and playoff champ Drummondville Voltiguers — play tonight, with the winner basically getting a “bye” into the semifinal. The loser of tonight’s game will play Windsor on Thursday night, and the winner of that game will play the winner of tonight’s game Friday. Kelowna awaits that entire mess to sort itself out, and they’ll get whoever’s left standing in the title game Sunday.
• The Houston Aeros visited Winnipeg for the first two games of the AHL’s Western Conference Finals, with the host Manitoba Moose holding serve at home. The Aeros then lost Game 3 at home Monday, and face elimination when the two teams play Game 4 at the Honda Center in Houston tonight. The Moose will be trying for their 11th consecutive victory of these Calder Cup Playoffs.
In the Eastern Conference, the Hershey Bears and Providence Bruins split the first two games of the series in Hershey, and will play Game 3 on Friday night.
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