Archive for Detroit Red Wings
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.
Popularity: unranked [?]
NHL Playoffs: Capitals and Penguins Go To Game 7
Posted by: | CommentsThe funnest thing about this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs for me has been the amount, and magnitude, of fresh star power on display. Look at the goals and points leaders through nearly two rounds of games so far, and you’ll see predominantly names of players 25 years or younger — guys who are good now, and just emerging before your eyes and becoming great: Alexander Ovechkin (10 goals, 10 assists, 20 points), age 23; Sidney Crosby (10-8–18), 21; Evgeni Malkin (6-11–17), 22; Nicklas Backstrom (3-12–15), 21; Alexander Semin (6-8–14), 25; Jonathan Toews (4-6–10), 21; Patrick Kane (8-5–13), 20; Phil Kessel (6-4–10), 21; Eric Staal (9-3–12), 25; Ryan Getzlaf (3-13–16), turned 24 Sunday; Corey Perry (6-4–10), turns 24 this Saturday.
There’s a fresh, new elite pool of players in the NHL, and for many the 2008-09 playoffs have represented a coming-out party.
Capitals vs. Penguins: Losing your best defenseman at this critical point of the season is obviously not ideal for any team, and the Penguins certainly miss Sergei Gonchar. He’s the anchor of their power play and their best offensive blueliner. During the regular season, Pittsburgh’s resurgence coincided with, among other factors, his return to the lineup.
But the Penguins are perhaps better equipped than most teams to absorb a loss such as that, at least for short periods of time. They dressed two defensemen to fill Gonchar’s roster spot — Alex Goligoski and Phillipe Boucher — and used 11 forwards. Coach Dan Bylsma reasoned those two give the team something different that no one D-man can. Goligoski has picked up a lot of Gonchar’s minutes on the power play, while Boucher adds some physicality and grit. Goligoski is a proven playoff performer, evidenced by his 28 points during the AHL Calder Cup Playoffs last fall, a record for points by a defensman, in just his first season as a pro.
The Penguins’ best defenseman in this series, however, has been Rob Scuderi. The former Boston College standout had two assists during Pittsburgh’s Game 4 win Friday, and is a plus-5 over the past three games played mostly in Gonchar’s absence. He has also played rock solid defense, including a sequence in Game 4 when he blocked two point-blank shots with the shaft of his stick flush on the ice in a span of about 3 seconds, with only about 10 ticks left in the first period that preserved a 3-1 Pens lead. They went on to win 5-3.
• Speaking of Goligoski, he showed up to join the Penguins with a full playoff beard already in play, as his Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins were still involved in this year’s AHL postseason. In fact, the “Baby Penguins” will play the Hershey Bears — the Capitals’ AHL affiliate — in Game 7 of the East Division Final series tonight in Hershey, Pa. The winner takes on either the Worcester Sharks or the Providence Bruins, who hold a 3-2 series lead in the Atlantic Division Finals. On the other side of the bracket, the Manitoba Moose (mostly the Canucks’ affiliate) swept the Grand Rapids Griffins (Red Wings) in the North Division Finals, and the Milwaukee Admirals (Predators) and Houston Aeros (Wild) will meet in a Game 7 of the West Division Finals on Wednesday.
• The Penguins have been pretty tight-lipped about how extensive Gonchar’s injury is and when he might be back. For whatever it’s worth, the Russian skated with the Pens for the team’s optional practice this morning, and his status for Game 7 will be evaluated after seeing how his body responds to the session.
• Mike Green has been better, slightly, since being pretty much a non-factor in the first three games of the series, but the Capitals still need more from him. He still has just one goal in the playoffs after scoring 31 in the regular season, the most among all NHL defensemen. He hasn’t had more than three shots on goal in any game of this series, and his high for the postseason is four (Game 3 vs. the Rangers). He isn’t alone though, as Semin hadn’t scored a goal in the series before Monday night’s 5-4 overtime win for the Capitals, and Viktor Kozlov weighed in with his first two tallies of the series in Game 6 as well.
• The 38-year old Bill Guerin, practically given up for dead with the lowly Islanders this season, was a big part of the Penguins revitalization down the stretch, but he’s been an even more reliable contributor in the playoffs. He’s playing on Pittsburgh’s top line with Crosby and Chris Kunitz, another trade-deadline acquisition, and he has four goals and eight points in 12 games.
• This series is going to a seventh game courtesy of David Steckel’s overtime game-winner Monday night. I think the Capitals are going to win Wednesday, mostly because I just don’t quite trust Marc-Andre Fleury. He can be brilliant sometimes, like when he stopped 55 shots in Pittsburgh’s 4-3 triple-overtime win at Detroit in Game 5 of last year’s Stanley Cup Finals. But among all the goaltenders left in the playoffs, I simply believe he’s the most likely to let in a soft one at the wrong time to cost his team a game. Just a gut feeling.
• Fearless prediction: Capitals prevail in Game 7, 3-2 — probably in overtime, seeing as three of the last four games of this series have needed more than 60 minutes.
Bruins vs. Hurricanes: A lot of the attention in the upcoming Eastern Conference Finals will be focused on whichever team emerges from the Caps-Pens series, but don’t sleep on the Carolina Hurricanes, whom I believe will win Game 6 at home tonight and advance. The ‘Canes’ two best players are Eric Staal and Cam Ward, and they are playing at the height of their capabilities right now, and both have been there before.
Staal led all players with 19 assists and 28 points during the 2006 playoffs, when the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup, and his nine goals this year are one fewer than Ovechkin and Crosby atop the leaders board. He now has 18 career playoff goals, the most in Hurricanes/Whalers franchise history. Ward won the Conn Smythe Trophy in ’06 after grabbing the starting job in the first round and running with it.
• Jussi Jokinen had another big goal for Carolina in Game 4, scoring his third game-winner of the playoffs early in the third period, and his second in as many games. Hard to believe he was placed on waivers twice by the lowly Lightning before Carolina worked out a trade to acquire his services.
On the flip side, Jokinen will likely be a marked man for this incident in Game 5 on Sunday, after his slash felled Slovak giant Zdeno Chara with about half a minute left in the second period. I watched this clip several times, and it looked like a pretty light tap on the skate to me. Chara still led all Bruins with 24:34 of ice time, and didn’t miss a shift.
• Heading into tonight’s Game 6 in Raleigh, much of the talk of this series revolves around Scott Walker’s alleged sucker-punch of B’s blueliner Aaron Ward. Walker claims he was simply coming to the defense of a teammate, Matt Cullen, a key Carolina forward with a history of concussions, though he told the Raleigh News-Observer he “wasn’t proud” of the hit and seemed somewhat remorseful. Ward saw things differently of course, and called the punch a joke after this morning’s skate. Walker was fined $2,500 for the punch, but not suspended. Ward will apparently play in Game 6 tonight.
• The Bruins looked like the team that finished with the top record in the Eastern Conference in Game 5 in Boston on Sunday night, and if they can put together another effort like that tonight, they’ll have a good shot to force Game 7. But Game 6 will not be played in the friendly environs of TD Banknorth Garden, but at the RBC Center in Raleigh, where the fans have been rabid during the postseason again. The Hurricanes are 5-0 at home in the playoffs thus far, and I think their home crowd lifts them to a victory tonight. I have to give the Carolina fans credit, I’ve never been to that area of the country, and I somehow doubt there are mass legions of hockey fans walking the streets of Raleigh, but the ones who show up at the games — the ones you see and hear on TV — seem to be very knowledgeable, and they’re passionate about their team. They cheer at the appropriate moments, like after sustained periods of offensive pressure or after an effective penalty kill, not simply when their team scores a goal or the goalie makes a big save
• Fearless prediction: ‘Canes prevail tonight in Game 6, 4-2.
Canucks vs. Blackhawks: The Blackhawks are the first team to clinch a spot in the conference finals following their electrifying 7-5 win at home against Vancouver on Monday night — their deepest playoff run since battling the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals in 1995.
Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane aren’t much for growing playoff beards yet — Toews’ month’s-worth of scruff looks more like sideburns that haven’t been trimmed in awhile, and Kane … well he’s still only 20, so for now it’s cool if he’s still rocking the peach fuzz. But the two combined to score five goals in Monday’s decisive tilt, and suddenly the kids are playing like seasoned veterans.
Kane apparently took exception to some comments from Canucks defenseman Willie Mitchell, who said Kane “is not a guy who is really going to hurt us even strength” after Kane scored two goals in Game 1:
“Anytime you get a wake-up call from old Willie Mitchell over there …” Kane said in the Hawks’ jubilant dressing room.
“I don’t know if you want to fire up a player like that throughout the series, but he decided to make some comments and kind of fired me up a bit. He said I couldn’t play 5-on-5. I think I had three goals 5-on-5 tonight.”
Why, oh why, would you want to say something like that?
• Nikolai Khabibulin doesn’t have the most overwhelming stats among goalies remaining in the postseason, but he’s been a rock in goal for the ‘Hawks and already has a Stanley Cup ring from his days with Tampa Bay in 2004. He stopped 33 shots Monday and yielded five goals, but had one of the best saves you’ll ever see in the second period. Moving side to side, he faces a shot that first deflects off a stick, then appears to skip like a stone off the ice, dramatically altering both the shot’s speed and trajectory (twice). He drops low to stop the shot, but suddenly it’s fluttering like a changeup toward the top right corner, until Khabibulin lunges, doing the splits, and with full extension flicks the wrist of his blocker hand and just barely gets enough of the puck to swat it away. I really wish I could have found video of this save, it was amazing and I’m sure my writing can’t nearly do it justice.
• The third period Monday was wildly entertaining, with six goals total being scored — including Kane’s seventh and eighth scores of the playoffs to secure the hat trick. His last tally was a true goal-scorer’s goal, as he dipped past Shane O’Brien, slipped the puck between the defenseman’s skate and stick, then fired a backhand laser across his body past Luongo on the blocker side for the final dagger.
• The United Center was apparently so loud Monday, Blackhawks players had difficulty hearing coach Joel Quenneville shout instructions during a break in play in the third period, and had to relay messages down the bench.
• Goaltender Roberto Luongo reportedly took the abrupt end to the Canucks’ promising season pretty hard.
• At the Chicago Tribune, the smack talk leading up to an anticipated renewal of an old Norris Division rivalry in the Western Conference Finals has already begun.
Red Wings vs. Ducks: The Red Wings are looking to finalize that conference finals meeting with a win over Anaheim tonight at the Honda Center. It sounds like they’ll get a boost with defenseman Brian Rafalski returning to the lineup, as well as Jonathan Ericsson.
This series seemed to take a turn early in Game 4, when Wings coach Mike Babcock juggled his lines a bit, putting Marian Hossa, Johan Franzen and Valtteri Filppula together on a unit, and Pavel Datsyuk, Tomas Holmstrom and Henrik Zetterberg together on what must be considered Detroit’s top line. The Wings have scored 10 goals in two games since.
• It’s hard to imagine a team only about 24 months removed from winning the Stanley Cup being referred to as “inexperienced,” but with five first-timers taking regular shifts — perhaps unaccustomed to the grind of playing in such a high-intensity game every other night — the Ducks have looked kind of tired. Coach Randy Carlyle told his players not to bother showing up for this morning’s optional skate unless they specifically wanted to. Nobody expected to play tonight did, according to the Orange County Register.
• With the Angels playing a home game against the Red Sox tonight, traffic in the Anaheim area is expected to be not fun.
• Fearless prediction: Ducks force game 7 with 4-3 win tonight, but the Red Wings advance with 4-1 win Thursday in Detroit.
Around the hockey world: Russia repeated as gold medalists at the IIHF World Championships in Switzerland this past weekend. Ilya Kovalchuk, who scored the game-winner in overtime of last year’s gold medal game, scored five goals, finished with 14 points and was named the tournament MVP. Sweden beat the U.S. 4-2 to claim the bronze medal.
• James Neal, the Dallas Stars’ promising rookie who led all first-year NHL players with 24 goals, had a very, very close call playing for Canada at the tournament, getting clipped in the eye by a follow-through of a Ladislav Nagy shot. He needed stitches on both his upper and lower eye lids, but it sounds like a contact lens might have prevented damage to his actual eyeball. Yikes!
• The Windsor Spitfires, ranked as one of the top teams in all of Canadian junior hockey all season, beat the Brampton Battalion in five games to claim the J. Ross Robertson Cup as Ontario Hockey League playoff champions. That series featured a number of future top-end NHL talent, including the Spits’ Taylor Hall (2010 draft eligible), Ryan Ellis (2009 eligible), Andrei Loktionov and Dale Mitchell (Maple Leafs), and the Battalion’s Matt Duchene, who may go as high as No. 4 this summer, Cody Hodgson (Canucks) and goaltender Thomas McCollum (Red Wings).
• The Calgary Hitmen had the best record in the Western Hockey League in the regular season, finishing with 122 points, but they ran into a buzzsaw in the WHL finals, as the Kelowna Rockets won the Ed Chynoweth Cup as playoff champs in six games. The Rockets, seeded third in the Western Conference entering the postseason, had four of the top five points men in the playoffs. Dallas Stars draft pick Jamie Benn led all players with 33 points, Cody Almond had 27, Flames prospect Mikael Backlund was fourth with 23 points and Tyler Myers (Sabres) tied with Hitmen center Kyle Bortis with 20. Joel Broda (Capitals) had 24 points for Calgary.
• The Drummondville Voltigeurs, the top team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in the regular season (112 points) will play the Shawinigan Cataractes in Game 7 of that league’s championship series tonight. All seven of the top points scorers for the postseason belong to one of those two teams, led by Bruins prospect Yannick Riendeau’s 27 goals and 49 points in 18 games for Drummondville. Dany Masse and Chris DiDomenico (Maple Leafs) of the Voltiguers both have 35 points.
• The field for the Memorial Cup, Canada’s national championship, is nearly set. Windsor (OHL) and Kelowna (WHL) earned berths with their league titles. The winner of tonight’s Drummondville-Shawinigan matchup will advance and join the QMJHL’s Rimouski Oceanic, the tournament hosts. The tournament rotates between the three Canadian leagues every three years, and if the host team wins their respective league title, the runner up advances to the Memorial Cup.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ba453bc2-f84f-4f2e-879c-9b7bced4f32a)
Popularity: unranked [?]
