Archive for NHL Playoffs
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.
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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.
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Fleury, Pens Grab Early Advantage
Posted by: | CommentsCam Ward was pretty good in Game 1 Monday, but Marc-Andre Fleury was better. The former No. 1 overall pick made 23 saves and was named the third star of the game, while Ward made a few spectacular saves but allowed at least one goal that should not have gone in — even if that goal came courtesy of a man, Evgeni Malkin, who knows how to bury a scoring chance with the puck on his stick. Ward is now 4-0 in Game 7s after beating the Capitals last Wednesday, but Fleury is 5-0 in Game 1s at home after Monday night’s 3-2 Penguins victory.
• With the ’Canes already trailing 2-0 Monday night, Ward made a sensational point-blank stop on Bill Guerin coming straight up the gut, off a nice feed from behind the goalline from Sidney Crosby. It was a huge save to keep Carolina in the game, and it saved Joni Pitkanen from being on the wrong end of the highlight reel again. The Finnish defender looked either slow or lazy trying to catch up to Miroslav Satan streaking out of the penalty box for a breakaway goal in the first period that made it 1-0, and he made an absent-minded, behind-the-back pass in his own corner, right to Crosby that set up Guerin’s scoring chance. Only Ward’s good read of the play and sure glove hand prevented it from being 3-0 and essentially game over 5 minutes into the second period.
• The Rose scores on the Flower: That would be Chad LaRose scoring on Fleury, to make it 2-1 with about 7 minutes left in the second. This was a great team goal for Carolina, as all five players on the ice touched the puck immediately before the goal, starting with Matt Cullen poking the puck loose from Matt Cooke in the Hurricanes’ corner. It ended with Erik Cole gaining the offensive zone and cutting to his left at a 90-degree angle, then dropping a pass right to LaRose going by him the other way. Bet that looked good in the X’s and O’s video critique this morning.
• Scary moment seeing Cole drop to the ice and need help, initially, getting off the ice after a knee-on-knee hit by Cooke not quite halfway through the third. He made his way off the ice on his own eventually, but he did not return. That is a devastating loss if he can’t go for the ’Canes, who are not saying much about the nature of the injury or when/if Cole will return. Carolina also lost winger Tuomo Ruutu to a “lower-body injury” and both players are questionable for Game 2.
• Speaking of knee-on-knee hits, Sergei Gonchar is playing gamely after what looked to be a debilitating injury in Game 4 of the Penguins’ conference semifinals series with Washington, courtesy of an Alex Ovechkin hit. At times he’s looked a little “wobbly,” as Versus commentator Brian Engblom called him Monday night, but nonetheless the Russian blueliner led Pittsburgh with 21:42 of ice time in Game 1.
The lefthander had an assist on Crosby’s rebound goal that made it 1-0 in the first period of Game 7 against the Caps, taking the initial shot from the point, perched on his left leg like a pelican — obviously favoring the injured right knee.
• Incidentally, it was the Penguins’ seventh defenseman, Phillipe Boucher — in the lineup as an insurance policy for Gonchar — who scored the game-winning goal Monday.
• A bit of news that sheds more light on the Scott Walker saga from the Bruins series, when he punched Aaron Ward in the mug and gave the defenseman a black eye: Apparently the veteran right winger learned during the Eastern Conference semifinal series with Boston that his wife, Julie, had cervical cancer, a fact that was not revealed until this past weekend. The Raleigh News-Observer reports that Julie Walker had a special request for her husband before Game 7 against the Bruins, and he came through — notching the first playoff goal of his 14-year career in overtime to lift the Hurricanes into the conference finals. Julie, the story says, is expected to make a full recovery.
• Three out of the four starting goaltenders left in the playoffs have started for a Cup winner in their careers: Ward (Hurricanes 2006); Khabibulin (Lightning ’04); and Osgood (Red Wings ’98 and ’08). Only Fleury remains ringless.
Blackhawks look to draw even tonight
Patrick Kane had six goals and eight points in Chicago’s conference semifinal series with Vancouver, and Jonathan Toews had a big Game 6 in the clincher (two goals, an assist and a plus-2 mark). But both players finished Game 1 against the Red Wings with a minus-3, and that can’t happen if the Blackhawks hope to advance to their first Stanley Cup Finals series since 1992.
• Lucky for Adam Burish that he’s 6-foot-1 and not an inch shorter, or Ben Eager’s errant skate blade could have been a much more serious problem.
• You’ll notice a few Red Wings players clean shaven for the Western Conference Finals, which seems to be a movement led by Chris Chelios. Teammate Nicklas Lidstrom claims the 47-year old shaves only because his beard would likely grow in gray.
• The Detroit News has a pretty cool-looking interactive series preview up on their website.
• Brian Campbell is the Blackhawks’ big-name defenseman after signing an eight-year, $56.8-million contract last summer, but the heart and soul of the Chicago defense is the pairing of Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, says the Chicago Tribune’s Shannon Ryan.
• The Blackhawks went over a million in attendance with their Game 6 victory over the Canucks to clinch their second-round series, with a crowd of 22,687 for that contest. That’s a single-season record for the ’Hawks. With 40 regular-season games at the United Center (as well as the New Year’s Day Winter Classic at Wrigley Field that technically counts as a “neutral-site” affair), and three each in Chicago’s first two playoff series, that averages out to nearly 22,000 a game, the top mark in the NHL in 2008-09. Hockey is indeed back in the Windy City, and that’s good to see for an old Norris Division guy like myself. Incidentally, the Blackhawks are 5-1 on home ice in the playoffs so far.
Around the hockey world
• Apparently Gary Bettman would prefer to see the Coyotes return to Winnipeg than relocate to Hamilton, Ontario — if they had to leave Phoenix. The good folks of Winnipeg are trying not to get too giddy too soon. On Tuesday, the other three major North American pro sports leagues filed court papers in support of Bettman and the NHL’s right to decide the team’s future, claiming it would set a bad precedent to allow Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes to simply sell his team to the highest bidder and allow it to move wherever that new owner wishes. The pivotal bankruptcy hearing to decide the team’s future will be held today.
I would love to see this come to fruition, and I’d see it as a victory for the North Stars, Whalers and Nordiques fans of the world — fans who didn’t deserve to have their teams stripped away from them and have always held out (an admittedly futile) hope their teams would someday return. I loved the North Stars, and while I’m glad the NHL finally made right and returned an expansion team to the Twin Cities, my home, it was never quite the same. For one thing, I hated the name Wild from the day they announced it — can’t stand singular nicknames. The team made up for that horrible moniker by creating quite possibly the coolest logo in pro sports, but I still yearn for the bygone era.
• I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the prospect of my childhood idol, Patrick Roy, taking up the coaching reigns of an NHL team, but for now I’m leaning toward being in favor of it. Not that the Avalanche are asking my opinion. Montreal’s La Gazette reports that Roy is denying he has been offered the Colorado job, and may be holding out for an offer from the Canadiens. OK, nevermind. I’m in, let’s do it.
• At the Memorial Cup, Canada’s four-team national championship tournament hosted by the Rimouski Oceanic this year, the upstart Kelowna Rockets of the WHL are 2-0 with one game to play in the round-robin first round, earning them a spot in Sunday’s championship game. Dallas Stars prospect Jamie Benn had four goals in a win over QMJHL champ Drummondville, one score short of tying a tournament record held by current Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau.
Meanwhile the favorites, the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, are winless and need to beat the Rockets and then win two more games to reach the final after that just for a rematch with Kelowna in the title game. The top team from the round robin advances directly to the championship tilt, while the second- and third-place teams play a semifinal. Currently the two Quebec teams — Rimouski and Drummondville — are both 1-1, and play each other Wednesday. If there is a tie for third place, which will happen if Windsor prevails against the Rockets today, those two teams will play a tie-breaker Friday for the right to play in the semifinal. Here are the standings and remaining schedule.
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NHL Playoffs: Penguins Hold Serve at The Igloo
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been thoroughly enjoying the Penguins-Capitals series so far (what’s not to like about a playoff series involving the top three points leaders from the regular season?) and I have to admit I was watching Wednesday night hoping Pittsburgh would win Game 3. I don’t really care who wins the series, but I want the series first and foremost to be compelling, and I’d like it to last as long as possible. Washington winning last night and taking a 3-0 series lead would have dampened both those likelihoods. The fact that one of these two teams is guaranteed to be playing in a conference finals series has to be thrilling for the NHL, and for hockey fans.
Some thoughts on Game 3 specifically, and the series in general, followed by some notes from all four second-round series:
• While watching the Capitals first goal Wednesday, I couldn’t help but think that there can’t be many more horrifying moments for a goalie than to be skating back to play a puck behind the net, when simultaneously the puck takes a crazy bounce off the boards and jumps back in front at the very instant your stick slips out of your hand. Then as you scramble to get back to your crease, you see it’s none other than Alexander Ovechkin, the planet’s preeminent goal-scorer, bearing down on the loose puck. He didn’t miss.
• The Penguins played like the desperate team last night, and I think only Simeon Varlamov’s goaltending (39 saves) prevented the game from being more one-sided. On a side note, I wonder if Pittsburgh’s Russians — Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar — have been talking any smack in their native tongues to the rookie netminder, who from all reports doesn’t speak much English.
• Courtesy of Dan Rosen at NHL.com, while Ovechkin got the Caps on the board first, he had only five shots on goal in Game 3, after piling up 21 combined through the first two games (to go along with 36 total attempts).
• Several times last night I kept wondering where Mike Green was. For about half a period I wondered if he’d been hurt and I’d missed hearing about it. Alas, no Washington player logged more ice time (28:01) than the Norris Trophy finalist (and favorite, in my opinion), who picked up an assist on Ovechkin’s goal only because it was his dump-in attempt that handcuffed Fleury and bounded perfectly to his teammate in front. But I didn’t hear his name much, and didn’t notice No. 52 on my TV screen much either. He finished the game with the helper, two penalty minutes, an even plus/minus ratio and one shot on goal. His totals for the three games: 0 goals, 2 assists, even plus/minus, 4 PIM, 2 shots on goal. I’m sure the Caps would really appreciate him getting more involved in this series.
• One of my favorite moments from Game 3 was the collision between Ovechkin and Brooks Orpik, the Penguins’ rampaging beast of a defenseman. Ovie got a good head of steam before impact, then decidedly got the worst of the encounter, getting flipped head over heels, to the delight of the crowd at The Igloo.
Bruins vs. Hurricanes: I haven’t been able to watch much of this (or any) second-round series, as I was back home in Minnesota last weekend and have been busy packing and moving since then, which is too bad, because I ended up owning both teams in our Upper Deck playoffs pool, and they’re the only teams I have left alive. Which is probably a good thing, seeing as I’m therefore guaranteed a conference finalist.
• What a find Jussi Jokinen has been for the Hurricanes. It was his goal with 0.2 seconds left in Game 4 against the Devils that evened Carolina’s first-round series, and it was his tally with 1:20 left in Game 7 that tied that game. Wednesday night, he took a swipe at Sergei Samsonov’s rebound in overtime and knocked the puck past Tim Thomas to set off a near riot at the RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C. The guy continues to find his way to the right place at the right time.
While NHL hockey has, unfortunately, not caught on in a lot of Sun Belt locales, the ’Canes seem to be doing OK on Tobacco Road. A little off topic, but if the Phoenix Coyotes end up moving, I’d love to see them go back to Winnipeg and call themselves the Jets again, and I will rejoice vicariously with Manitobans for the fulfillment of a dream I once held myself.
Red Wings vs. Ducks: The pivotal Game 4 is tonight at the Honda Center in Anaheim, and thankfully for the scores of people in southern California who have been blacked out from several Ducks games so far this postseason, Prime Ticket — the secondary Fox Sports channel in the region — is not broadcasting either Games 4 or 5, so both games can be seen on Versus in HD.
Heading into Game 4, the most talked-about storyline of this series unfortunately is the Red Wings goal that was disallowed near the end of Game 3 that would have tied the score. The referee lost site of the puck, despite the fact it was sitting very much uncovered in the crease and actually crossed the goal line (clearly) before the whistle blew. The call wasn’t even reviewable, because the actual timing of the whistle blowing is irrelevant — it’s the intent to blow the call, er, whistle, that matters most.
I have not watched a second of this series yet, though I will tonight, so I don’t have much to offer yet. While Red Wings message boards have understandably lit up with posts of all levels of anger and literacy (it was a truly awful call), I actually feel a little bad for Brad Watson, the zebra at the center of the controversy. Just remember the next time you mess up at work, be thankful yours isn’t such a public faux pas, and accompanied by death threats.
• Canucks vs. Blackhawks: I watched Game 1 of this series while I was back in Minnesota last weekend, and probably the most noteworthy item for me was Chicago’s ability to battle back and tie both games in Vancouver after digging themselves early holes. They came up short in Game 1, but scored five straight goals and rolled to a 6-3 win in Game 2 to even the series heading back to Chicago.
After that scoring watershed, Patrick Kane, the Blackhawks 20-year old wunderkind, commented that perhaps the ’Hawks had solved Roberto Luongo, who allowed eight goals through the first two games.
“The more we play around him, the more we can realize he’s human,” said Hawks winger Patrick Kane, who has three goals in the series. “Once we got a couple on him, maybe it shattered his confidence a bit. But he’s still playing great hockey.”
Don’t tug on Superman’s cape young man. My money is on those eight goals in two games being the exception to the rule. Luongo looked pretty damn good in posting back-to-back shutouts to close the regular season, and was outstanding in the first-round sweep of St. Louis, stopping 126 of 131 shots he faced.
• For Canadian fans hoping for the Stanley Cup to return north of the border for the first time since Montreal won it all in 1993, it’s Canucks or bust.
• Apparently, fans in southern California aren’t the only ones forced to jump through hoops to watch their team’s playoff games, even if the circumstances are a little different. Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz sums up my frustrations with the NHL television policy pretty succinctly here: “Hopefully the league will realize that access can only help the game instead of trying to funnel it through a very small eye of the needle,” Wirtz said.
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NHL Playoffs: First Round Recap
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s the first week of May, and we’re already nearly a week into the second round of action of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The ongoing highlight of the conference semifinals, of course, is the first ever playoff matchup between Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and the defending Eastern Conference champion Penguins, and Alexander Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals. As this is the first hockey-related post on this blog, I’m going to take a look at how we got here to these second-round matchups.
But first, a tiny bit about me. I am the hockey copy editor here at Upper Deck, which means I put all the stats and bios on all our hockey trading cards, or if I don’t do it myself I’m responsible for checking them and making sure they’re factual and accurate. I come to work every day, and essentially dive head first into the hockey world — pros, Canadian juniors, NCAA, you name it — all day every day, and I feel pretty lucky to have such a fun job. I’ve been with the company for almost a year now, and before that was a refugee of the newspaper industry, as several of our other copy editors are. I’m originally from Minnesota, and worked for three years at a small daily newspaper in Faribault, Minn., before moving to San Diego in November 2007. I’m actually really excited to have the chance to write about hockey in a longer format again, and hopefully you find what I have to say interesting and entertaining. So here goes, with a brief recap of each of the eight first-round series.
• Bruins vs. Canadiens: First a disclaimer: I am a big Canadiens fan through an odd set of circumstances, though I cling to a claim that I am not a homer, for any team in any sport, and I pride myself on my objectivity.
I grew up a huge North Stars fan in suburban St. Paul in Minnesota, and when owner Norm Green uprooted the team and moved to Texas following the 1992-93 season, it felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest. I was a freshman in high school, and I don’t think it’s too much hyperbole to say it felt like a relative had passed away, because that’s how into that team I was as a kid.
I was always a big Patrick Roy fan in my youth, and by extension a Canadiens fan, but because the Habs played in the opposite conference as the North Stars, and my chances to watch St. Patrick and his squad — whether in person or on television — were few and far between, mine was a mellow fandom for Montreal’s squad.
That all changed in the 1993 playoffs. A confluence of three key factors swept me away on the Canadiens’ bandwagon that spring, and I’ve never left it. For seven seasons, the Habs were my favorite NHL team, and my only favorite NHL team until the Wild came along in 2000-01, and in the ensuing nine seasons my allegiances have been spliced in half — an impossible scenario if the North Stars had stuck around.
The first factor was that the North Stars stumbled down the stretch in the spring of 1993, and barely missed the playoffs. The second was that those ’93 playoffs were back on national television, on ESPN, for the first time after a few years in Pay-Per-View purgatory, so I was able to watch a lot of Canadiens games, as well as a lot of other series. The third, of course, was that the Habs went on an improbable, magical run and won the Stanley Cup, with a staggering 10 of their 16 playoff wins coming in overtime. Since then, I’ve always felt like my being a Canadiens fans was meant to be.
Fast forward to 2009. I had a chance to participate in a Stanley Cup Playoffs pool with seven other co-workers here at Upper Deck, and the one team I wouldn’t have touched was the Habs. For a number of reasons, the second half of their season was a nightmare, and there was nothing about the way they finished the regular season that led me to believe they could suddenly flip a switch and turn things around when the games truly started to matter. Indeed, the Habs finished with an eight-game losing streak.
For the Bruins, what a better way to start the playoffs than by sweeping their biggest rival, and long-time playoff nemesis? The two teams had locked horns in the playoffs 32 times previously, with Montreal holding a 24-7 series edge. And how sweet it must have been for Michael Ryder, given up for dead by the Canadiens last spring, to stick it to his former squad by leading Boston with five goals and nine points through Sunday’s Game 2 second-round loss to Carolina.
• Devils vs. Hurricanes: This was best first-round series, hands down, in my opinion. Too bad most people stateside didn’t see it. I’d love to give this nail-biting seven-game set its due with a lengthy review, but to be honest I only watched one game of it, Game 6, finding myself at the mercy of Versus’ lovefest for Crosby and Ovechkin.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with Versus’ coverage of the playoffs, I actually think they do a decent job with the games they telecast — save a couple complaints, one of which I’ll outline in just a bit. I don’t have a problem with not being able to find Versus, I know right where it is. Surely there aren’t a lot of casual, aimless viewers stumbling onto NHL telecasts on Versus and sticking around, which is a problem and the NHL knows it, but hockey fans wanting to watch the playoffs have figured out the Versus enigma after four seasons now. I also don’t have a problem with them showing as many Penguins and Capitals games as they can. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin are the NHL’s most exciting and marketable players, and the hope is they will have the crossover appeal to bring hockey into the mainstream consciousness of sports fans in the U.S.
If there were a Versus2 network that was also committed to showing NHL playoff games, you and I wouldn’t be having this, um, conversation. But there’s not, and so even as the games in this series wore on and it became apparent it was shaping up to be a beauty, it remained a rumor to most Americans. I plan on getting my fill of Crosby-Ovechkin in Round 2, but I hungered for more Devils-’Canes in Round 1.
Game 4 was a playoff classic, with Jussi Jokinen scoring the game- and series-tying goal past Marty Brodeur with two-tenths of a second remaining. And Game 7’s finish was as good as they come, with Carolina scoring twice in the final 1:20 of regulation to tie the game and take the lead, and ultimately advance. Too bad nobody saw it, even though Game 4’s dramatic conclusion went down between Versus’ broadcast of Pens/Flyers Game 4 and Sharks/Ducks Game 3. Instead of showing, ya know, some actual hockey, Versus instead decided that fans would rather watch the talking heads in the studio breaking down the East Coast action and setting up the West Coast game.
In Game 7’s aftermath, I was struck by the irony of Brodeur’s up-and-down season. Everyone knows he broke Roy’s all-time NHL wins record, and he will shortly pass Terry Sawchuk for the all-time shutouts mark. The man has looked otherworldly at times over his 16 seasons, and he was the starting goaltender for three Stanley Cup winners. But two of the Hurricanes’ four goals in Game 7 were downright weak — including Eric Staal’s final dagger that sent the Devils home with a first-round exit for the second straight season. And for the first time in his career, Marty missed a significant amount of games due to injury. He turned 37 on Wednesday, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think he’s just not the same goaltender he was when he was carrying the Devils to the finals four times in nine seasons.
• Capitals vs. Rangers: For me, this series turned in Game 4, which was actually a 2-1 Rangers win at Madison Square Garden that put the Blueshirts up 3-games-to-1. It was Henrik Lundqvist’s best game of the series, as he stopped a career-high 38 shots, and had been the best player in the series for either team through four games.
But about halfway through the third period of Game 4, the NHL’s premier pest, Sean Avery, decided the Rangers needed a little of his brand of nonsense, despite the fact his team was leading 2-1 in the game and was about to take a stranglehold on the series. Avery took four minor penalties himself in Game 3, and added a game misconduct for punching Simeon Varlamov in a 4-0 Capitals victory. Near the end of Game 4, he first backhanded Milan Jurcina in the face with the knob of his stick, creating a nice little gash for the young Slovak defender, though Avery tried to be slick about it and make it look like an accident. He might have gotten away with it if Jurcina hadn’t started bleeding and slumped over immediately. Instead he was escorted to the penalty box with a roughing penalty, and thankfully for him his team killed the ensuing power play and the Rangers clung to the one-goal lead. You’d think having dodged that bullet that common sense would take over, but this is Sean Avery after all, for whom common sense has been elusive.
Staggeringly, he took another needless penalty with about 3 minutes left for high-sticking Brian Pothier, and went to the box again. Once again Lundqvist and the Rangers penalty killers bailed him out, but from that point on the series shifted away from how well King Henrik and New York were playing and to whether or not Avery should or would play in Game 5. The rest, as they say, is history.
The cause and effect here are debatable — and ultimately unknowable — but what is certain is Avery was scratched for Game 5, Rangers coach John Tortorella blew a gasket in that contest, throwing a water bottle into the stands in Washington that struck a spectator. Lundqvist was average, at best, over the final three games, and was yanked from both Games 5 and 6. You could see in the Rangers’ faces on the bench they were in trouble as they were getting their doors blown off at home for the sixth game, and by the time the two teams returned to D.C. for the decisive battle, the series was all but over.
• Penguins vs. Flyers: Like I mentioned earlier, I’m all about gorging myself on Sid the Kid, Malkin and Co. in Round 2, but I didn’t catch a lot of this series, partly because of the early start times here on the West Coast (Upper Deck is located in the San Diego area). I did catch the end of Game 2, when Philly, down 1-0 in the series, carried a 2-1 lead through most of the third period, only to watch Evgeni Malkin tie the score with a power-play goal with about 3 ½ minutes left in the third period before Bill Guerin netted the winner in overtime while Pittsburgh skated with a 5-on-3 advantage.
The Flyers got the first crack at the power play in OT when Hal Gill was whistled for a cross-check, and one has to think this series would have been dramatically different if Philadelphia had converted there, or been able to hold off the Penguins in regulation. Instead, Mike Knuble took his own cross-checking penalty, and Claude Giroux was whistled for slashing 30 seconds later. Once Gill’s penalty was over, Knuble and the precocious winger Giroux could only look on helplessly from the visitors’ penalty box as Guerin stuffed the puck past a surprised Martin Biron on the short side to give the Pens a 2-0 series edge.
The two teams traded wins in Philadelphia, and the Flyers looked like they might climb back into the series by winning on the road in Game 5, but ultimately Philly couldn’t dig out of the hole they’d dug for themselves in the first two games, and they had to be kicking themselves for blowing the chance to even the series in Game 2 going back home for Game 3.
• Sharks vs. Ducks: I watched more of this series than any other, catching Games 2 through 6 pretty much in their entirety, mainly because the games all started in prime time on the Pacific Coast. To my chagrin I was forced to watch three of them at a local watering hole, but that’s another story.
Two things struck me about this series as it went on: First, the Ducks made all the right moves late in the season, trading for defensemen Ryan Whitney, James Wisniewski and Sheldon Brookbank to bolster a blueline corps that already featured future Hall of Famers Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer, then having the guts to hand the starting goaltender job to second-year NHLer Jonas Hiller, even though it meant parking former Conn Smythe Trophy winner and Stanley Cup champ J.S. Giguere on the bench. Hiller was the key to the first-round upset of the Presidents’ Trophy winners, and it’s doubtful they’d have pulled that out without the young Swiss netminder manning the cage. Hiller made 35, 44, 35, 31, 48 and 37 saves, respectively, over the course of the six games.
The second was my curiosity as to what the Sharks are going to do this offseason. Judging by their regular-season performances, it seemed as though GM Doug Wilson pulled all the right strings last summer in bringing in defensemen Rob Blake, Dan Boyle and Brad Lukowich, and 117 points pretty much speak for themselves. True, the Sharks had a lot of banged-up players as the regular season neared an end, and one could wonder just how healthy guys like Blake, Patrick Marleau, Evgeni Nabokov and Ryane Clowe were heading into the postseason. It’s standard procedure for guys to play hurt in the playoffs — sometimes really hurt — and to keep their mouth shut about it. So even though those guys were on the ice, it’s hard to say how much their were bothered by their respective ailments.
When a team underachieves year after year when the playoffs come around, despite loads of talent, it has to be stupefying for the guy in charge. I’m not one to overreact to small sample sizes, and six games is a small sample size. But after four consecutive upset losses in the first or second rounds, there’s obviously a pattern there that cannot be ignored. Is Joe Thornton a playoff choker? I’m sure he doesn’t think of himself in that way, just as Sharks fans now and Bruins fans before him didn’t want to see it that way, but at this point it borders on being a self-fulfilling prophecy. For whatever reason, he hasn’t been able to elevate his play when March rolls into April, May and June, and his teams have faltered despite big expectations.
• Red Wings vs. Blue Jackets: I didn’t watch a single second of this series, but obviously it would have been a huge upset for the Jackets simply to have stretched the defending champs out beyond four or five games — never mind actually winning the series. The Red Wings seemed primed for another deep playoff run, and while the Blue Jackets had a tremendous season, qualifying for the postseason for the first time in franchise history, their best days are ahead of them. Goalie Steve Mason is going to win the Calder Trophy, and might just win the Vezina Trophy. He leads an extremely talented group of rookies that includes Derick Brassard, Jakub Voracek, Nikita Filatov and Derek Dorsett, giving Columbus a strong nucleus to build around in the years to come.
• Canucks vs. Blues: Not much to say about this series, I only watched parts of one of the games. It was a sweep for Vancouver, and while it’s not like St. Louis was overmatched in any of the four games, they only held one lead through any of the four games, and they struggled to get consistent offensive chances. As coach Andy Murray said after his team had been eliminated, the Blues were only themselves in “phases” during the series. But they have a lot of really talented young players, and keep in mind that 2006 No. 1 overall pick Erik Johnson, the expected anchor of St. Louis’ defense corps in the coming years, didn’t play one shift this season.
• Blackhawks vs. Flames: This series was great through the first four games, but late in Chicago’s blowout 5-1 win at home in Game 5, Dion Phaneuf suffered a leg injury, hobbled off the ice for the final time during the 2008-09 season, and the Flames chances wilted without him. Calgary was already playing without its defensive heart and soul, Robyn Regehr, and the absence of its top two defensemen — as good a pair as any team in the league can boast — was simply too much to overcome. The ’Hawks broke serve in Game 6, becoming the first team in the series to win on the road, and clinched their first playoff series win in 13 years with a 4-1 victory.
I think whatever the Blackhawks do in this postseason is a bonus, because while they’ve got a pretty good team right now, they’re still very, very young. Their captain (Jonathan Toews) is only 21, and Patrick Kane isn’t even old enough to consume an adult beverage yet. Three of their top four defensemen are 25 or younger (Duncan Keith, 25; Brent Seabrook, 24; Cam Barker 23), and this group reinvigorated NHL hockey in the Chicagoland area. It’s a great time to be a ’Hawks fan again.
I didn’t really expect it to happen before the postseason started, but I’ve watched more hockey this spring than I think I have in my entire life. For me there’s nothing like the first round of the NHL playoffs, where there’s a virtual nightly buffet of compelling, intense hockey. The beauty though is that after the first round, and for every round thereafter, that intensity ratchets up another notch. Stay tuned!
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