Archive for Pittsburgh Penguins
Brag Photo: The Giant Sidney Crosby In Our Lobby
Posted by: | CommentsLast weekend was a pretty exciting one for sports: the Lakers won the NBA Finals, and the Penguins took the Stanley Cup from the defending champion Detroit Red Wings in enemy territory. Doesn’t get much better than that. And while everyone here at Upper Deck has their favorite athletes and teams (especially those who came here from areas other than San Diego), we all find ourselves cheering for athletes who work with our company. Like Kobe Bryant and Sidney Crosby.
So right after Marc-André Fleury made those incredible saves in the final seconds of Game 7 to bring the Cup back to Pittsburgh, I immediately knew what this week’s Brag Photo had to be. Behold: the giant Sidney Crosby in our lobby!
Sidney is actually located right by the steps to the second floor, so if you work up here (as I do), you’ll see him first thing in the morning, and at the end of the day on your way home. Being that it’s an Upper Deck item, no detail is too small.
If you spotted the sign on his base, or are familiar with Upper Deck products, you’ll notice that this Sid the Kid is actually a much larger version of the All-Star Vinyl product that also bears his likeness. I can say with a good amount of confidence that you’re unlikely to ever obtain this giant one that greets us each day, but luckily the market version is just as detailed, and can fit comfortably on your desk without crushing it.
Fortunately for collectors, these items have a fairly limited print run, so you may have some trouble finding this particular Sidney (though I encourage you to look at your local hobby store). If the Penguins aren’t your team, or hockey isn’t your thing, we currently have Eli Manning, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James in stock in the online store, so click here to check those out. Not to mention, two very cool Vinyls from the Legends Series:
I’m not aware of any current plans for a giant Muhammad Ali, but if we did produce one, the champ would provide me with deep inspiration to come up with great one-liners on a daily basis. A boy can dream.
Keep visiting every Friday for more Brag Photos: even though we have lots of cool items in the warehouse, the game-used room or deep in the vaults under lock and key, some of our most unique items like the Giant Sidney are in plain sight on a daily basis. You’d normally only see these if you’re an employee, a visitor or a lucky sweepstakes winner, but I’ll be showing them off right here on the blog.
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Penguins Skate the Cup: C’est Magnifique!
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a good bet a lot of the revelry Friday night in the Penguins locker room after they clinched the Stanley Cup in Detroit was in French.
Friday’s climactic Game 7 had a very French-Canadian flavor to it, with six of the players skating the Cup for the winning team hailing from the province of Quebec — including Max Talbot, who scored both goals in Pittsburgh’s 2-1 victory at Joe Louis Arena, and Marc-Andre Fleury, whose goaltending in Games 6 and 7 was the single-most crucial factor in the Pens successfully overcoming a 3-2 series deficit. In addition to Talbot and Fleury, Kris Letang, Pascal Dupuis, Phillipe Boucher and backup goalie Mathieu Garon were all born in Quebec.
Talbot and Fleury are good friends, and have a pre-game ritual performed in French in which they “talk about their boyhood days, their shared experiences on the Canadian junior teams, [and] their good fortune in getting paid to play hockey on its highest level,” explains Robert Dvorchak of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Penguins carried play in the first period, but went to the dressing room unrewarded on the scoreboard. Then Talbot serendipitously found the puck on his stick after Brad Stuart’s ill-advised clearing attempt out of his corner glanced off Evgeni Malkin’s skate and right to the Lemoyne native, and Talbot didn’t miss. It was a huge goal, and sucked the life out of the Joe Louis Arena crowd. After Talbot went down the line in front of his bench to get the customary fist bumps, he took a few strides toward his buddy, exchanged a meaningful glance and a fist pump for Fleury, as if to say “OK, we got one. Now it’s your turn.”
On the other end of the ice, it was clear early that Fleury was just as engaged in Game 7 as he was in Game 6 in Pittsburgh, and it was going to be really tough for the Red Wings to beat the Sorel native on this night. He was reading plays very well, his positioning was flawless and there was a sense he might just pitch a shutout. Indeed Detroit didn’t get on the scoreboard until only about 6 minutes remained in the contest, on a goal by rookie defenseman Jonathan Ericsson through a screen that Fleury likely never saw. While he may have caught a break when Niklas Kronwall’s blast smacked loudly off the crossbar with about 2 minutes left, he saved his best stop of the evening for last, desperately flinging his body in front of Nicklas Lidstrom’s last-gasp shot from point-blank range with a second remaining. It was a pretty good scoring chance, given the circumstances, and Fleury’s lunging save will be one of the enduring images from the game, along with the scruffy-looking, yet baby-faced Sidney Crosby triumphantly holding the Cup over his head, a coronation not just for Sid the Kid and the Penguins, but seemingly a new generation of NHL superstars.
Another image that will stay with me is that of another Quebecer, Mario Lemieux, the new unofficial mayor of Pittsburgh, again hoisting the Cup over his head 17 years after winning the second of back-to-back championships with the Penguins in 1991 and ’92, and listening to the effusive praise from Talbot, who was being interviewed by Pierre McGuire on NBC at the time, for Mario:
“When he’s in the room, he pushes us,” Talbot said, mentioning that Lemieux delivered a note to the team before Game 7. “He’s an unbelievable guy, and he’s a winner. Once again.”
Lemieux hoisting the Cup, then and now.
Earlier last week, another of the Pens Francophiles, spare defenseman Boucher from St. Apollinaire, told Rob Rossi of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review what Lemieux means to French Canadians: “When French Canadians think of hockey, [Lemieux’s name] is the one that comes to mind.”
Having said that, while French Canadians can and should continue to take pride in the gracious Montreal native, Lemieux now belongs as much to Pittsburgh as he does to his native province, and probably more so.
Mario Lemieux Upper Deck Original Art
Is it possible for any person in sports history to endear themselves to a fan base more than Lemieux, who is as much a part of the fabric of Pittsburgh as the steel industry, and the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers? He has now saved the Penguins franchise in Pittsburgh twice over, first vaulting the club from irrelevant, laughable bottom-dwellers to perennial Cup contenders upon his entry into the league in 1984-85. He played his entire spectacular 17-year career with the Pens, then bought the team in 1999 by turning the money owed him by the team in the form of deferred salary into equity in the franchise, saving the Pens from bankruptcy that very nearly led to the team’s extinction in Pittsburgh. They were close to either moving or folding completely, but Lemieux’s plan to pay all the team’s creditors was successful, and now they will play one more season in the NHL’s oldest building, Mellow Arena, affectionately known as “The Igloo,” before moving into a shiny new home beginning with the 2010-11 season, thanks to Mario.
And of course, he’s been Crosby’s landlord and surrogate father since Sid joined the Penguins in 2005.
Rossi says the Penguins are thinking of placing a statue of Lemieux outside the new Consol Energy Center when it opens, but the humble owner would have to OK that arrangement.
Some random thoughts and notes: As mentioned Friday, it had been 30 years since a visiting team in either the Stanley Cup Finals, World Series or NBA Finals won a Game 7 on the road — the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. It’s only happened three times in NHL history, the last time coming in 1971, when the Montreal Canadiens bested the Chicago Black Hawks. That series played out the same way as this one did, with the home team winning the first six games before the Habs broke serve in Game 7.
• For those that may have forgotten, it was Talbot who scored with 35 seconds left in regulation last year that tied Game 5 and denied Detroit the privilege of celebrating another Cup on home ice, when the Penguins went on to win that contest in three overtimes before bowing out in Game 6.
• I enjoy playing fantasy hockey in the winter, and next year I’m making it a priority to target Jordan Staal, who I think grew by leaps and bounds this postseason. I think Letang is another guy who will be undervalued heading into 2009-10.
• One of this offseason’s more interesting unrestricted free agents, in my opinion, is stay-at-home defenseman Rob Scuderi. He will surely require a raise from his $725,000 salary of 2008-09.
• When commissioner Gary Bettman handed the Cup to the 21-year old Crosby, Sid became the youngest captain in NHL history to hoist sports most treasured trophy, just as he was the youngest player in history to be named an NHL captain before the 2007-08 season. Malkin (22) is the third-youngest player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy.
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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.
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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.
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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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