Round 1 Roundup

Well THIS was an interesting first round. Three teams wrapped it up and moved on early; three series went to six games, and two went to seven. Epic moments occurred in every series, though some had more impact than others; players were suspended, as were coaches, goalies were given the boot, and one team made a ridiculous comeback. Here's a ranking of the eight series, from least exciting to most amazing. (May be a little biased.)

8. Detroit Red Wings sweep Columbus Blue Jackets

I have to admit, I did not pay attention to this series at ALL. For one thing, for the most part, I tend to shy away from Western Conference games unless the Blackhawks are involved; for another, I had a feeling that the Red Wings would completely dominate. I picked them all four times in the Twtpool and that was that. Things of note include the fact that this was CBJ's first ever trip to the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs; to be fair, they're a young franchise. Hopefully they'll take this playoff experience and run with it, coming back next year with a vengeance. I have to say, too, I was secretly rooting really hard for Steve Mason, especially after he blanked the Bruins back on March 10th.

7. Vancouver Canucks sweep St. Louis Blues

Vancouver Canucks sweep the St. Louis Blues: another series I didn't pay much attention to, except via all the 'Nucks and Blues fans who apparently follow me on Twitter. (highly entertaining to watch Twitter react when goals were scored in this series.) Again, I picked the Canucks in all four games in the pool, and I got 'em all.

6. Penguins take it to the Flyers in 6

Marc-Andre Fleury really owned this series, except when he didn't. I kept picking the Pens, and they only dissapointed me twice.

Basically: Pens take games 1 & 2, Sarah goes "Oh, well, this'll be a quick one." WRONG. Series goes to Wachovia for game 3; all of a sudden, my haterade for Scott Hartnell QUADRUPLES, and the Flyers take game 3. Dang. Flyers fans have to be the most annoying things ever ("Crosby sucks?" Be a little more original, Philly.) Luckily, game 4 didn't go the same way; Flower nearly shut out the Flyers (3-1, final) in a bit of a turnaround from game 3.

Flyers take game 5 in a 3-0 shutout at Mellon Arena, making Pens fans everywhere incredibly angry and further screwing me over in the twtpool; luckily the Pens came back for game 6 with a fury.

...sort of.

At the end of the first period it's 3-0 Flyers and I am seriously having doubts about ever having picked the Pens for any reason other than I love Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury. AWFUL. Luckily my doubts were assuaged when Sidney Crosby decided he wanted to actually show up to the game. Final score: 5-3, Pens win, move onto round 2, and get me some pool points again. (I am nothing if not devoted to the teams I pick.)*

5. Ducks jump the #1 seeded Sharks in 6

Okay, I have to admit, I have a soft spot for the Ducks. After all, they did acquire one Petteri Nokelainen from the Bruins and James Wisniewski from the 'Hawks back on Hockey Christmas, along with a bunch of other dudes. Post March 4th, they were basically this team cobbled together from parts of other teams, and then they started winning. Craziness.

Plus, I don't really like the Sharks. Going into this, I pretty much assumed it was going to be 4 and done, Sharks move on - in all my round pools, I picked them to do that, even though it made me a little sad.

Lucky for me (sort of?), Joe Thornton and the Curse of the President's Trophy struck again! The Ducks made some epic comebacks, and while the Sharks struggled to stay in it, Jonas Hiller the Shark Killer kept them to two games, and the Ducks took it in 6. Good times. Glad I picked the Ducks in game 6. This was a fairly exciting series.

4. Bruins sweep the sad-sack Habs in 4

The only reason this isn't further down on the list is because I'm a giant homer. No, wait, that's incorrect.

THIS SERIES ROCKED. Really hard. I'm not a bad person, I swear, but it was like the best sort of revenge.

Game 1: First, Phil Kessel scored. Seconds later, David Krejci scored. (Dear Peter Chiarelli: RE-SIGN KREJCI. That is all.) Some Habs did some scoring. Lame. Later, Zdeno Chara scored the GWG and Marc Savard totally gave him a big smooch for it. There were some extracurriculars at the end of the game, which resulted in Matt Hunwick getting his eye poked out, practically (that image is a little icky, watch out) and Kessel getting plowed after his last-minute goal. This game was probably the most struggly. Matt Hunwick got sent to the hospital the following day.

Game 2: Best game in the series. Sheriff Shane Hnidy, playing in Matt Hunwick's spot (which he took from Hnides earlier in the year, BTW) SCORES A GOAL. WHAT.

Too bad that's not ALL that happened. Marc Savard was crazy, Mike Ryder lit it up against his former team, Tim Thomas got his FIRST NHL PLAYOFF POINT (assisted on Ryder's goal, I believe). And did I mention that Patrice Bergeron got in a fight?



Lucic got a game misconduct and a 1-game suspension which did not make ANY sense considering the extracurriculars that went on in game 1 and the beginnings of this game. Oh well. BAM, 5-1, let's go to Montreal.

Game 3: This is where the Habs really started looking sad-sack. We take the series to ye olde Bell Centre, A Shawn Thornton from Byron Bitz goal happens (and can I pause here to mention that for a while Thorts had more goals in the playoffs than supposed superstahhh Joe Thornton? AWESOME.), Timmy is yet again an unstoppable brick wall, only letting in one goal in the first period. THOOOOOOOOOOO-MAS chant, what? Ole, what? Bring on game four!

Game 4: Michael Ryder vs. the Habs, round 4. Michael Ryder wins. 2 goals, 1 assist. Andrei Kostitsyn and the Habs showed up for about ten minutes in the first; however, Ryder and Krejci scored goals (off assists from each other...Lucic-Ryder-Krejci MIGHT be my favorite line, EVER) less than a minute apart, and after that, it was really all over. A bit of extracurriculars, Montreal going crazy on Carey Price (who did NOT deserve what those fans did to him, in my opinion) and that was that, onto a week of bumming around Wilmington and some not-really-needed rest.


3. Blackhawks put out the Flames in 6

I watched as much of this series as I could. Basically what I gleaned from it for the most part is: Marty Havlat is the most versatile forward on the team; Coach Quenneville could stick him ANYWHERE (first line, fourth line) and things would get done. Iginla-Cammaleri-Jokinen gave them problems, and at times the Hawks looked like they had no idea what they were doing; first playoffs since Jonathan Toews was what, 8? or so will do that to you.

But magic happened; in game 1, Marty Havlat scored the third fastest overtime goal in playoffs history. Check please, United Center goes wild. Game 2: Captain Serious scores two goals, Patrick Sharp grabs one, the defense and Khabibulin are GREAT and limit Calgary to two goals.

Games 3 and 4 in Calgary were a struggle; Kane sat Game 3 with flu-like symptoms (perhaps Swine Flu of Doom?) and some crazy rumors started that the 'Hawks were yelling racist slurs during the game. Come on, let's just play some hockey. Jokinen and Iginla played really well at home; the Hawks just really couldn't handle them.

After that, it was like the Hawks just decided they wanted to be done with things. Kiprusoff forgot there was a game 5; Kaner and the boys rocked game 6 and that was that. Exciting series.


2: Hurricanes whale on the Devils; take it to 7

Didn't watch a minute of this series because it was never on TV. Things I saw in highlights include two things:
1) Carolina scores with :00.7 left in the third, Marty Brodeur throws a hissyfit (game 4).
2) Carolina scores two goals in one minute to take game seven; somewhere, Mama and Daddy Staal declare Eric their favorite of the night. Marc goes and cries in a corner, due to the results of epic series #1.

These two things were ridiculous; the series went to game 7, Lady Luck was SO with Carolina it's sort of unbelievable.

1. Baby goalie, Ovie, and Sergei Federov are better than Sean Avery and Coach Torts in 7 games

Oh god, where to begin.
THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME:
*Jose Theodore gives everything up in game one; is pulled; New baby goalie Semyon Varlamov (who'd logged what, like five actual NHL games at that point?) pulls through, Caps win.
*Ovie has a few super nice goals, but this is overshadowed by
*MATT BRADLEY WITH TWO GOALS IN GAME FIVE. Yes, THAT Matt Bradley. Ovie's goal was pretty, but Brad's were the ones that counted.
*Two shutouts for Semyon Varlamov; on top of this, gets Sean Avery sat for one game because of his shenanigans. Avery does not like goalies, apparently; he smacked Varly in the back of the head. Check out Varly's reaction: IT IS NONEXISTANT. Russian goalie is....very stoic.
*Mike Green finally pulls his head out of the sand and does well in the last two games.
*Some Caps fan taunts Torts; Torts throws a water bottle at him, gets thrown out of the next game, Caps proceed to trounce the Rangers yet again.
*It all comes down to the last few minutes of game 7 at the Verizon Center. It's 1-1, and Old Man Feds bangs one in for the win, and for the pass to Round Two. Bring on the Pens!

So now it's time for Round Two. I just want to say: I picked 7/8 of these series correctly. Sweet. Go Bruins, Caps, and Hawks! And...Ducks, I guess!

* This is a giant lie. Case in point: Devils/Canes series.

Wheels vs. the Milk Crate

Just a little quickie, post-Bruins practice.

It could be 100 degrees out in the shade and Ristuccia would still be rockin' out at ridiculously sub-freezing temperatures. I mean, I know it's an ice rink, but...let's just say the nickname "The Ice Box" is spectacularly apt.

A few days ago a friend posted a link to one of Cabbie's Journals; Cabbie, if you don't know, is a reporter who's following all the teams in contention for the Stanley Cup. His interviews are fairly tongue-in-cheek; he goes to Fenway Park and hangs out with Carey Price, for example, or tries to learn Russian from Varlamov, the baby Caps goalie, or tries to steal money from Brooks Laich.

In this video, he totally makes fun of the autograph hounds at Ristuccia. GOOD TIMES. I'm glad I recognized the parking lot (and the lady with the makeup that he makes fun of, as well. She's there EVERY FRIDAY THAT I AM THERE.) Totally worth a watch.

In actual practice news, though, things looked good today. Savard, Bergeron, and Wideman were noticeably absent, along with Tim Thomas, who may be taking a recovery day due to "flu-like symptoms" experienced in games 3 & 4 (bet you're even happier that we swept now, eh? I can't imagine Fernandez in goal against a Habs team that was any stronger than these guys. No, Thank you.) Up filling in for Thomas was young Providence Bruins goalie Adam Courchaine, who's only logged one game for the Peebs this year - he did most of his time in the OHL with the Ottawa 67's. At first we thought it might actually be Bemidji State callup Matt Dalton, but that wasn't right. Adam Courchaine is highly unlikely to see any playoff time; there are a few goalie in line ahead of him, the most prominent being Tuukka Rask. Odds are that with at least a week before the next playoff game, Julien just wanted to give Timmy Thomas an extra rest day.

Drills were solid today - not too much messing around, although the team seemed in high spirits and didn't take things too hard - with the exception of Byron Bitz, who did extra conditioning while the rest of the team chipped pucks at Courchaine towards the end of practice.

One last fun thing - in past weeks, Matt Hunwick has had the unfortunate task of cleaning up the pucks post-practice. A few of us have been keeping score of Matty Hunwick vs. the Milk Crate of Pucks- one week he knocked over a bunch of water bottles during clean up (Milk Crate Wins), one week things went without incident (Hunwick wins), and one week the coaches let him escape without cleaning up (draw). But with Hunwick out for the count with a busted spleen, we wondered who would step up to the plate and battle the Milk Crate in his stead. Answer: Blake Wheeler. (of course, another rookie.) Wheeler did his teammate proud, and wins this round! Get well soon, Matt Hunwick - your opponent awaits you at Ristuccia!