Category Archives: Sports – Hockey

Oilers finally get through to Toskala:

Roloson deflected Ek’s shot, the puck went way up in the air and nobody saw it. Just a flukey thing. What can you do?” said Sharks coach Ron Wilson. “It all came together like, well, a perfect storm. We had them penned in their end for two minutes on the power play, firing shots left and right, then one of our shots gets deflected, we can’t find the puck and they get a bounce.”

When Jason Smith (on a nifty deke) and Ales Hemsky (after a great feed from Ryan Smyth) beat Toskala early in the third he was gone for Evgeni Nabokov. It was only the third time in his NHL career, Toskala has given up five goals in a game.

If Toskala’s psyche is a little bruised, he wasn’t showing it after the Oilers made him look mortal for the first time in the series. He didn’t have much to say, but he didn’t look broken up. Wilson got him out of there after 31 shots, not so much because he was shell-shocked, as to get his former No. 1 Nabokov into the game.
“Just a rest for Toskala and an opportunity to get Nabby some work,” said Wilson, who’ll let the Finn jump right back on the horse Sunday night.

“I thought Peca’s goal (to make it 3-2) actually got us back on our heels, shooting from on the goal-line,” said Wilson, who wrote off the Samsonov goal as just a terrible break. “We were in control of the game, up 3-1 and Roloson made an incredible save on a 2-on-0 (Joe Thornton and Jonathan Cheechoo) when we were short-handed, then a couple of bounces went against us,” said Wilson. “The crowd got into it and they finished us off.”

I’m not sure I’m as sanguine about the loss as Wilson is — while the Sharks have been in control early, it’s been a closely fought battle with both teams playing well. A couple of bounces turned Edmonton’s way, and they buried us; it shows how close this series really is, that it could be 3-1 either way.

It’s nice that the team isn’t being too worried about the loss to the press, but let’s hope that some of that is showmanship, not simply overconfidence; because that’s what the Oilers would love to take advantage of…

The Battle of Alberta:

I think Chopper speaks for all Oil fans when he says:It would be more enjoyable if we were up in the series,” said Moreau. “But I love this hockey – it’s great, it’s fast, it’s physical. It’s a great product. It’s two teams that are competing very hard, two teams that skate well.True dat.I have no grand observations other than I think that the winner of this game will win the series.

I think that might be correct.

Gotta hand it to Edmonton tonight. They found the crack in San Jose’s armor and ripped it wide open. San Jose’s been humming along, feeling invulnerable and playing like it. No more.

Now, we get to see whether San Jose can deal with that. It’s no longer an easy decision to pick the Sharks in this series (if it ever was. I picked them in six; it’s easier to pick them in six than living through them playing this series for six games….). On the other hand, Edmonton is going to have to win in San Jose; if both sides keep winning home games, the Sharks move on in 7.

But edmonton had to find a way to break through. they did. Now, it’s clearly the Sharks on the defensive, having to find a way to push back and take momentum back. Game five has to be a great game for the Sharks, or they’re in trouble.

(will they? I think so; that was their first truly stinker game of the playoffs, if you ask me — but I’ll give full credit to Edmonton for forcing San jose into stinking… San jose didn’t play flat, san jose was flattened.) I can’t even say “the sharks looked tired” as an excuse; they didn’t. They simply got seriously outplayed.

It’s now a best of three, and anyone’s guess. Game 5 MAY tell the story; especially if Edmonton wins it. But this puppy is going at least six, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see San Jose win at home, and Edmonton follow, and it all come down to Game 7 and who can dig deeper. If that happens — then Anaheim’s the real winner….

Makes me feel that whatever happens, the REAL final round with the east will be an anti-climax. We’re seeing the real final rounds now; the worry may well be whoever comes out of the West is too tired and beaten up to beat the East, not that the East is better.

The Battle of Alberta:

You know what else really pisses me off about the Sharks? Their fans. Oh sure, they can yell and scream in the rink, but where are they now?

I’ve been quieter than normal because I’m travelling. Sunday (round 2 game 1) was my mom and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary, and they threw themselves a big party, renting out a restaurant and inviting lots of folks. As dutiful son, not only did I go, I wore a coat and tie, and I didn’t even ask the bar to sneak the sharks game on.

I’ve been following where I can thanks to the XM radio in the car, but between being tied up with things (the party, upgrading mom’s computer to Tiger and a new printer/scanner, surprising dad with his own iBook now that he’s decided to get online, and doing parental tech support.

First two playoff games I’ve missed since, um, 1995, when I was in europe training Apple people on this new “internet” thing. Fortunately, the hotel I’m in now has OLN, so life is a LOT better, but I’ll be happy to be home (tomorrow).

I know some folks can be experts about anything — but I prefer to actually watch what I talk about, or at least listen to it… (I did get most of OT on the Sharks/Oiler game last night, at least….)

We’ll be back to normal by game 5. And once the Sharks put the Oilers away (which SHOULD still happen, just not easy), perhaps we’ll even start believing the Sharks are for real…. right now, it’s still a bit cinderella-ish, Joe thornton notwithstanding…

the three games last night are an interesting view into playoff hockey. New Jersey and Ottawa are looking at tee times, and Edmonton isn’t.

Coaches for the Devils and the Sens should simply show the first period of last night’s Oiler’s game to their teams and say “this. This is how you play when the end of the season is staring at you”.

but the Oilers have their own problem: they hung it all out. the sold out. they did everything they possibly could, and finally won a period against the sharks (in enthusiastic style and by a wide margin). Then they had to go back into their locker room and say to themselves “now, we only need to do that two more periods tonight, and for three more games after that”.

And I think that reality is why they came out a little flat in the 2nd, and the Sharks scored twice. The reality is, it looks like for Edmonton to win, they have to play with that “no tomorrow”, almost-suicidal attitude; and do it not for a period, but for the rest of the series.

To give them credit — they found that next gear, nobody else this round has, or really came close. Will they be able to keep it up? Will that “12″ on their amplifier travel with them to San Jose?

Dunno. But that period was a textbook case of playing desperate; and it took well into overtime, but Edmonton finally got the break it needed, and the win. They earned it the hard way, too, and deserved it. I respected them going into the series; I respect them more this morning. they’re not going to make it easy.

But — can they do it three more games? We’ll see; to be honest, that’s why coaches focus on the next game, and the next period. Lose those, it no longer maters. Let the players see too far into the future, and they see how steep the path is. Only talk about the next climb, let them know they can do it.

On the Sharks side? All they need to do is keep doing what they’ve been doing; if they have a ’12′ on their amplifier, even better, but they can do what they did last night — avoid the worst of the Oiler physical play, be patient, take their shots; after all, they also were one bounce away from making that series 3-0 last night, despite everything Edmonton threw at them. Edmonton is still the team under pressure here.

(and — congrats to the Oiler fans. that’s some noise. something the Sharks fans should take as a challenge….)

Pond Hockey:

The new NHL? Those were NHL teams playing? It wasn’t the local beer league? You could have fooled me.

Tom? Tom?

please do us a favor. Grab Don Cherry (and while you’re at it, set up a carpool with Pat Quinn, Derian Hatcher and Bobby Clarke) and go off and join the Quebec Senior League, where you all seem to fit in a lot better now.

Folks, folks, nothing to see here. Please move along.

It’s just a few dinosaurs whining about how they don’t like how the mammals are running things these days.

My Round 2 predictions….

But first, a look back at Round 1. I picked:

Detroit/Edmonton: Detroit in 5
Dallas/Colorado: Dallas in 6
Calgary/Anaheim: Calgary in 6
San Jose/Nashville: San Jose in 6.

(that makes me, um, 1-3 in the west, where I know the teams better. Great work, chuq)

Ottawa/Tampa Bay: Ottawa in 4
Carolina/Montreal: Carolina in 5
New Jersey/Rangers: New Jersey in a fight.
Buffalo/Philly: Buffalo in 6.

(where I magically went 4-0)

So I’m 5-3 in the first round, one of the best records I’ve had for a while.

2nd round:

Edmonton/San Jose: San Jose in 6. I just think San Jose is rolling, better offense, better goaltending. Pronger worries me, as always. he can carry a team, and will.

Colorado/Anaheim: Anaheim in 6. I just don’t think Colorado is stronger.

Ottawa/Buffalo: Ottawa in 7. Series to watch this round in the east. gonna be fun.
New Jersey/Caroling: New Jersey in 6. the better team, with Brodeur.

Off Wing Opinion: And In Edmonton…:

If I’m San Jose Sharks head coach Ron Wilson, I’m thinking there isn’t a team left in the draw in the West that my guys can’t beat. And that includes Calgary. It’s all breaking for Ron just like it did in 1998 in Washington. If everything holds up, he’ll get home ice against Colorado in the next round.

Hey, if you insist.

(frankly, Calgary still worries me. Both Sutter and Kiprusoff have shown they like to “remind” the folks in San Jose they used to be Sharks… and in the playoffs, that kind of emphatic reminder would be — priceless).

And In Anaheim…:

Don Koharski just blew a huge call by waving off a Ducks goal by Teemu Selanne. Koharski nullified the goal…

painful. And no matter how you want to argue it, the only proper answer here is “oops”. the goal was clearly scored before contact, and the water bottle in motion. So Lupul didn’t commit goalie interference, because the play is dead when the goal scored. A very serious mistake, that I hope isn’t significant to the game.

Kuklas Korner:

Obvious Edmonton high stick knocked down the puck near the Detroit goal. Ensuing scramble, Edmonton scores. Knocked down puck went directly to Samsonov and he scored on a goal that was also reviewed for a kicking motion. Now I know replay cannot overrule a high stick call, only if a high stick caused the goal. But something should have been done to eliminate that obvious high stick on the puck.

CBC showed camera angles clearly showing it wasn’t a high stick, and both Ron MacLean and Kelly Hrudey (and, FWIW, me) agree it was the right call, and a good goal.

I’ve been telling people today that I thought it was done for Detroit.

Silly me. Steve Yzerman, playing 3 minutes a period, on one leg, barely skating, seems to be able to find a way to turn the game anyway.

It really looks to me like he’s going to make sure this goes to game 7, somehow. And I don’t want to be Edmonton in Detroit for a Game 7.

But — Ken Holland ought to be looking at his team (very well paid, very veteran, very playoff experienced) and start asking a few guys why he’s paying them that money if they can’t step it up without Yzerman around, and what they plan on doing once he retires (if he ever retires). Because it seems to me Detroit has a problem with who the leaders are and how they lead. It really looks to me like that team has a bunch of leaders, but only if they’re following Stevie Y. That’s a problem he needs to solve.

update: and it’s now 2-2, and… well… wow. someone doesn’t want to go back to detroit, I guess…. wow.)

update 2: and edmonton decides to finish it.

Wow. and well done.

The Sports Economist:

In 1994-95 more than 40% of the season was lost to a labor dispute. The fans reacted in 1995-96 by setting a new attendance record. In 2005-06 history repeated itself. An entire season of games was lost and fans reacted by setting a new attendance record. This leads one to ask, does taking hockey away from NHL fans make these fans happier?Not being much of a hockey fan, I do not know.

well, as a hockey fan that lived through both lockouts, let me attempt to answer.

The answer is, I think, pretty simple: if the fans are convinced that the problems that led to the strike are solved, they’ll put the stoppage behind them and come back to the game. They have to feel that there’s been a solution, not just a stoppage. That’s been the problem with baseball’s occasional slow return to attendance numbers: fans generally seemed to believe (and not without justification) that the enxt time the contract was up, they’d have another strike.

After the first stoppage, most fans (and hockey people) felt they’d dealt with the issues; it turned out, that CBA had flaws. This latest stoppage, I think the fans were more or less willing to put up with it because the ownership group seemed determined to fix the problems AND build a better working relationship with the players; if they’d simply outwaited the players and gone off to business as usual, I think it would have been much different.

It didn’t hurt that there were hockey franchises going through bankruptcy, and other franchises up for sale with no takers. It made it a lot easier for the owners to justify the need for drastic behavior. Most fans, I think, realized hockey was seriously screwed up and at risk of failing as a league. That changes your attitude…

We have now written a book that is bound to be read by perhaps dozens and dozens of people. In this book we argue that the story the media tells about labor disputes is not true.

excuse me, but, well, duh. Good news does not sell newspapers. Never has. It serves the newspaper’s purpose to be as negative as possible and emphasize the problems. And sports columnists have a long history of having (and caring about) only a faint aquaintenceship with the facts, because they get in the way of the rabblerousing.

If labor and management in professional sports believe that strikes and lockouts do not threaten future attendance, will these events occur with even more frequency?

No, because they’re still expensive and economically disrupting events, perhaps even more disrupting to sponsorships and non-attendance revenue than gate receipts.

And besides, nobody wants to be the first league to be involved in a stoppage when that changes. Remember when building a new arena or stadium “guaranteed” big revenues? And then Oakland rebuilt the colliseum for the Warriors, and then there was New Comiskey, and…. It’d be a bad idea to assume there won’t be bad side effects to a stoppage, because that’s the kind of arrogance that might well cause them to happen.

Kuklas Korner:

- “You know the type of game you’re going to get – we talked about it – it’s Marc Joannette and Warren, who I’ve had my issues with over the years.

And Darren Pang, today on XM, basically agreed with him. And to a degree, so do I. Joannette’s one of the guys that I’d originally put on my “least favorite” list and pulled because I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it from memory with my lack of detailed notes on him. But now that others are saying it too, I feel better about saying “me, too”.

where McTavish loses me, though, is that this is the refs fault. There are good refs and bad ones, and many in the middle. And all along the history of the game, different refs have brought a style and/or personality to games they called: nobody in their right mind would expect a game by Fraser to be called the same way Paul Stewart used to. One reason I really like Walkom as the new head of officiating is that the type of game he called — strong control, quiet personality, stable and consistent — is the type of game the NHL has to be getting everyone to stretch for.

It’s McTavish’s job, and the players responsibilty, to understand how the referees are going to impact the game, and adjust their game strategy accordingly. The good teams do this as a matter of course, and yes, I am saying they scout referees the way they do the opposition. And in reality, McTavish knew what his team was looking at, prepped his team for it, and they didn’t do what he told them to do.

Coming out on the refs in public is really just a way to try to swing a call your way in a later game. it’s politics. and it might well work. I got no problem there, by the way…

Here is, for what it’s worth, part of an email I sent last night about the officiating this year. It sums up my feelings pretty well:

I’m loving the officiating now. Rob Shick and Pollock had a really tough game tonight in San Jose, and he and his partner did a great job in my mind. Sillinger was ready to pop most of the night, and they kept the game from going sideways all evening. It wasn’t an easy night. If you check the tape, early in the first, you’ll see that there’s a sequence and after the whistle, the Preds start yapping at Pollock and giving him grief, and it was clear from our seats that Pollock got a bit stressed, but kept his cool — and Shick noticed it, and held up the faceoff and went over and talked to him for a short bit and got him calmed down and focussed again. A real quiet but veteran move, and it really impressed me. He was talking to everyone tonight (both were, actually), and working to keep tempers down, and the couple of times I thought the game was going to spin nasty, he cut it short with a good but timely penalty. And Sillinger more than deserved the 10 at the end…

So for what it’s worth — I’m really loving the new standards. The more I hear the dinosaurs whine about them (of course Derian Hatcher hates it; he can’t skate, he can’t keep up, he’s obsolete in the new NHL. and that’s great), the more I like seeing the league’s stance. Keep at it. Who would you rather see decide a game? Paul Kariya or Derian Hatcher, anyway? To me, the answer’s simple…

and yeah, I know Sillinger bitched at the press about the roughing call after the hit by McClaren — but it was correct, because it wasn’t a “shove back”, it was a punch to the face. If he’d shoved back, no call. But the tempers were escalating, the hit was legal (not late, but close….), and the response was an angry escalation. And Schick sat them for two, and kept the tempers from escalating any further. It was a key point of the game where it could have spun into chaos (or worse, a Flyers game) — and Schick caught just the right moments to get involved a LITTLE, to prevent it. that’s the kind of reffing I really like — where the refs stay out of it TO A POINT — but catch it before their job becomes aiming firehoses on the cinders and calling the next of kin.

In some way, you can best tell the good refs from the bad refs by how often games they ref spin out into rugby games. The better refs let them play, but not let them take over. The bad refs either clamp down too soon and piss players off, or don’t clamp down soon enough, and spend the rest of the night getting dirty looks from the linesmen, who, of course, are paid to clean up the messes…

Off Wing Opinion: Exit Marc Crawford:

With Crawford’s track record in Vancouver and Colorado, I’m not sure he’ll be waiting long to find a new job. But what I couldn’t help but wonder was how different things might look had Todd Bertuzzi not gone after Steve Moore in March 2004. Something tells me that playoff would have looked a lot different with him in the Vancouver lineup.

This is very true, but… who’s ultimately responsible when it comes to defining what is and isn’t acceptable player behavior on a team?

The coach. Marc Crawford may (or may not have) encourage Bertuzzi to go after Moore; Marc Crawford did, however, clearly coach a team where that kind of action (and it’s justification under The Code) was not only acceptable, but expected.

So don’t cry many tears for Crawford over this; his team did what he demanded of them; in this case, it turned out badly.

I keep thinking about Crawford and Bertuzzi, and the environment of, well, goonism that Crawford and coaches like him create (like him, off the top of my head: Cherry, Quinn, Keenan, Sutter to some degree). And then I look at New Jersey and Lamoriello, and Scott Stevens (and a whole bunch more guys, too). How would Scott Stevens have handled returning the favor to Moore? Do you honestly believe Bertuzzi would have been encouraged to do it in the way that led to Moore’s injury?

Which is not to say Steven’s didn’t cause injuries. Ask Eric Lindros. But — what we’re talking here is fair battle vs. goonery. Some teams and coaches demand their players live up to the ideals of the game (without compromise); other coaches crawl behind The Code, and use it as an excuse for their “just win, baby” mentality, and then whine when it goes too far and people call them for what they are: honorless goons with no respect for the game and their fellow players.

because if they did — they wouldn’t do that. The Code is, ultimately, a rationalization of the “win at any cost” manifesto, of street thuggery instead of athleticism. And teams that live by The Code will also die by it — usually whining to the press afterward.

And how much The Code lives in the mindset of a team is defined by, and only by, the coach.

So don’t shed a tear for Crawford here. He demanded a certain mindset out of his team in name of victory. It’s that mindset that convinced Bertuzzi what he did was acceptable behavior. With or without explicit words about Moore, Crawford created the environment that allowed and encouraged Bertuzzi to act.

And I dare you to tell me that if the team was the Devils that the same thing would have happened. Because we all know that on that team it would have been handled, but very differently, and with class.

For one brief shining moment, Chris Mason may have believed he’d carry the team through the playoffs. Then Cheechoo’s goal got through, and everyone could see he wasn’t Tomas Vokoun. And that probably ended Nashville’s hopes.

Not that, as far as I can tell, Vokoun would have made much difference. Tonight, the Sharks looked like — well, to be honest, they looked like all of those Detroit Red Wings teams under Scotty Bowman. You know the look — they know they’re going to win, and they’re willing to wait for you to make a mistake. They know you will.

Even when Nashville really pressed, the sharks seemed to be waiting. they never got flustered, they never got scrambly, they never panicked.

It was just a matter of time; and when it happened, Nashville deflated like a popped balloon. But even before then, they seemed to be a fly beating on a closed window.

And now Nashville has to figure out what’s next. and do it in front of a goalie that they seem to have decided can’t save them….

NHL Playoffs: Speed (s)Kills:

If you aren’t enjoying these NHL playoffs, you have no soul (or you are a Flyers fan, and don’t have a soul anyway)

I was skeptical, but now my fears have temporarly been put to rest as the NHL playoffs have seen Speedy “New NHL” teams defeat the slower, more physical “Old NHL” teams.