Monthly Archives: April 2008

The 2008 NHL award nominees are in, here are my picks.

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

The nominees for all of the NHL’s major awards are now in and while we agree wholeheartedly with most of them, there were a couple we thought were a little weak.

 

Here are the nominees with my picks and why. The awards will be handed out in Toronto on June 12…

 

The Vezina Trophy (Top Goaltender): The nominees are San Jose’s Evgeni Nabokov, New Jersey’s Martin Brodeur and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist.

 

Our pick is Brodeur. He played  in all but five games this season and was brilliant in almost all 77 appearances. Brodeur’s 44 wins were second in the League behind only Nabokov’s 46. His 2.17 goals-against average was fifth best and his .920 save percentage tied him for fourth (among goalies who played in at least 41 games). He was clearly the best goaltender simply because he got a marginal team into the playoffs.

 

The Norris Trophy (Best Defenceman): The nominees are Detroit’s Nicklas Lidstrom, Calgary’s Dion Phaneuf and Boston’s Zdeno Chara.

 

Our pick is Lidstrom in a landslide. Phaneuf was fine and Chara had his moments, but the second-best defenceman in the league this year was Brian Campbell (Buffalo and San Jose). Lidstrom has won five of the last six Norris Trophies and he  should win easily again this year.

 

The Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year): The nominees are Chicago’s Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom. 

 

Three outstanding nominees, but our pick is Jonathan Toews. He missed 16 games and still led all NHL rookies in goals. He was the Blackhawks alternate captain and emerged as a team leader. He was third overall in rookie scoring and despite his injury, he didn’t tire down the stretch like Backstrom. I love Kane, and he’ll likely win the voting, but Toews was the best rookie in the NHL this season.

 

The Lady Byng Trophy (Skill and sportsmanship): The nominees are Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk, Buffalo’s Jason Pominville and Tampa’s Martin St. Louis.

 

No question, Pavel Datsyuk. In fact, Datsyuk isn’t far from being the league’s MVP. He had 96 points, was a plus-41 and played all 82 games. He was the best player on a great Red Wings’ team and although he was a magnificent defensive checker, he picked up only 10 minor penalties all year.

 

The Selke Trophy (Best Defensive Forward): Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg and New Jersey’s John Madden.

 

Zetterberg was tremendous but my pick is Datsyuk (see above).

 

The Hart Trophy (MVP): The nominees are Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin, Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin and Calgary’s Jarome Iginla.

 

Three more outstanding nominees. My vote would go to Ovechkin at the end of the season, but if they counted the playoffs, it would be Malkin. The Pens’ star has been magnificent in the post season and really stepped up during the regular season whenever  Sidney Crosby was hurt (which seemed like a lot), but Ovechkin had 65 goals and 47 assists in all 82 games and that’s impossible to ignore.

 

The Adams Trophy (Coach of the Year): The nominees are Detroit’s Mike Babcock, Washington’s Bruce Boudreau and Montreal’s Guy Carbonneau.

 

Carbonneau will likely win but Nashville’s Barry Trotz was coach of the year.

 

Here’s why… this is my column from the National Post which ran April 7, 2008.

 

Scott Taylor in Winnipeg

 

At the beginning of the 2007-08 season, the Nashville Predators were left for dead.

 

Even if one ignored the off-ice fact that the franchise could be re-located on any given day without notice, one couldn’t ignore the on-ice fact that, at least on paper, the Preds were a bad hockey team.

 

Gone in an off-season housecleaning that made the books look better and the product look dreadful, were No. 1 goalie Tomas Vokoun, No. 1 defenceman Kimmo Timonen, leading scorer Paul Kariya and gifted rent-a-player Peter Forsberg. Two of the team’s most reliable forwards, Scott Hartnell and Scottie Upshall had moved on and No. 2 scorer Steve Sullivan was hurt. And he’s been gone all season. 

 

When they went to training camp in September, head coach Barry Trotz’s best player was 33-year-old Jason Arnott, a guy who hadn‘t been a top line centre since his days in New Jersey a decade ago. J.P. Dumont, a talented underachiever wasn’t bad and Alexander Radulov, a gifted 21-year-old Russian who has been a victim of unrealized potential, was about due. Dan Ellis, Martin Erat, David Legwand, Vernon Fiddler, Dan Hamhuis and Jordin Tootoo were all good players, but they were no-names who could have been up-and-coming country singers for all anybody knew.

 

“Yeah, like who is Dan Ellis?” asked Vancouver Canucks forward Jason Jaffray on Friday. “I’d never heard of him before and I looked in the paper and he had some of the best goalie stats in the league. I had no idea who he was.”

 

Dan Ellis is a 27-year-old from Saskatoon who played at Nebraska-Omaha and was with AHL Iowa last year, but yeah, who knew?

 

Naturally, the anonymous Preds started the season as if they were going to be so bad, they’d be sold to an owner who wanted to re-locate them to Minsk. Or Winnipeg.

 

They won their first two games, then lost six straight. They were 14th in the West (14-16-2), after a five-game losing streak ended on Dec. 22. But Trotz had faith. He had faith that his team wouldn’t quit and he believed, in his heart, that this collection of would-bes, never-weres and has-beens were resilient enough to overcome all the off-ice distractions and play like professionals.

 

“Resilient. That’s our identity,” said Trotz, an old University of Manitoba assistant coach who came out of Dauphin, Man., to become the only head coach the Predators have ever had. “We’re kind of a hockey version of Major League, the old baseball movie with all the misfits and cast-offs. We sat down in December, when we were almost last, and just decided to play as hard as we could and try to fight back into the playoff race.

 

“We didn’t say ‘Let’s go out and win 10 straight,’ we just tried to win two-of-three, pick up a point whenever we could and just tried to chip away. When you lose the guys we had lost and somehow you stay in the playoff hunt, I think resilient is the only way to describe us.”

 

This week, the surprising, No. 8 Nashville Predators will open the 2008 Stanley Cup Western Conference playoffs against the President’s Trophy-winning, No. 1 Detroit Red Wings in what should be a mismatch.

 

But it might not be. In eight meetings this season, the Wings and Preds went 3-3-2 against each other.

 

“It’s just another example of how close the league is today,” Trotz said. “We struggled against St. Louis and I really thought that Chicago was the most talented team in our conference. But Detroit, as outstanding as they were, weren’t that intimidating for us. We matched up well against them.

 

“Of course, we weren’t intimidated by anybody, all year. We’re a lot better than people think.”

 

This season, a veteran coach took a mediocre team in a lousy situation, convinced them to focus on the job at hand and found a way to keep them from thinking about moving locations or missing assignments. Now they’re in the playoffs. 

 

Certainly, Montreal’s Guy Carbonneau and Washington’s Bruce Boudreau have each done a wonderful job this season, but Barry Trotz would also make a pretty deserving coach of the year.

 

National Post

 

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Although we picked the Pens to win the series, it appears as if we underestimated their mettle. Game 3: Pittsburgh 5 New York 3.

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

The Pittsburgh Penguins are making a statement. They’ve now played seven games in this year’s playoffs – four at home and three on the road and they have yet to lose.

And it would be difficult to suggest that they’ll lose in New York on Thursday night.

The Pens have fire power, an improved defence and a young goaltender at the top of his game. With Tuesday night’s 5-3 win at Madison Square Garden, the Pens might also have proven they have the mettle to go a long way without a loss this spring.

There were a lot of reasons to believe the Penguins might lose Tuesday night. For one, they were playing at MSG where the fans are crazy and the building is tough at the most meaningless of times. Last night, in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinal, the building was rocking but the Penguins weren’t intimidated. They scored the first goals and built a 3-1 lead and almost took the crowd out of it for 59 minutes.

Another reason, they might have pissed away Tuesday night’s game came in the second period when they were two-men down for 32 seconds. But they killed the penalties and stayed in control.

Another reason they might have blown Tuesday night’s game came late in the second period when the Rangers scored two goals within a minute and four seconds to tie the score at 3-3. But Evgeni Malkin scored a power-play goal, his second of goal of the game, before the period ended and Pittsburgh went to the second intermission with the lead — and, yes, control.

This Penguins team is supposed to be too young. Its goalie is unproven. Its stars are barely into their 20s and their coach has been through the ringer (Michel Therrien was not only fired in Montreal but put in 3 1/2 seasons in Wilkes Barre before being brought in to replace the struggling Eddie Olczyk).

Still, it’s a team that almost finished first overall in the East and has yet to lose in this year’s playoffs. Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Sergei Gonchar, Ryan Malone, Marian Hossa, Jordan Staal, have all played wonderfully.  Malkin, just a few hours after he was selected as a finalist for the Hart Trophy, scored two power-play goals and added an assist in the best game of his playoff career Tuesday night. 

I still like the Red Wings to win the Cup, but I would not be at all surprised if the Wings faced a Pittsburgh outfit that did not lose a game on the way to the Eastern Conference title.

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Price not so good, Hatcher not so bright as Flyers take 2-1 lead. Game 3: Philadelphia 3, Montreal 2.

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Montreal could use a new rule. The creation of a game-long, five-minute major.

 

Monday night in Philadelphia, the Flyers beat the Canadiens 3-2 in a very interesting hockey game. Now, even though the Habs outshot Philly 34-14 overall, the fact they outshot the Flyers 17-2 in the third period says a lot about the importance of a five-minute major penalty. Philly’s Derian Hatcher picked up that penalty at 5:17 of the third after Hatcher hit Francis Bouillon from behind — for absolutely no reason. See the Hatcher-Bouillon hit in the middle of the video below.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXej6dYRaWI]

 

It’s great to be aggressive. Aggressive teams win hockey games. But to hit an opponent from behind when you’re ahead 3-0 is about as stupid as it gets. To hit an opponent who plays on a team with the best power play in the NHL is even more stupid (stupider???). The Flyers had this game in the bag and they almost let it go.

 

Still, give the Flyers credit. They lost all four meetings with the Habs this season and they struggled mightily down the stretch, but they’ve been terrific in the playoffs and despite the lopsided shot number, they deserved to win last night’s game.

 

However, at some point, Flyers head coach John Stevens is going to have to take Hatcher aside and ask politely to grow a brian cell. Hatcher’s hit was illegal, dangerous and dumb. And while Bouillon will certainly be expecting big Derian to hit him again at some point, he can only hope the Flyers’ giant (Hatcher is 6-foot-5, 235 pounds) uses a little discretion next time. 

 

Hatcher is a tough player. He’s also a 35-year-old who has been in the NHL for 15 seasons. He knows better. Still, he made an emotional play and that play nearly cost his team a Stanley Cup playoff game.

 

The Flyers deserve a great deal of credit for holding on Monday night. They also have to feel fortunate that Carey Price didn’t play particularly well.

 

We might have underestimated the Flyers — or overestimated the Canadiens — but based on last night’s outcome, this series will probably go seven.

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“Big European” Red Wings look like early Cup favourites.

Posted on April 27, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

At the Manitoba Writers Guild book awards at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on Saturday night — where my book, “The Winnipeg Jets: A Celebration of Professional Hockey in Winnipeg” lost Winnipeg book of the year to a communist rant by lefty Godfather Roland Penner — a handful of people in Tweed jackets who said haughtily “I’m not a hockey fan but…” asked me who’d win the Stanley Cup.

 

I said, without hesitation, the Detroit Red Wings. I either got a surprised look or a really surprised look. One woman, who appeared as if she’d been caught in the headlights said, “Oh, I didn’t know Detroit still had a team.” Tells you how little our literary crowd knows about, ahhh, umm, anything at all, I guess.

 

Anyway, I wasn’t kidding. After what I watched on Saturday afternoon, this Red Wings outfit is clearly the best team remaining in the post-season.

 

After all, the Wings didn’t just beat the Colorado Avalanche 5-1 on Saturday, they eviscerated them 5-1. Outshot them 40-20 (and Colorado blocked 15 more shots to Detroit’s four), outhit them and completely outplayed them. That was as solid a performance by one team as we’ve seen in the playoffs this season, simply because the Wings beat a good team in the process. 

 

No, this wasn’t the Nashville Predators, a marginal collection of has-beens and might-bes who were coaxed into the playoffs by Barry Trotz, the best coach in the game. This was the Colorado Avalanche, a team made up of great and near-great players such as John-Michael Liles, Joe Sakic (who can still play), Milan Hejduk, Paul Stastny, Jordan Leopold, Adam Foote and Ryan Smyth.

 

Yeah, they’d be better with Peter Forsberg, but not that much better.

 

In Game 1 of the series, the Wings built a 4-1 lead and then took their collective foot off the gas. It was a game the Wings completely controlled. They built the 4-1 lead and they let Colorado back in the game when they, the Wings themselves,  started coasting late in the second period. 

 

Saturday, the Wings didn’t let up. They outshot Colorado 10-4 and 22-6 in the first two periods and while Colorado had more shots in the third (10-8), the Avs didn’t have but one good scoring chance and they converted on that one good scoring chance — but the score was already 4-0.

 

The big star was Johan Franzen, one of the Wings’ “big Europeans.” At 6-foot-3, 220-pounds they call him “the Mule,” but he plays like a thoroughbred.

 

Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Kronvall, Tomas Holmstrom, Jiri Hudler, Pavel Datsyuk, Nick Lidstrom and Valterri Flippula were damn good, too.

 

Remember, these Wings play “big, European hockey,” and this year it could be unbeatable. They are large, fast, skilled and tough and if they stay awake for 10 more wins, they’ll win the Stanley Cup in a romp.

 

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Habs and Wings win shaky. Game 1: Montreal 4, Philadelphia 3 (OT); Detroit 4, Colorado 3.

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Is there anything better than watching two playoff hockey games at once?

 

That’s what we did Thursday night and not only did we have two TVs going at once, but we watched two terrifically close games and two losing teams that deserved better.  

 

Montreal won because the officials (and they again will go unnamed), called a pretty marginal penalty against Mike Richards in the final minute.

 

Montreal scored on the power-play (with their net empty) with 29 seconds left in regulation and then won it at the 48 second mark of overtime  when Tom Kostopoulas cashed in his own rebound.

 

For most of the night, Philly was the better team, but a lousy break and a defensive breakdown cost them a road win they probably should have stolen. 

 

Meanwhile, in Detroit, the Wings took a 4-1 lead on a pair of goals by Johan Franzen, but then, as Detroit often does, they got complacent and nearly fell asleep long enough for Colorado to catch up. 

 

The Avs even had a chance to score in the dying seconds, but Chris Osgood did what Dominik Hasek forgot how to do — make a big, important save. 

 

Detroit outshot Colorado 36-21 and probably should have won by a bunch, considering Peter Forsberg and Wojtek Wolski didn’t play and Jose Theodore played despite the flu (he was pulled after giving up four goals and went back to the hotel). Still, the Avs sucked it up and made a game of it.

 

For openers, they were both fun to watch (although the Montreal fan who doused Richards with beer in the penalty box was rather bush). We even got a penalty shot in the Montreal-Philly game, plus a couple of goal reviews and a huge dive and a big shot from Kovalev. Remember the Gordie Howe hat trick? A goal, an assist and a fight? I guess an Alexei Kovalev hat trick is two goals and a dive.  

 

Friday night, we get the Rangers at Pittsburgh at 6 on CBC while Dallas plays at San Jose at 9 on TSN. In June I’ll get a life.

 

If you missed the Top-10 highlights from Round 1, you can see them in the video below.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qBXXL-REE]

 

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NHL Playoffs Round 2 Predictions: The Habs could not have written a better script.

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Carey Price NHL Playoffs Round 2 Predictions: The Habs could not have written a better script.It was Minnesota Wild assistant general manager Tom Thompson who said, "The first round of the playoffs is the most intense two weeks of any hockey season. 

 

"This is the time when seventh- and eighth-place teams can ambush first- and second-place teams because they have nothing to lose. No pressure, no worries and then bam, they can take out a team that might have finished with 30 more points because the better teams are looking too far down the road.

 

"This is the greatest time of year to be a hockey fan and the toughest to be a hockey coach."

 

Or, to be fair, Tom, the toughest time of the year to be a hockey prognosticator.

 

We were very fortunate (or unlucky if you consider that overtime penalty call in Game 7 between Washington and Philadelphia that resulted in the Flyers winning goal), to select five of eight series correctly in the first round.

 

We had Montreal, Pittsburgh, the Rangers, Detroit and San Jose to advance to the second round and we were correct. We also had Washington, Minnesota and Anaheim and we were dead wrong.

 

However, we did believe that if you selected lots of Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens in your playoff hockey pool, you’d make a lot of money. And that holds true through the second round. 

 

Of course, the second round is a little bit odd. Montreal won four of four against Philly this year and have now faced two teams in the first two rounds of the playoffs that were 0-12 combined against the Habs. Guy Carbonneau could not have written a better playoff script for his club.

 

The same can said for Detroit who went 4-0 against Colorado this year. 

 

Meanwhile, the Rangers were 5-3 against Pittsburgh and Dallas was  4-2-2 against San Jose and, yet, we like the teams that lost the season series.

 

It’s been a great two weeks already and the next two weeks could be even better. Let’s take a closer look…

 

THE EAST

 

No. 1 MONTREAL CANADIENS  (Eliminated Boston in seven games vs. No. 6 PHILADELPHIA FLYERS (Eliminated Washington in seven games)

 

The Habs were a very interesting team this season. They led the NHL with a 24.1 percent success rate on the power play during the regular season and then went three-for-33 (9.1 per cent) against the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs. If the Habs get the power play going, look out.

 

Not only did the Habs take all four games from Philly this year, they’ve won six straight from the Flyers going back to 2006. This year, Montreal outscored Philadelphia 15-6.

 

Rookie goaltender Carey Price had two shutouts in the opening round against Boston including one in Game 7 and appears to have passed his first test as the heir to the rookie goaltending throne shared by Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy in Montreal.  

The Flyers will look to the likes of Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Joffrey Lupul and Daniel Briere to carry them against Montreal. Not only did Briere have six goals and 11 points in the opening round series against Washington, but he anchors the No. 2 power play in the league, right behind Montreal.

And then there is Vinny Prospal. After having a tremendous series against Washington, Prospal should enjoy playing against Montreal. He had four goals in four games against the Habs this season.

The Flyers will also hope that goalie Martin Biron is just as good in Round 2 as he was in Round 1 against the Caps.

History has very little to do with this series. The last time these two teams met in the playoffs, Habs head coach Guy Carbonneau and GM Bob Gainey were actually in uniform for the Canadiens.

Montreal in six games.

 

No. 2 PITTSBURGH PENGUINS (Eliminated Ottawa in four straight games) vs. No. 5 NEW YORK RANGERS (Eliminated New Jersey in five games)

 

The Rangers had plenty of success against these high-scoring Penguins this season and Scott Gomez led the way with three goals and four assists in eight games.

 

The reason for New York’s success against Pittsburgh was not the play of Gomez, Chris Drury, Brendan Shanahan or Jaromir Jagr, but the presence of Madison Square Garden where the Blueshirts won all four games in 2007-08.

 

Perhaps the biggest difference in this series is the goaltending. It will be the talented but inconsistent Marc-Andre Fleury for Pittsburgh against Vezina Trophy candidate Henrik Lundqvist for the Rangers. And you have to give the edge to Lundqvist who held the Penguins to three goals or fewer on seven occasions in 2007-08 and is 12-6-3 in his career against Pittsburgh.

 

It will also be interesting to watch againg superstar Jaromir Jagr against Sid the Kid. Is this Jagr’s last hurrah or the Kid’s next step toward his first Cup? 

 

This will also be a brother vs,. brother series. Pittsburgh centre Jordan Staal will be up against Rangers defenceman Marc Staal.

Pittsburgh in six games. 

 

THE WEST

 

No. 1 DETROIT RED WINGS (Eliminated Nashville in six games) vs.  No. 6 COLORADO AVALANCHE (Eliminated Minnesota in six games)

 

Pretty hard not to like Detroit in this series. The Wings are big, fast, skilled and strong with plenty of experience. And now that Chris Osgood is the starter, they have legitimate playoff goaltending, too.

 

Osgood went 2-0 with a 0.39 goals against average in two games in Round 1. He had a shutout and stopped 53 of 54 shots against Nashville.

 

However, the Avalanche is a team that really wasn’t itself during the season. Joe Sakic played only 44 games. Peter Forsberg signed late in the season. Ryan Smyth played only 55 games and Milan Hejduk missed 16 games with various bumps and bruises. It was because of all these injuries (and absences) that Detroit shut out Colorado in the last three meetings of the season.

 

Right now, Detroit’s shutout streak of Colorado stands at 214 minutes and four seconds. In fact, Detroit hasn’t lost to Colorado in regulation time in three seasons. 

 

This season, only rookie Cody McLeod of Binscarth, Man., and sophomore Marek Svatos scored for Colorado against Detroit this season as the Wings outscored the Avs 11-2.

 

I think the Red Wings will win this series and can win the Cup.

 

Detroit in six games.

 

No. 2 SAN JOSE SHARKS (49-22-10) vs. No. 5 DALLAS STARS (Eliminated Anaheim in six games)

 

Dallas had the best of San Jose during the regular season and the Stars looked particularly good in their opening round against defending champion Anaheim.

 

However, San Jose netminder Evgeni Nabokov, a Vezina Trophy candidate, has been playing pretty well in the post-season after going 2-3-2 against the Stars with a 2.56 goals against average during the season. 

 

Dallas outscored the Stars 24-21 in eight regular season games so this series is closer than Dallas’s 4-2-2 season record might indicate. However, Stars netminder Marty Turco has never played better. He allowed only 12 goals in six games against Anaheim and played in all eight regular season games against San Jose.

 

With Brad Richards playing well and with Stephane Robidas running the show, the Stars are playing as well as they have all year. However, something tells me Joe Thornton is going to step up in the second round.

 

San Jose in seven games.

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Flyers win in overtime. A brilliant series ends in a suddenly quiet building. Game 7: Philadelphia 3, Washington 2 (OT)

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

It sure would have been fun to have the brilliant Alexander Ovechkin face the exciting Sidney Crosby in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but Philadelphia’s Joffrey Lupul made sure that wasn’t going to happen.

Lupul scored the overtime winner on a power play Tuesday night and silenced a raucous crowd as the Philadelphia Flyers eliminated the Washington Capitals in seven games. The vast majority of those games were terrific to watch and one can understand why the Verizon Center got eerily quiet after Lupul started the Flyers’ celebration.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GFcUEvZiAo]

With the win, the Flyers will face the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the playoffs while the New York Rangers will meet Sid the Kid and his Pittsburgh Penguins. Both should be good series, but as a hockey fan who doesn’t care who wins or loses (yes, I’m still a die-hard Winnipeg Jets fan) I would have loved to have seen Alexander the Great against the wide-open Pens.

Be that as it may, Philly gets full marks for its victory. As close as the series was — and any series that goes seven games and has Game 7 go into overtime is about as close as it gets — Philly just seemed to be the tougher, grittier team. No argument, Ovechkin was spectacular in the series and he almost won the thing by himself, but ultimately, the Flyers ground it out and took advantage of a relatively rare overtime penalty, a penalty that was especially rare in a game in which there were no penalties in regulation after the 13:27 mark of the second period.

But as well as the Flyers played, it’s hard to get excited about their chances against Montreal.  

After all, Philly lost all four meetings with the Canadiens this season. Which means the two teams Montreal will have faced in the first two rounds of the playoffs had a combined record of 0-12 against them this season.

Boston lasted seven games. The Flyers can only hope they last that long.  

Although, to be fair, Martin Biron kicked out 39 shots on Tuesday night and since it is the playoffs, goalies can carry marginal teams a lot farther than they should go. 

We’ll have our second round selections tomorrow.

* * *

Hockey lost a good friend yesterday.

For more than 20 years, Ed Chynoweth was the commissioner of the Canadian Hockey League. I first met him when I covered the old Winnipeg Warriors and he was always very nice to me. He was professional and could be hard-nosed if he had to be, but over all the years, I found him to be one of the nicest men I ever met in hockey.

He’d been battling cancer for awhile and we know he fought the good fight. 

Our condolences to the family and our condolences to the game of hockey. Ed Chynoweth will be missed.  

 

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Carey Price stands up to the pressure. The Habs move on. Game 7: Montreal 5, Boston 0

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

The Montreal Canadiens eviscerated the Boston Bruins 5-0 at the Bell Centre last night as The Kid stood up to the pressure. 

 

Montreal goaltender Carey Price, the son of the chief of B.C.’s Ulkatcho First Nation, was the feel-good story of the game, playing extremely well Monday night after allowing 10 goals in his previous two games — both losses (5-1 and 5-4).

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km0aI0UqnLc]

 

A lot of folks thought his luck had run out on the weekend, but as he proved last night, he’s a pretty cool 20-year-old customer. He played brilliantly in the first period when the Bruins outshot the Canadiens 11-8. His effort in the first period took much of the steam out of the Bruins engine and by the midway point of the second period, Boston had nothing left.

 

Montreal outshot Boston 17-6 in the second period and the Bruins appeared lost. It was a sad way to fade out of the picture in a series in which they had battled so hard and so effectively to even it up at 3-3. 

 

The Habs did what they had to do and got a few breaks in the process.

 

Goal 1: Deflected shot, lucky bounce.

 

Goal 2: Great moves, great shot by Mark Streit.

 

Goal 3: Big rebound. Loose puck. No defence.

 

Goal 4: Andrei Kostitsyn’s second on the power play (meaningless).

 

Goal 5: Great passing play (completely meaningless).

 

It’s quite stunning, when you stop and think about it, but the Boston Bruins allowed three goals in the first 40 minutes of Game 7 and Aaron Ward and Zdeno Chara were on the ice for all three of them. Ward finished the game minus-4.

 

All season, Bruins coach Claude Julien had given Chara the responsibility of running the offence — and the defence — handing the big guy 20-plus minutes of ice time a game. So, one supposes, you could say it was inevitable that Chara would be on the ice when the Canadiens scored because he was on the ice more than any other Bruins’ player.

 

However, in a game as important as last night’s little soiree in Montreal, the leader has to lead. He has to set up the goals at one end and help stop them at the other and he did neither. Tim Thomas might not have been Vezina Trophy material last night (he did make a handful of huge saves, however), but it was hardly his fault. His big defenceman was outright horrible.

 

Meanwhile, Price proved his mettle. Whenever it appeared as if the Bruins were taking a serious run at the Habs, Price shut them down. He picked up his second shutout of the opening round of the playoffs and everyone in Montreal had forgotten that he’d allowed 10 goals in his last two games. Although Montreal outshot Boston 35-26, it was still a virtuoso performance. 

 

Now, however, for Price and the Canadiens, life will only get tougher.

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Red Wings win easily, but it’s a good thing Hasek was so bad he HAD to be replaced.

Posted on April 20, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Let us not pull any punches. The Detroit Red Wings were a significantly better hockey team than the Nashville Predators. And, frankly, while the Pope is in the United States he should fly to Nashville and give Barry Trotz sainthood.

 

The Nashville Predators are a lousy hockey team. And they’re lousy for a reason. Gone in an off-season housecleaning that made the books look good and the product look dreadful, were No. 1 goalie Tomas Vokoun, No. 1 defenceman Kimmo Timonen, leading scorer Paul Kariya and gifted rent-a-player Peter Forsberg. Two of the team’s most reliable forwards, Scott Hartnell and Scottie Upshall had moved on and No. 2 scorer Steve Sullivan was hurt. And he’s been gone all season. 

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk5nlr9b6YM]

 

As we told our National Post readers, when they went to training camp in September, Trotz’s best player was 33-year-old Jason Arnott, a guy who hadn‘t been a top line centre since his days in New Jersey a decade ago. J.P. Dumont, a talented underachiever wasn’t bad and Alexander Radulov, a gifted 21-year-old Russian who has been a victim of unrealized potential, was about due. Dan Ellis, Martin Erat, David Legwand, Vernon Fiddler, Dan Hamhuis and Jordin Tootoo were all good players, but they were no-names who could have been up-and-coming country singers for all anybody knew.

 

“Yeah, like who is Dan Ellis?” asked Vancouver Canucks forward Jason Jaffray on 92-CITI-FM one morning. “I’d never heard of him before and I looked in the paper and he had some of the best goalie stats in the league. I had no idea who he was.”

 

Dan Ellis is a 27-year-old from Saskatoon who played at Nebraska-Omaha and was with AHL Iowa last year, but yeah, who knew?

 

The anonymous Preds started the season as if they were going to be so bad, they’d be sold to an owner who wanted to re-locate them to Minsk. Or Winnipeg.

 

And yet, the Preds made the playoffs and went 3-3-2 against the President’s Trophy-winning Red Wings this season. So it was no surprise that after losing the first two games of this opening round series, Nashville caught the Wings at 2-2.

 

For that alone, Trotz should be coach of the year.

 

Reality began to set in on Saturday night, however. In Game 5, Detroit dominated Nashville and Ellis, almost by himself, got his mates to overtime before the Wings scored the winner. Detroit outshot Nashville 54-21 and owned the game. And still, they were fortunate to win.

 

Then, on Sunday, Detroit did it again. They absolutely dominated Nashville and they did it with what’s becoming known as "big European hockey." They’re fast and skilled and better suited for the rough going of the playoffs than many experts imagined. And even though Nashville did everything they could to bang the Wings, Detroit was simply too big — and had too many tough players of their own (McCarty, Draper, Cleary). No matter what Nashville tried to do, it wasn’t going to work.

 

Fact is, the only reason the Preds lasted six games was because Dominik Hasek was so horrible, he personally kept an outclassed Nashville club in the series.

 

Finally, Wings coach Mike Babcock had seen enough. Chris Osgood took over midway through Game 4 and Detroit was suddenly a winner. 

 

Sunday, Nashville’s dream died. The first period was pretty physical and one could argue that Nashville got the best of the hard-ass play, but by the second period, the Preds had nothing left. Detroit outshot the Preds 21-4 in the second period and it was obvious, when Nicklas Lidstrom scored on a lucky bounce, that this one was Detroit’s to lose.

 

Fortunately, for the Wings, there was no Dominator to be found. No sieve to destroy the good karma. With Osgood in net, Detroit was clearly the better team. They outshot Nashville 43-20 and Osgood really didn’t have to make too many difficult saves.

 

It could be said that Dan Ellis was a Conn Smythe candidate based on just six games. In the final two games of the series, he stopped 90 of 94 shots (the final goal on Sunday was scored into an empty net). It was a brilliant performance that kept a bad team in the series.

But ultimately, Detroit was simply better. Period. The President’s Trophy winners deserved to move on and move on they did. With the demise of Dominik Hasek came the rise of the Red Wings.

With goaltending, the Detroit Red Wings are Stanley Cup worthy. Dispatching Nashville, a team that believed it could pull off the upset of the decade, was a great first step. Their next opponents had better be wary.

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Welcome to the State of Hockey

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

ST. PAUL, MN – Welcome to the Xcel Energy Centre, one of the great hockey buildings anywhere in the world.Tonight, we’ll blog periodically from Game 5 of the Minnesota Wild-Colorado Avalanche Western Conference opening round series.

After getting drilled 5-1 in Game 4 — and trying desperately to appear tough in the third period — the Wild have to lick their wounds, buck up and play legitimately tough hockey, not stupid, penalty-filled, dumb-ass hockey. 

The Avalanche, meanwhile, just need to do exactly what they did in Game 4 — skate, skate, skate and take advantage of mistakes made by a tiring Wild defence. With Kim Johnsson, Brent Burns and Martin Skoula playing nearly 28 minutes a night for Minnesota, the Avalanche can certainly use their speed to wear down a Wild defensive unit that is undermanned and overworked.

The lights have dimmed — gone right freakin’ out actually — the show is starting, they’re playing The State of Hockey and 18,000 people, all decked in Wild jerseys are going nuts. Makes me think of White Outs at the Old Barn. 

If the Wild don’t respond to this welcome, they’re done.   

FIRST PERIOD — Minnesota comes out banging and the Avs don’t like it. Paul Stastny takes a dumb tripping penalty, but the stone-handed Wild can’t convert. Marian Gaborik still doesn’t have a point in the series. 

Oh, oh. Todd Fedoruk takes a penalty and at 12:24, Andrew Brunette — a former Wild star — picks up some garbage in front and roofs it. It’s an easy goal and the Wild now have some stress. They’ve carried the play but haven’t been rewarded and Colorado has just too much skill.

About 30 seconds later, David Jones takes a penalty and in the first few seconds of the power play, the Wild get a scoring chance, but Jose Theodore is too quick. The Wild have territorial advantage and plenty of chances, but somebody needs to convert. 

With four minutes left, the Wild have outshot the Avs 13-5, but Colorado still leads. The Wild need to score because it’s hard to imagine they can keep up this pace. The Avs are starting to get to more loose pucks and winning the little battles.

With 2 1/2 minutes left, Peter Forsberg takes a penalty and right away Brent Burns has a chance and Brian Rolston gets a big rebound, but Theodore stones them both. Shots are 16-6 and Theodore is getting better. 

On the 17th shot with 39.3 seconds left in the period, the Wild get on the board. Pierre-Marc Bouchard takes a great pass from Brent Burns (second of the playoffs) and drifts a one-timer past Theodore. It’s about time and it seems only fair.

Minnesota owned the first period and the Avs scored on their one real chance. That’s hockey.

End of the first: Colorado 1 Minnesota 1.

SECOND PERIOD — Ran into Larry Fitzgerald Sr. between periods. The father of the spectacular Arizona Cardinals receiver, Larry Jr., is a columnist with the Minneapolis Statesman-Recorder, the highly-regarded African-American paper in the Twin Cities and he’s a bigger hockey fan than people give him credit for. He’s also, evidently, a big Derek Boogaard fan. Go figure.  

So what happens at the start of the second period? Boogaard gets one of his rare shifts and on a seemingly innocuous play, almost tips in a goal.The Wild have now outshot Colorado 21-9 but just can’t beat Theodore.  

Stephane Veilleux, the young man the Denver media believes should be jailed for his behaviour in this series, picks up a penalty and the Avs take control. But despite owning the Minnesota zone and despite making a couple of great passes, Minnesota goalie Nicklas Backstrom has to face only one shot. 

Moments after the penalty ends, Gaborik has another glorious chance but can’t get a backhander up over the leg of Theodore.

The building has exploded. Aging Ian Laperriere has big Boogaard lined up and he drills him at the Avalanche blueline (it’s an interference penalty in any other league) and the big guy goes down with a thump. Trouble is, the big guy gets right up and Laperriere doesn’t move. Boogaard went down because he doesn’t skate very well. Laperriere went down because he bodychecked a truck (Boogaard is 6-foot-7, 260 pounds).

This little incident fires up the Wild who take control of the game. Minnesota gets three great chances, but they fire three booming shots right at the A on Theodore’s jersey. The shots are now 30-12 and Colorado isn’t anywhere to be found.

The Wild own this game. It’s like one long, protracted power play. Colorado can’t even clear the puck. First it’s Gaborik, then it’s Burns, then it’s Mikko Koivu. Chance after chance after chance and yet they can’t beat Theodore.

And it’s not like Theodore is unbeatable. The Wild either shoot it right at the goalie’s pads or they miss the net altogether. Burns, the best player on the ice, should have five goals, but officially, he doesn’t have that many shots.

In the final 12 seconds, Colorado gets its first solid chance of the period, but Backstrom has not fallen asleep and makes the save.

Shots at the end of the second: Colorado 14, Minnesota 32.

Score at the end of the second: Colorado 1 Minnesota 1   

THIRD PERIOD — Early in the third, Minnesota’s Sean Hill takes a penalty and for a minute and 55 seconds, the Avs do nothing. Then, with five seconds left in the power play, John-Michael Liles sets up Wojtek Wolski who one-times it past a startled Backstrom.

The shots are 34-16 and Colorado leads 2-1.

Colorado’s superior playmaking pretty much puts this one away. At the 6:25 mark, Paul Stastny takes a pass from Milan Hejduk (who took a beautiful pass from Peter Forsberg) and roofs a backhand to make it 3-1.

Minnesota has toughness and heart, but Colorado has speed and skill and that combination looks like a winner.

There are 19,364 rabid Wild fans in this building tonight and probably half of them think they have better hands than the boys on the ice who happen to be wearing Wild uniforms. 

This is a truly wonderful place to watch hockey. The Wild are down 3-1 with less than two minutes to go and not one person has left the building. These aren’t fair weather fans who try to beat the traffic. They’ll go down with their team.

The final shots on goal are 40-17 in favour of the Wild, but Colorado’s pure hockey talent was just too much for a big, strong feisty team with plenty of moxy, but not a whole lot of skill.

The place erupts as Brian Rolston finally scores (he had a million chances) to make it close. But it’s 19:57 and the dream is dead.

This series should be over on Saturday in Denver.

FINAL SCORE: Colorado 3 Minnesota 2  – Video highlights below

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjglWRaQr9I]

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