Hockey fans, this is why we live. This is why we put up with snow in April. This is why we check our hockey pool numbers all winter long. This is why we have personal computers.
The 16-team Stanley Cup tournament begins Wednesday and it will no doubt provide us with the same number of upsets, surprises and thrills that it does every single spring.
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After a year in which Alexander Ovechkin broke Luc Robitaille’s record for goals by a leftwinger with 65 (here’s Ovechkin’s 60th at http://youtube.com/watch?v=F36L5idlmQo); Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews broke into the Chicago lineup and, almost by themselves, rebuilt the franchise; Evgeni Malkin did everything the Penguins could ask after a nagging injury to Sidney Crosby; and the Montreal Canadiens regained the form that made them the most feared franchise in hockey in the 1970s, we’re now heading into a post-season in which absolutely anything can happen.
You have President’s Trophy-winning Detroit taking on the no-name Nashville Predators and while it looks like it could be a Red Wing romp – on paper, at least – the Preds played the Wings tough all season and know the playoffs aren’t decided on paper.
You have the slumping, injury riddled Ottawa Senators going at it with the gifted Pittsburgh Penguins and, without question, the Sens late-season collapse no longer matters, but a knee injury to captain Daniel Alfredsson does.
And you have the talented Calgary Flames, the only Canadian-based team in the Western Conference playoffs, up against the very talented San Jose Sharks — a team many think will win the Cup — in a series that will feature two of the game’s most controversial coaches, Ron Wilson in San Jose and Mike Keenan in Calgary.
The first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is always the most intensely contested seven-game stretch of the year. Great teams are sometimes looking ahead to the next round – or the final round – while teams that have struggled all season and snuck into the playoffs have absolutely nothing to lose and tend to attack, all-out for 60 minutes every night.
Granted, the playoffs are a marathon, not a sprint, but a great team, playing its hardest with a red hot goalie, can make a marathon a mere 16 games long.
So who’s hot and who’s not? Which team will surprise? Which team will collapse? Which team will ride a hot goalie farther than anyone expected? Which team has the horses to win it all?
It’s going to be a great two months. Click the links below and let’s take a closer look…
These two teams have despised each other for nine decades and by the end of the opening round of the playoffs, that hatred will not have subsided.
But the Caps also have Nicklas Backstrom, a sweet-playmaking centre who will be nominated for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year, Mike Green, the most under-rated forward in the East, and three more tremendous Russians, Viktor Kozlov (like Ovechkin, a plus-28), Sergei Fedorov and Alexander Semin.