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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