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10 things to think about heading into the 2008 NHL Conference finals…

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

1. The readers’ poll on Canoe yesterday asked, "Who will you cheer for now that no Canadian-based team remains in the playoffs?" Fifty-eight per cent (as of our last check) had selected the Pittsburgh Penguins. Like Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa fans, they will be disappointed. If not in May, certainly in June.

 

2. When Brenden Morrow scored the winning goal at the 9:03 mark of the fourth overtime period early on Monday morning, it was quite appropriate. Morrow was the best player in the series and definitely the best player on the ice Sunday night/Monday morning.

 

3.  A piece in Sun Media by Toronto-based Mike Zeisberger suggested that in the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia Eastern Conference final "there will be blood." Perhaps that’s true and if it is, the only blood shed will be Pittsburgh’s. Had the Rangers played as tough in Games 1,2, 3 and 5 as they did in Game 4, they might have beaten the Penguins. Pittsburgh will back off and if the Flyers sense it, that collection of grinders and bangers will go straight for the jugular.

 

4. As we mentioned yesterday here at the RCSBlog, Pittsburgh’s Ray Shero deserves a lot of credit for making the necessary moves to acquire Marian Hossa at the trade deadline. Hossa has clearly paid dividends in the post-season and would make a great Penguin forward for the next three or four seasons. However, the Pens have to think about the future and according to the team’s director of hockey administration, Jason Botterill, the priority is to get Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal and Evgeni Malkin signed to long-term deals. According to the NHL Players Association, the salary cap will grow to about $57 million for 2008-09. It’s still not enough to sign Crosby, Staal, Malkin AND Hossa and have a supporting cast that can continue to lead the Penguins as far as, say, a Conference final. Watch for the Montreal Canadiens to make a concerted effort to sign Hossa this summer. Unrestricted free agent, Michael Ryder, is as good as gone from Montreal and Hossa will be Bob Gainey’s prime target.

 

5. Let’s go back to Brenden Morrow’s performance on Sunday night/Monday morning. Granted, the game was 129 minutes and three seconds long, but Morrow played 51 minutes. He not only scored the winning goal, but he had seven shots and get this — 19 hits! Who has 19 hits in a hockey game? No matter how long it is.

 

6. Let’s go back to Rangers’ head coach, Tom Renney, for a second. He should be fired for not dressing Colton Orr in Game 5. Just the thought that Orr could goon up Crosby or Malkin changed everything in Game 4 (won 3-0 by the Rangers). When he wasn’t around for Game 5, the Penguins had nothing to fear.

 

7. Remember when Ottawa Senators head coach Bryan Murray accused the Penguins of throwing their final game of the season in order to play Ottawa instead of Philadelphia in the first round? Guess it doesn’t matter now.

 

8. Great news for an old friend yesterday. The Vancouver Canucks announced that Laurence Gilman has joined the Canucks as the team’s  Director of Hockey Administration. Gilman a Winnipegger, joins the Canucks after spending 13 years in the Phoenix Coyotes and Winnipeg Jets organizations. He had many jobs during that time including, most recently, as the club’s Senior Vice President & Assistant General Manager for five seasons. In addition, Gilman served as general manager of the AHL’s San Antonio Rampage. Gilman, who is 43, graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 1991. 

 

9. Guess Ron Wilson’s in trouble in San Jose. In fact, he might not be the Sharks head coach by the first day of the NHL entry draft. Wilson is terrific when he’s winning, but a complete pain in the ass when he’s not. Back in 1998, when Wilson coached the Washington Capitals, he was doing what he always did — using the post-game news conference to let the media know that he knew everything about the game and the rest of us knew nothing. After the news conference, Kevin Allen of USA Today told no one in particular, "Am I ever glad I got to cover hockey before Ron Wilson invented it." 

 

10. If they want — if they really care enough — the Detroit Red Wings will play eight more games and then raise the Stanley Cup. 

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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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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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