Monday Playoff Round-Up, Plus Videos!

As per usual, if you’d like to read my writing in coherent, organized form, here’s my latest piece for USA Today.  It’s on “those moments” that unify a team throughout the year, and how a team needs them to be dangerous in playoffs.  Cool?  Alright then.  Lets move on.

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BUFFALO / BOSTON

Johnny Boychuck hit that Matt Ellis guy, and I immediately thought “there’s not way that guy is a regular NHL player”.

(No one on the Sabres could even fake anger on that one.)

Have you ever seen someone skate for so long with the puck before getting hit by someone right in front of him?  At the NHL level?  He’s not even looking back for a pass, or trying to make a move, he’s literally looking down at the puck like a rec leaguer, to make sure he has it while he gets on his horse.

So, I pulled up his career stats to learn about the guy - I’m a little befuddled, and looking for some answers.  This year he had 3 and 10 for 13, so he doesn’t score.  He played in 72 of 82 games, but only had 12 PIMS, so he doesn’t fight much.  I assume he grinds it out, but usually grinders take a few PIMS, have a few scraps, somethin’. 

Sabres fans…. defend your boy!  That play was bizarre.

And then to top it off, Mark Recchi hits Tim Kennedy, and Kennedy looks like he was upset that Recchi was trying so hard.  There wasn’t even any effort to get up and back into the play by Kennedy.  Totally disheartening if you’re on the bench, and you watch your teammate get that pwned.  And of course, kudos to the old guard – he made a smart play with the puck the second he got it too, and two was all the Bruins would need! 

Fun series.  Weee!

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VANCOUVER / LA

This series is making me bummed that they’re playing each other, cause I want them both to advance.  Very fun to watch.

It’s already becoming clear that there won’t be a person in the media who doesn’t pick Doughty to win the Norris next year (if they didn’t already vote for him this one).

Kid is slick.

{Quick Tangent – I couldn’t help but think last night – okay, as of tonight, current playoff teams are going with Andrew Raycroft, Carey Price, Semyon Varlamov and Brian Boucher in net.  Oh, and Antti Niemi.  And Jon Quick.  And Jimmy Howard.  And honestly, I’m not sure who Ottawa’s goalie is.  Elliot?

Having a “great” goalie has gone from being a necessity to a perk (not that guys like Jonathan Quick aren’t great, they’re just not “established” yet).  Having a Ryan Miller is a plus, not a need – in the clutch ‘n’ grab NHL days, you had to have Brodeur, Roy or Hasek to win your 1-0, 2-1 games.  I almost put Ed Belfour in that category, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.}

But back to Vancouver / LA.  It’s such a coin flip series, and LA brought the absolute FIRE on the penalty kill last night.  Vancouver looked like they expected LA to let them cruise in, set up and have some fun, y’know, like they’re supposed to.  They got straight up outworked.

As for the Kings powerplay/Canucks penalty-kill, I’m giving blame to the ‘Nucks over praise to the Kings.  LA, to their credit, is doing the right things.  But they’re not reinventing the wheel.  They’re doing what every coach wants: move the puck quickly, get shots through, have traffic in front, and hunt for rebounds.  Vancouver has to do a much better job staying in lanes if they want Canada’s collective mental breakdown to be postponed to at least round two.

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WASHINGTON / MONTREAL

It was only a matter of time until the team that ended the season with the most points (by a runaway) pulled a complete game together and pumped Montreal.

Classic picture

It’s just too bad it had to happen when Varlamov was in net.  Not because I don’t wish the guy success, but because now Washington is the exact same team as last year:  Good enough to beat the bottom 26 or so teams in the league just by having that much better of a team, but when they have to play one of the three that can press ‘em, uh oh, goaltending issues!

Then again, I can’t help but feel it’s only a matter of time until a somewhat-bad goalie wins a cup, and it very well could be this year. (As I’m writing this, I see Gary Greene is praising Semyon for being “absolutely brilliant”.  Herrrre we go.  Someone give Osgood the tap too!)  I just thought that when Caps fans were praising Theo’s 18-0-2 end-of-the-year finish, he must have refound his Vezina form.  Hmm.  If you can’t trust fan analysis…. who can you trust?

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For those of you you who didn’t get around to following Link Fest ’98 I hosted on Twitter yesterday, here’s the highlights.  Enjoy.  Oh, let’s kick it off with a beauty….

 Mreow.  I want my cat to do this.

Brian Burke’s press conference announcing the Phaneuf/Giguere trades:

Dany Heatley giving a tour of his home in my lovely hometown of Kelowna:

A quick Spezza interview:

You could waste your whole day checking out Ottawa Gh0st’s work on YouTube (it’s a zero, not an “o” in Ghost – thanks for that annoying twist, buddy).  It’s masterful.

Summer Jobs For NHL Players

In the spirit of DownGoesBrown….

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Well, its that time of year again.  Playoffs.

And at this time of year, journalists, reporters and TV pundits are all focused on the boys who made the cut and still have a chance at Lord Stanley’s Holy Grail.

Fortunately for you, you read the blog of an ex-player, and I have the connections to give you a look at something different.  Truth is, even though NHL players make a ton of money, a lot of them still live paycheck to paycheck.  You know how that can be.  So, I thought it’d be entertaining for my readers if I made some calls and figured out what a few of the NHL guys that didn’t make playoffs are doing for work in the off-season. 

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* It seems Dog the Bounty Hunter is getting too old to do his show, so they were doing interviews for someone to take over the lead role.  Nobody thought Evander Kane would actually get the part, let alone immediately after his interview, but apparently he knocked it out.

* Phil Kessel was told he could come in any time over a two week span for a job interview at some place called “Olympic” Pizza, but apparently he went missing the whole time.

* Rick Tocchet apparently hasn’t been able to find any summer work, but he somehow moved into a nicer home.  I’ll give you 3 to 1 odds he’s got something going under the table.  5 to 1?  Okay, 5 to 1.

* Steven Stamkos was already up for the salesman of the week bonus at the Nissan dealership that hired him - apparently he tied the lead guy in sales by selling a tricycle to a blind guy for $80 bucks at the last second, just to reach the numbers.

* Apparently Keith Ballard got a job coaching t-ball.  Not sure why.

* Rick Nash got a job doing landscaping, but was noticeably frustrated after seeing that, even though he was doing an amazing job, his co-workers sucked so bad things always turned out horribly.

* Amazingly, Daryl Sutter got a job running a major league baseball team.  Since then he’s been there he’s been desperately trying to get some Blue Jays on his roster, at one point reportedly saying “I know all they’ve done is lose, but trust me, I really like what’s going on with these Toronto guys.”

* The only other scoop I heard was that Dion Phaneuf has apparently sunk to being a bus boy at Earls.  It’s not about the money, I’m told.  The staff said he just likes taking care of the sloppy seconds.

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After learning about a few of the Maple Leafs summer jobs, I realized I hadn’t heard much from that organization lately.  I did a few quick Google searches to see what’s been going on:

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For your daily mix of (mostly hockey) insight and humour, follow JTBourne on Twitter.

“Phaneuf” Sounds Onomatopoeic

Really, the title has nothing to do with anything.  Just an observation, reallly.  That’s the sound you make when you get hit by him, maybe.  “Ph-neuf!”

Because today is gonna be sooo fun, lets start with huge news from the hockey world:

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So yeah, good morning!

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best team ever of all-time and they’re gonna win the Cup, right?  Big time.

God, the Leafs are sooooo good.

I see no need for any further review.

Okay, just a little:  I thought it was awesome that Phaneuf fought in his first period.  If you’re Dion, you know it’s all eyez on you in that first period, so what better way to show you’re committed to being a Leaf than to have a go with Colin White?  Every time I ever fought it took a period-plus of self-convincing that I needed to do it (with the odd sticking-up-for-a-teammate skirmish, of course).  Phaneuf clearly needed less time.  He just seems like a Maple Leaf.

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Dion has gone from the Western Conference to the East, and I found myself thinking about how cool that would be.  Playing in new cities, cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, all those old-school east coast cities (Raleigh-Durham!).

Which leads to the question: which would be the better conference to play in?  They both have their warm cities (Phoenix & San Jose vs. Tampa Bay & “Sunrise” (Panthers), they both have their Canadian cities (Toronto, Ottawa & Montreal vs. Vancouver, Calgary & Edmonton), and they both win their share of Cups.  What’s your vote?

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You know what always surprises me?  How different players hold their stick with their top hand.  It’s something you just assume everyone does the same, but they totally don’t.  And, it makes a huge difference in the things you can do with a stick and puck.

I assume most new players just grab the stick and go,  and don’t give it another thought, which is how you should decide what you like.  But a good rule of thumb is, if you’re “choking up” on the stick with your top hand, you probably aren’t a great player.   Sorry.

Some guys jam the butt-end of their stick into their palm (I’m not even gonna try to make that sound more appropriate, you’re an adult.  Stop it), like, completely perpendicular to it.  I’m somewhere in the middle.  My palm wraps around the very top like a claw, but the rest of my fingers wrap around pretty normal.  You’ll find the real handsy guys have their palm and stick in that 90 degree-angle-claw hold (90 degrees is an exaggeration, they obviously have to have some fingers wrapped around, but the butt-end will be jammed into the palm), while guys with hard shots and simpler games just grab the damn thing like they’re holding on to a railing, and fire when ready.  Those guys (d-men, usually) have no idea what I’m talking about right now.

I’m guessing how you hold the top of your stick hasn’t crossed your mind all that often?  I probably just did the classic golf jinx to like, 400 people.  “Do you inhale or exhale when you swing?”

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 Happy Humpday folks.  I hope the Lost premier was as good as EVERY PERSON ON FACEBOOK EVER hoped it was.

Canadian Shake-ups, NHL Observations

Whether you love or hate Brian Burke, you have to, at the very least, admire how seriously he takes winning.  The man wants to win.  Like, right now.

There are simply too many players involved in the Toronto/Calgary deals to congratulate a winner.  But Burke knows one thing – players that are good-but-not-great are easy to come by.  You need the difference-makers to win, and Phaneuf is definitely one of those.

This pic of Wendell is G

Toronto had nothing to build around when Burke got there, and the guy seems to be aware that nobody has ever won anything “by commitee” (the current codeword for “trying to win without talent”).  The Penguins win around Crosby/Malkin, the Red Wings win around Datsyuk/Zetterberg, so Burke is building around guys like Kessel/Phaneuf/Komisarek.  Not quite on the same level, but better than the cores of a few other teams (Havlat/….Kobasew?).

At least Toronto fans will have a few A- players (okay, B+) to cheer for while finishing out the year — for them, it’s been far too many winter months of cheering for a team of C+ guys without a Mats Sundin, Doug Gilmour or Wendell Clark.  (By the way, how insufferable will Toronto fans be if Burke manages to transform them into good…. which I suspect he will.  It’ll be like mixing crappy Flames fans with obnoxious Yankee fans.  Plus, about 55,000 people already have one foot on a bandwagon that would immediately collapse under the weight all the new “diehards”.)

By the way, worth mentioning – I think Matt Stajan is a really talented guy.  The Flames did well by themselves in picking up a quality depth scorer.  In fact, I think both teams made a smart move.

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I think DiPietro looks too bad on too many plays, too often right now.  I know he’s got rust to shake off; the guy hasn’t played goal in forever, but it looks worse than that.

I’m just really nervous about that big contract.  His numbers are fine, that’s not what stresses me.  I’m saying he just isn’t technically sound these days.  He doesn’t look balanced, his angles are suspect, he isn’t getting his pads flat post-to-post in the butterfly, and just doesn’t look like the old Ricky. 

Here’s to hopin’.

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Is Matt Duchene gonna be last years Steven Stamkos?  Just kill it the second half of the year and be a legit NHL stud by next year?  I say yes.

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If you’re the GM for Washington, don’t you go Brian Burke trying get a goalie for your team?  You can’t expect your guys to put up football numbers every night in playoffs, and those stupid, weak goals are just so disheartening.

Of all the stacked teams, San Jose really has the best total package right now (even though I like Chicago and Washington’s forwards better.  San Jose might have the best line in the NHL, but aren’t the best one through 12).  Nabokov is legit.

Happy February – it’s Superbowl week!  Your reward is an insider report on how TV news reports get made.