bandl wrote: Where was he in the series vs. Montreal? He was pretty much a non-factor.
I think the Montreal defence and gameplan account for this more than Crosby being a no-show. Im not gonna rip Sid, he is awesome, Montreal just found a way to shut him down and make him ineffective, which few other teams have figured out...Id give all the credit to the MON coaching and defense for this
Personally, I'd especially give Hal Gill credit. He was a major contributing factor (well, him and Halak) to containing Sid and co.
As for the Crosby penalty at the start of game 7....
I'm not going to complain about it, as by the letter of the rule, it was boarding I guess. But such a play is frequently a no-call, especially right at the start of the game, so if anything, it plainly shows that Pittsburgh wasn't getting any of that "referee bias" that some people were whining about them getting earlier.
bandl wrote:
He can thank his TEAMmate and the playoff MVP, Malkin, for that. And that was last season. I'm talking about this season, this series. Where was he in the series vs. Montreal? He was pretty much a non-factor. He even put his team in the hole in game 7 within 30 seconds and lord only knows how much crap Ovie would have taken for drawing a penalty 10 seconds into the game.
Bandl - you may be right about that but the fact is that he has won a World Championship, a Stanley Cup and an Olympic Gold (the trifecta of hockey) and Ovi's teams have not performed well at all (not sure about Russia with the Worlds but the other 2 I am positive about). Crosby may not have played his best during those games but his teams won when it counted. Ovi's team have not.
Hoping to see their lucks turn around (at least for Stanley Cup - and not the other 2 big ones - lets go USA)
And Jay is correct, Gill deserves a ton of credit for his play against Crosby. He had a hell of a series.
Wow, just wow. The Flyers become just the third team in NHL history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series, and they did it after spotting the Bruins a 3-0 lead in Game 7. Incredible.
The Eastern Conference has been / is absolutely crazy this year.
Going down the stretch of the regular season with so many teams within just a few points in the standings,
and then once the playoffs hit, 3 of the 4 1st round series end up as "upsets", and both of the 2nd round series end with "upsets", (so that makes 5 of 6 ending in "upsets") including a team coming back from being down 3 games. Craziness.
And now it ends up being #7 vs. #8 in the conference finals. I wonder if that has ever happened before.
JayJ79 wrote:Classy Boston fans, chucking stuff on the ice at the end of the game.
(though perhaps that's a common occurance in hockey, I dunno)
hey as it was pointed out earlier in the thread... it was a Philly crowd there tonight. seriously though as long as the fans were trying to hit the Bruins I'm fine with it. Up 3 games to 0 and leading 3-0 in game 7 and they lose.. those players deserve to get stuff thrown at them.
JayJ79 wrote:Classy Boston fans, chucking stuff on the ice at the end of the game.
(though perhaps that's a common occurance in hockey, I dunno)
Well, stuff does get thrown on the ice in hockey, and if there were ever a "justifiable" time to do it, witnessing that kind of collapse on home ice would be the time.
That being said, can we please lay off Philadelphia fans, people? We're not the only ones that act badly. Did anyone see the coverage of all the looting and burned cars in Montreal the other night after they beat Pittsburgh? Where was the outcry from the national press?
JayJ79 wrote:Classy Boston fans, chucking stuff on the ice at the end of the game.
(though perhaps that's a common occurance in hockey, I dunno)
Well, stuff does get thrown on the ice in hockey, and if there were ever a "justifiable" time to do it, witnessing that kind of collapse on home ice would be the time.
That being said, can we please lay off Philadelphia fans, people? We're not the only ones that act badly. Did anyone see the coverage of all the looting and burned cars in Montreal the other night after they beat Pittsburgh? Where was the outcry from the national press?
I never got why people riot and trash the city when ur team wins...
JayJ79 wrote:And now it ends up being #7 vs. #8 in the conference finals. I wonder if that has ever happened before.
A quick research session yielded that this is, in fact, the first time that a #7 seed has played a #8 seed in the conference finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The NHL started seeding 1-8 in 1994. Prior to that, the teams were seeded #1-#4 in each of the 4 divisions, though browsing back to 1983, I couldn't find any occurances of a #4 divisional seed playing the other #4 divisional seed in the conference finals.
In the 2003 Western Conference finals, #6 Minnesota played #7 Anaheim, and in the 2006 Western Conference finals, #6 Anaheim played #8 Edmonton. But 2010 is the first instance of #7 vs. #8.
SJ jumped out to a 1-0 1st period lead, Hawks tied it in the 2nd, and won it in the 3rd when Danny Heatley left Big Buff wide open in the slot for a quick slapper beating Nabakov. Antti Niemi was sterllart making 44 saves, and the refs called a very lopsides games call 5 minors on Chicago while San Jose played a so-called perfect receiving 0 penalties
Chicago leads the series 1-0, Game 2 Tuesday 10pm ET
Great game from Philly! But from a competitive standpoint I was disappointed. I was on a major high after watching the Hawks in the afternoon and was looking for the same kind of game in the evening. So after I saw Philly dominate, I switched over to Dog the bounty hunter lol. But congrats to Philly on Game 1
Kind of like how Washington beat Montreal 5-1 and 6-3 in games 3 and 4 of their series.
I don't really see how one series compares to the other. Hockey is all about matchups. Washington has imbalanced scoring from the top line and plays questionable defense. The Flyers might not have that elite first line, but the scoring is balanced and they'll (quite literally - see Ian Laperriere a couple of weeks ago) take a contusion to the brain to stop a shot. Heart is more important than a fancy Russian scorer in the NHL playoffs.
At any rate, as a Flyers fan, I'm just kicking back and enjoying every minute of this. For a team that fired its coach five months ago and was a shootout on the last day of the season away from missing the playoffs completely, this is all just playing with house money.