The Two-Line Pass

Here’s a story you will read in every Canadian newspaper tomorrow.

VANCOUVER — On the game’s biggest stage, and in the most important game of his life, Roberto Luongo ____________ (answered his critics/imploded horribly), spilling thousands of Vancouver fans into the street in paroxysms of ____________ (sheer joy/blinding rage).

Luongo, who in many ways was the crux of the series’ bizarre and numerous turning points, played ____________ (extremely well/mind-bendingly poorly) in allowing ____________ (0/12) goals and turning aside ____________ (14/three) shots in ____________ (60/eight) minutes of action.

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The Lead

Hockey’s biggest rivalry! The 8-6 slugfest from February!

Make no mistake, there was palpable excitement for this Bruins/Habs showdown in Montreal that, while it wouldn’t decide the Northeast Division by any stretch of the imagination, it was certainly going to be a huge boost to whichever team emerged victorious.

Both teams had been off since Saturday night, and had ample time to let the importance of this game marinate. And because this game was so vitally important, Claude Julien, who knows all too well about how much of a pressure-cooker Montreal can be, decided to give the nod to…

Tuukka Rask?

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The Lead

(I know, I know. Shut up.)

Derek Boogaard hadn’t scored a goal since January 7, 2006.

Four years, 10 months and three days later, he scored again, taking the puck coast to coast and rifling a slapshot past Michal Neuvirth to put the Rangers up 3-2 on the Capitals midway through the second period.

Since then, a new president got elected and already got halfway through his first term. There have been three Olympic Games. Conan O’Brien hosted three different late night talk shows. Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen played for the Flames twice. The Tampa Bay Lightning went through three owners, four coaches and four GMs. Twitter started existing, then became stupid. Some idiot gave Derek Boogaard four years at $1.625 million per. And so forth.

In scoring, he snapped a 235-game streak without a goal. The longest active streak in the league. And it came unassisted. None of the above was in any way a typo.

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Detroit, as the Red Wings supporters are so eager to point out any time you bring up anything even remotely critical of the city itself, its residents or anything else even tangentially involved with it on any level, is a town that has been through a lot lately.

And while I have no ill feelings toward the team itself (despite its penchant for crybabyism over any number of perceived slights), I think the fans of this team and I have built up enough enmity over the past year or so that I would like to put it through just a bit more.

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The Lead

I’ve been sitting here for a while now trying to think of the best way to write about this Sharks/Red Wings game, which certainly had its share of storylines.

Goal reviews, both upholding the original calls and overturning them. An absurd call for a penalty shot that ended up not mattering. Clowncar goaltending of the highest order from both netminders, who each gave up no-angle goals. Joe Thornton having his best game of the postseason, and maybe the best postseason game of his career. Pavel Datsyuk looking pretty damn bad all night. The exchange of bad line changes that led to Detroit’s ultimate ruin.

In short, the game itself was a mess.

And really, that probably tells you everything you need to know about these Detroit Red Wings of 2010.

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The Lead

If past performance is indicative of future results, and we have at no point in the history of performance-to-result comparison been given any reason to find that this is not the case, then Antti Niemi is going to concede roughly 213 goals on 214 shots in the next game and Chicago will lose and therefore it will be all Niemi’s fault.

Hell they talked about it at length on Versus tonight so it must be true.

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The Lead

Well now that the Red Wings went into Glendale and kicked the living christ out of the Phoenix Coyotes, the time has come for me to apologize.

You see, as it turns out the team loaded with cagey veteran, hardened by years of deep and trying forays into postseason after immensely successful postseason were just too much for a team with a youthful spark and strong goaltender. Detroit had seen any possible combination of youth and speed and skill and veterans and defense and goaltending and coaching you care to throw at them, and as such it takes a lot to get by them.

Tonight, and ultimately in the series, the Coyotes just didn’t have enough.

And so, after being chirped on Twitter and email and on the Puck Daddy Game 7 chat by numerous Detroit fans, I guess I owe a lot of people an apology.

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The Lead

How awesome was that, right? Freakin’ Coyotes come back from to beat Detroit in the first home game in Phoenix, err, Glendale since I want to say 1642. Unreal. Keith Yandle was better than Nicklas Lidstrom. Wojtek Wolski was better than Henrik Zetterberg. Derek Morris was better than Brian Rafalski. And Ilya Bryzgalov was far better than Jimmy Howard.

Why, it’s almost like Phoenix was the fourth-best team in the league over 82 games this season!

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The Lead

For real if I controlled an army (one day, Lambert, one day…) I’d be parachuting my troops into Colorado like Red Dawn right this very second.

Last night I didn’t happen to write about the NHL because a. I was busy freaking out over one of the best Lost episodes ever, and b. I was crying.

Well, not really on that second one. Calgary, thanks to its inevitable loss to San Jose plus Colorado’s shootout win in Vancouver, where they hadn’t won all season, was eliminated from the playoffs. I saw it coming. Any idiot on the planet had to have seen it coming. This whole season was an unmitigated disaster from the word go for reasons I won’t get into here, both for the sake of brevity and my sanity, so yeah, not making the playoffs was an eventuality for which I’d been preparing myself for some time.

I don’t even begrudge Colorado, a team I normally can’t stomach and which had been playing terrible hockey for like a month or whatever, making the playoffs in Calgary’s place. Whatever. Hell, the fact that the win was in a shootout didn’t bother me that much, so you know for sure that I was pretty much not all that concerned.

But now the Avs have to go and lose to Edmonton tonight? Really? The OILERS!? The EDMONTON Oilers!? Now that’s something over which I’m pretty goddamn well upset. This is the universe screwing with me, right? Yeah, Craig Anderson played the more important and less-winnable of the two games of this all-road back-to-back, and therefore Petr Budaj, who sucks and is terrible, had to go tonight. But five goals on FORTY-FIVE shots? Whaaaaaat the hell, man. It’s like this night was specifically designed to piss me off. Well, National Hockey League, mission freakin’ accomplished.

The only solace I take is that everyone on the Avalanche is gonna get their heads handed to ‘em by Chicago in about a week’s time. Four games and out. Book it. That’s going to be awesome. They deserve it for losing to the Oilers.

Blackhawks! Avenge me! Avenge me!

Elsewhere…

New York Rangers 5, Toronto 1

Even Aaron Voros had a goal tonight. I think I read he’s been a healthy scratch for 40 games this season. Something crazy like that. Also I’m pretty sure this loss guarantees Toronto finishes in 29th place, which sucks for them but not so much for me because my life is immeasurably worse.

Detroit 4, Columbus 3

Jimmy Howard gave up three goals on 24 shots and still got the win. Last night on Twitter some idiot was trying to tell me that Howard deserves the Calder more than Tuukka Rask, who is first in the league in both GAA and save percentage. Because he has more wins. Yeah guess how many games Rask woulda won playing for a team with an offense like Detroit’s: all of ‘em.

Chicago 6, St. Louis 5

Keith Tkachuk retired. I am very sad about this.

Phoenix 5, Nashville 2

Wojtek Wolski had a goal and an assist for the Coyotes. He has 6-10-16 and five multi-point nights in 16 games since he was traded there. That deal is working well for Phoenix, I think.

The Lead

Alexander Ovechkin has 46 goals and 58 assists in 69 games. He’s two points out of the league lead despite having played 10 fewer games than Henrik Sedin, who’s out in front. He’s also a goal back of Sid Crosby in the Rocket Richard race despite eight fewer games played. He’s the league leader at plus-42. He leads the league in shots by a healthy margin. He devours minutes.

And he’s not the Capitals’ MVP.

Washington’s most valuable player, rather, is Nicklas Backstrom, who will likely break 100 points for the first time in his career over Washington’s remaining three games. While Ovechkin is off rifling goal after terrifying goal past opposing goalies (and getting himself suspended), Backstrom is doing everything else that makes the Caps such an offensive juggernaut.

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