What We Learned: You probably couldn’t watch Opening Weekend edition
Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.
Yes, I acknowledge this will get quite wordy once the full schedule gets underway, but that’s what I get for taking weekends off.
We only had four games this weekend, but in both, we saw more or less the same things happen to both teams. The Rangers swept the Lightning, winning both games of their series in Prague 2-1, and the Senators took three of four points from the Penguins, losing in overtime 4-3 on Saturday and winning 3-1 on Sunday.
We’ll start with the more successful teams right after the jump.
What we learned about the New York Rangers (2 games, 4 points): Anything happens to Henrik Lundqvist and they might be one of the worst teams in the league. Yeah, they took all four possible points, and yeah, they outshot the Bolts 80-40. But that was one of the more pathetic offensive displays by a team that had such an incredible advantage in territory and possession that the league’s seen in a while. The goals, apart from Markus Naslund’s on Saturday, were not especially impressive. If Mike Smith and Olaf Kolzig are presenting for your shooters behind Tampa’s defense, imagine the problems the Blueshirts will run into against Philly or New Jersey, who have good goalies and defenses, or Pittsburgh, who has a good goalie. Against a defense as inexperienced and unaware as the Lightning’s, New York’s savvy veteran group should have been walking around everyone and and doing nothing but scoring, and they couldn’t. Their shot selection was also remarkably poor, with the commentators noting several times that the Lightning D blocked a ton of attempts. Just a bad effort by the Rangers all around, and they’re lucky they drew a team as young at the back as the Bolts. Four points, but hardly well-earned.
What we learned about the Ottawa Senators (2 games, 3 points): The only real question mark is goaltending, not that anyone needed to be told that. Martin Gerber was pretty iffy on Saturday afternoon, giving up four goals and only one you could say wasn’t his fault. Shoulda had both Tyler Kennedy goals, and the Rob Scuderi goal too. Losing a one-on-one break to Malkin, though, is nothing to be ashamed of. Dany Heatley remained as deadly as ever (get it?) as he picked up three goals on the weekend because he was repeatedly and inexplicably given all the real estate in the world in which to shoot. In fact, the whole offense was pretty impressive, but honestly, can you really feel good about the words “No. 1 starter Alex Auld” being associated with them in any way?
What we learned about the Pittsburgh Penguins (2 games, 2 points): That power play’s gonna be a problem without Gonchar to quarterback it. The Sens weren’t exactly rolling out the Red Wings’ penalty killers, and they held the Penguins, who have Sid Crosby, Geno Malkin, Petr Sykora, and Miroslav Satan on the man-up unit, to a 1-for-14 weekend. That’s a 7 percent efficiency, and that’s simply unacceptable for a unit with that much offensive talent. Get it together or get left behind in the Atlantic. The offense overall should be fine, but this was a troublesome weekend for the Pens’ power play any way you care to look at it.
What we learned about the Tampa Bay Lightning (2 games, 0 points): That its defense stinks and its offense isn’t much better. The Rangers don’t have the most stalwart group of defenders in the world (Wade Redden, Dmitri Kalinin, Michal Roszival, Paul Mara, etc.), but the Bolts were still held to 40 shots in two games, and with the offensive talent that team has, that’s inexcusable. Marty St. Louis’ goal on Saturday was very pretty, but that was about where the offensive highlights ended. The defense, of course, was what everyone expected, giving acres of space to anyone that wanted it and playing out of position more often than not. Barry Melrose’s system of the defense jumping up in the rush resulted in an inordinate number of turnovers (just like I said it would (hire me, NHL teams)) and the guys at the back were just too young and inexperienced to have the wherewithall to correct their mistakes, or even see that they were making the same ones over and over and over. That’s on Melrose, and he’ll be gone 20 games into the season if his boys continue to turn in performances like the two putrid ones we saw this weekend.
Miscellaneous things I picked up on: Mats Sundin is still an attention-craving prick … It’s weird hearing Jim Hughson call anything besides the Hockey Night in Canada western game or the Canucks … Miroslav Satan is off to an awful start in Pittsburgh. The fears of Pens fans that he’s too soft to compete might be validated sooner than later … Seen Stamkos? I didn’t … Markus Naslund is as enfuriating and confounding as ever. Enjoy it Ranger fans, he plays like that EVERY night … Ever time I see Marty St. Louis play, I go, “Goddamn do I underrate him.” Then I continue to underrate him … Those Europeans crowds really didn’t care about any teams very much. Would’ve helped the atmosphere if the rinks were pro- one team or another … If you watched on the NHL Network like I did, you got the Hockey Night in Canada feed. That was awesome. What was not, however, was Ron MacLean having to deal with two rockheads like Mike Millbury, who spent some of the second intermission of the first game complaining about kids today and their rock music, and Kelly Hrudy for six hours at a time … Why, if this was the NHL’s Opening Weekend big-deal event, could I not see the first two games of the year on anything but the NHL Network, which only I and four other people get? … Man I can’t wait for Def Leppard on Thursday. Hoo boy that’ll be a hot one … All five of the Hockey Night in Canada theme song finalists are awful.
Play of the Weekend: Geno Malkin’s shorthanded breakaway goal on Saturday was pretty. Vintage Malkin, if such a thing exists. Good speed, good moves, nice backhander, and all while he got tripped. Loved it.
Gold star award: Big Dany Heatley. Pretty pretty pretty good. Clinical finishing. The Rangers should try to buy some from him.
You remember…?: When Pittsburgh’s defense was physical? I do. I miss those days.
Here’s something that’s really grinding my gears: Why doesn’t the NHL have league-wide stats available for viewing yet? I wanted to know who blocked the most shots this weekend, dammit, and I couldn’t find out! I can guarantee you that within three seconds of the end of the NFL’s season opener on a Thursday night, I could check out every bit of minutae I wanted about that game. But four games have been played already this season and I can’t even get something like points leaders. Ridiculous.
Something I thought of just now: Sure it doesn’t count, but I was watching the Bruins play an exhibition game on Saturday and Zdeno Chara took a slap shot so hard it knocked the goalie stick out of Joey MacDonald’s hands. It went like 10 feet in the air and landed between the hash marks. I thought it was pretty badass.
Next week’s game I’m totally going to watch on Center Ice if I’m home: Calgary/Vancouver on Thursday night for the late Hockey Night in Canada game. That’s gonna rule so hard.
Event that should replace the shootout and would be just as relevant to hockey skill: Rock-Paper-Scissors between the captain of the visiting team and a home season ticket holder selected at random. Imagine the headlines the next morning in Philadelphia: “Larry Smith of King of Prussia picks scissors, blows late lead for Flyers.” Someone would die if it cost a team a playoff berth, but it would teach us a valuable lesson about.. well, something. I dunno.
Soccer update only I care about: My Liverpool Reds came from down 2-0 at the half to beat Manchester City 3-2 on a pair of goals from Fernando Torres and a late winner from Dirk Kuyt. Awesome!
The No. 1 DVD I own and kind of want to watch this week but likely will not: The Outsiders (1983). Tagline on IMDB says, “They grew up on the outside of society. They weren’t looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.” I often find it difficult to decide which S.E. Hinton adaptation I like better. This or Rumble Fish, which also came out in ‘83 and also was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Matt Dillon. Rumble Fish is almost some weird art film for kids and Mickey Rourke’s character in it is called The Motorcycle Boy. For right now, that crushes doin’ it for Johnny or staying gold as far as I’m concerned. By the way, I bet they’re working on an “Outsiders” remake right now. I bet Shia LeBoeuf gets cast as Pony Boy. I also bet I’ll see it anyway.
Perfect HFBoards trade proposal of the week: From user “CM-”:
To Ottawa - Roberto Luongo
To Atlanta - Sedins (re-signed of course), Vancouver 1st
To Vancouver - Jason Spezza, Ilya Kovalchuk
Get it done, guys.
Signoff in a language other than English: Aloha.
