The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Ah the tantalizing mystery of the Orient.

It’s been a long time since even hardcore hockey fans here in North America have seen Jaromir Jagr play. Two years ago, he took his ball and went home — well, “home” — to the KHL and has literally spent those seasons playing in freaking Siberia for Avangard Omsk.

How far away from his last NHL team, the New York Rangers, is Omsk? Well, to give you an idea of how remote it is, the nearest semi-major Russian city appears to be Kurgan (pop. 345,000 or roughly the size of Santa Ana, California), a 325-mile drive down M-51. Whatever that is.

So I figured it’d be interesting to see how this once-great superstar was playing in what must be the dying years of his career. If his skills had deteriorated in the intervening time since his last NHL season, in which he scored 71 points in 82 games, how bad was that erosion? By the look of things, it had to be considerable, right? I mean, he hasn’t yet scored at a point-a-game pace in a league that plays on that offense-increasing, 200-by-100, international-sized sheet of ice in a league that unironically considers Kevin Dallman to be its best defenseman. He had to be crap at this point, which would be understandable since his NHL debut came when Sid Crosby was three years old.

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It’s about how Notre Dame (and to a lesser extent BU) are not good so far this year. Please enjoy!

Here is this week’s WWL. Don’t hurt yourself clamoring to read it, there’s plenty of internet for everyone!

Apparently we learned that Adrian Dater is an enormous Avs homer that doesn’t think about the things he writes before he writes them.

Also, we learned that it’s 2002 again because everyone on the planet has known this piece of information for at least that long.

Happy Columbus Day/Thanksgiving you creeps.

Over at FN, I posted this, which was prompted by my friend’s incredulity that I’d rather watch hockey than football.

Here it is, your guide to awkward training camp invitees. Have fun, kids.

The Lead

Scary stat on Puck Daddy today: Carolina is 7-0 in games in which Eric Staal has scored a goal in the postseason. Which, of course, accounts for all of their wins to this point.

That, in turn, means that ol’ Staalsy ain’t doin’ dick in the six games they’ve lost so far. And you’ll never guess what: Staal didn’t score tonight. And the Hurricanes lost. Nice of the kid to show up in the big games, innit?

Meanwhile, the Bruins’ star forwards are actually going against the Staalian school here, and performing well. Marc Savard scored a goal on a beautiful setup by Milan Lucic. Patrice Bergeron engineered a pair of brilliant goals. And meanwhile Matt freakin’ Cullen and Sergei Samsonov have to do the heavy lifting for Paul Maurice and his crew, who have spectacularly bungled a series that looked to be very much in hand just five days ago.

Not only did they fail to show up in Boston for Game 5 — and I don’t think many experts were giving them a chance to win twice in a row at the TD Banknorth Garden — but the way in which they comported themselves in the game’s waning moments (i.e. the Scott Walker cheapshot on Aaron Ward) gave the Bruins an actual reason to do something they had not done in the prior four games of the series: play with emotion.

Now they had a beloved team leader who had been sucker punched and, it was feared, would be unavailable for tonight’s game (and all because he had the temerity to engage an opposing forward on the edge of the crease), they had some gasoline to throw on the competitive fire that had been slowly dying for the prior few games. The Ward Situation obviously wasn’t going to sit well. Was it any surprise that they jumped on the first two decent scoring chances they had just to really, as the kids say, shove it up Carolina’s asses?

So instead of going down to Raleigh with a world of pressure on their backs to keep the series alive, the Bruins went down with a purpose: beat the christ out of the team that had attempted to put one of the most veteran guys on the team out of commission. And they jumped out to a two-goal lead nice and early, and once again put four past Cam Ward, this time on just 19 shots. That makes eight goals against in the last two games for Killa Cam on a mere 59 shots. That’s a save percentage of .864. And that sucks very badly.

And now the series goes back to Boston for Game 7. All the pressure is now on Carolina to salvage something from the wreckage of their playoff hopes here, so that they can begin life anew against the winner of this wonderful Caps/Pens series. But they can’t have any belief in their ability to beat Boston any more (their fans sure don’t). And with good reason. The Hurricanes have already been downgraded to a tropical storm and by the time 10 p.m. rolls around on Thursday, it’s more likely to be little more than just a bit of bluster, the dying memory of what could once have been a fearsome storm.

Umbrella weather. At best.

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The Lead

The Ducks have their unstoppable scoring machine in Ryan Getzlaf. And the Wings, through three games, had a hodgepodge of thrown-together guys scoring their big goals.

There was Nick Lidstrom, who had two goals and an assist in Game 1. There was Mikael Samuelsson and Brad Stuart who each scored in the first period of Game 2. Then there was Henrik Zetterberg who scored the only Detroit goal in Game 3.

Oh, and this Johan Franzen guy. He was the hero in Game 4 with two goals and an assist, sure. But those were his third and fourth goals of the series and third, fourth and fifth points overall. And even on Marian Hossa’s second goal of the game, he could have had an assist for his dictionary-definition perfect screen of Hiller that made it 4-2 Detroit.

Oh, and then you can go ahead and toss in the six points he had in four games against Columbus as well. Which, y’know, ain’t bad.

Six goals, six assists, eight games. Playoffs end today and he might be your Conn Smythe winner. He’d at least give Getzlaf a run for his money, but you gotta think if it goes to anyone on the Ducks is goes to Hiller, so you see my point.

Johan Franzen has been playing his balls off for the Wings but because he’s one of those guys that busts out jaw-droppping goals on a nightly basis like Alex Ovechkin, you might not see him come up in highlights. His first goal was the direct result of his own hard work along the boards in the neutral zone and his ability to get to a high-percentage scoring area in a hurry. His second was just going to bloody nose alley and tipping a shot inside of a minute to go to put Detroit up 2-1 despite having trailed almost immediately. And his assist was just a rocket pass out of the corner to Hossa.

Those are the kinds of plays that you might not even really notice his subtle, hardnosed brilliance. You and the Ducks might wanna start.

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My old buddy Alan Siegel from the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune sends along this video of a young Milan Lucic. BOXING!

The video is from the summer of 2004, when Lucic’s father sent him to Champlain Heights Community Center to learn how to box as a means of helping him mature and compete as a hockey player. And, well, you see the results. He won three of his four amateur fights, including the above video, a first-round TKO.

“His hook was perfect,” McInnis says. “I’ve seen him use it in hockey. He brings it over with the elbow slightly curving. A lot of guys will do it sideways.”

I mean, look at how bad Looch pummels that kid. Bloodied his nose on his first real flurry, then did it even worse on the second and the fight had to be stopped. Because even at 16, Lucic was a bad dude.

The Lead

So Chicago’s down three goals to a Northwest division opponent, ties the game, and then gives up the game-winner on an egregious turnover. After that, the Northwest division opponent adds and empty netter.

It happened last week, you may recall, when Chicago erased a 4-1 second-period deficit in Calgary but went on to lose 6-4, and it happened again tonight.

Only this time, it wasn’t Eric Nystrom pumping in a rebound off a rebound from a big point shot due to an own-zone turnover. Rather, it was Sami Salo picking up a rebound as the late trail on a 3-on-1 thanks to a Kris Versteeg turnover.

Memo to the Blackhawks: Any time Kyle Wellwood is springing 60 percent of the guys on the ice for a break the other way, you blew it.

But this was the deserved result, in all honesty. Vancouver, despite a teeeeeeerrible power play, scored beauty goal after beauty goal and dictated the flow for pretty much the entire game, save for the 14 or so minutes that Chicago needed to score all three of their third-period goals. And if you’ll remember, that’s exactly what they did against Calgary as well, taking the contest over with eight minutes or so of vibrant, exciting hockey before fading back to the monochromatic, blasé style they’d employed from puck drop to inspiration.

Chalk it up to the Blackhawks being a young team, I guess. When lightning strikes for them, they’re a devastatingly effective club. But when it doesn’t, they give up five goals, including one to Pavol freaking Demitra.

Oh, and you’ll never guess what. The empty-net goal was created because of an attacking-zone turnover by who? You guessed it: Frank Stallone Brian Campbell.