The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Was hockey kidding? How can two consecutive games be THAT freaking awesome?

In 126:22 of hockey tonight, we were treated to 21 goals on 135 shots and more lead changes than any normal person could possibly consider rational.

Take the Penguins/Capitals game for example, the sixth in a now-seven-game series that has lived up to every inch of its lofty billing and will make the Conference Finals (be they against Boston or Carolina) look like the worst kind of anticlimax. It was 1-0 Pens after one. Then the Caps score twice. Then Geno Malkin levels inside of 30 seconds to go in the period and it’s 2-2 through two. Then all hell breaks loose.

Kris Letang scores on the power play at 4:40 of the third. Brooks Laich answers 58 seconds later and Viktor Kozlov puts his team up just 29 seconds after that (with a special tip of the hat to Hal Gill, who’s pictured above). But then Sid Crosby, clearly the best player on the ice in this series, scores with just under five minutes to go in the period to force overtime. That’s where The Steckel came in to pop in his second goal in this series, both of which have been game-winners.

Then go have a peak at that Chicago/Vancouver game. No Game 7 necessary there, eh? Nah, Patty Kane took care of that. Hat trick for the kid. Lead changed five times in that one. Home team won before their huge home crowd which, for the year, officially topped one million fans tonight, a good fifth of which might’ve turned up to see them play last year.

And that game was a lot like the Pittsburgh game in that many of its goals came in bunches. The two goals in the first were scored exactly two minutes apart. Three of the four in the second were scored in the space of 4:32. The first two in the third came 1:58 apart, and the last four were in 4:02. It was nuts. And despite having three separate leads, Vancouver only actually found itself ahead of the Blackhawks for 4:43.

There was just no unseating the Blackhawks or Caps tonight. Awesome night of hockey.

The Lead

There was, of course, much complaining in hockey circles today about the quality of the Versus matchup.

And why not? No. 15 in the West vs. No. 15 in the East waging lusty battle to see which team could possibly play badly enough so as to allow the other to win.

As it turns out, the Avalanche are a far, far more dire team than even I have imagined and lost to the worst team in hockey 4-2 before, from the look of the crowd, 138 fans. Though they put 22 shots on net, Yann Danis stopped them all save for two Ryan Smyth bids to run his nice little streak to five solid games in a row (he’s only allowed five goals in that stretch but somehow went 3-2-0).

And it’s not like the Islanders’ leading scorer lit them up. The goalscorers for New York were Dean McAmmond (already rocking an “A” on his sweater after 10 days or so), Jesse Joensuu, Bruno Gervais and Jeff Tambellini, who netted their fifth, first, first and third goals of the year, respectively.

For Joensuu, who’s pictured above, it was the first of his career in his NHL debut, which is always great to see. Just look at his face. That right there is pure, unadulterated joy.

Sometimes (read: when I post on Puck Daddy) I catch a lot of crap for being too negative about everything in hockey, but seeing something like Joensuu’s first goal PLUS an embarrassing Avalanche loss? Perfect night. Couldn’t get any better than that.

The Lead

It’s been 11 months and one day since the Sharks last lost a regular-season game in regulation at HP Pavilion. That night, Feb. 14, 2008, they dropped a one-goal game to Edmonton before reeling off a home record 28-0-2.

Until tonight. Calgary went into HP Pavilion and did what had seemed impossible, beat the Sharks in just 60 minutes, by a score of 3-2. And really, it wasn’t anything the Flames did especially well that punched the Sharks’ ticket. Rather, the Western Conference frontrunners didn’t take care of the puck, were often ineffectual on the transition and failed to capitalize on any of the five power plays afforded them by Calgary and that includes a 5-on-3 opportunity.

But before the game, Mike Keenan had quipped that SOMEONE had to snap the Sharks’ home winning streak, so why shouldn’t it be Calgary, which kicked the Sharks’ balls in 5-2 just over a week ago.

Ryane Clowe, who, it seems, has had 114 percent of his career scoring come against the Flames, drew first blood just a minute into the game and I quickly began thinking of Calgary’s last trip to San Jose this season (a brutal 6-1 loss). Craig Conroy answered early in the second before Calgary surrendered a turdy goal a few minutes later to Joe Thornton thanks to Dion Phaneuf’s hesitance to take the body as Jumbo Joe cut into the middle of the ice.

But then Daymond Langkow answered on the power play when he found himself inexplicably open in front of the net for a tip-in. And when I say open, I mean he could have taken a quick nap and fixed himself a sandwich before Doug Murray, the nearest defender, got within a stick’s length.

Phaneuf made up for his Thornton-related miscue (and admittedly Joe was the best player on the ice tonight) by scoring the game-winner off the stick of Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Memo to Vlasic: Don’t block shots with your blade. It never works out how you’d like.

Big win for the Flames, huge loss for the Sharks, at least mentally. It wasn’t like Calgary came in with a perfect road game and outplayed them. On the contrary, the Sharks were dictating play. But apart from the Conroy goal, the rest of the Flames scoring was the result of a bad play by a Sharks defenseman, and San Jose was just awful on the power play. That one’s gonna sting for a while, and give the already surging Flames a very nice boost going into a stretch in which they play seven of their next 10 at home, where they haven’t lost in regulation since Dec. 2. That’s a big chance to make up some ground right there.

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The Lead

For those that missed the Bruins/Canadiens game tonight, you missed, without hyperbole, probably the best game of the season to date.

Despite being an essentially meaningless mid-January game (insofar as the Bruins and Habs ain’t exactly jockeying for position in the standings), this matchup had all the drama, pace and excitement of last year’s outstanding playoff series. The Garden was packed and rocking from the time the first puck dropped to the final whistle when the Bruins emerged with a fairly convincing 3-1 victory over the hated and red-hot Habs.

Tim Thomas and Jaroslav Halak were both outstanding, making 34 and 26 saves respectively, but the true star of the game was Zdeno Chara, whose big, power play point shot beat Halak twice and who ate up nearly 32 minutes of ice time for Boston.

There was a fight, pretty little passing plays and there were hits. Lots of hits. On paper, the Habs actually won the physical battle, outhitting the Bruins 28-23 thanks to Mike Komisarek’s ridiculous 11 checks.

I don’t know if there’s a way to watch the entire game online through some kind of NHL game archive, but this is a game you need to see. It was so good that even Jack Edwards was tolerable.

If this had been Game 7 of a late-round playoff series, people would be raving about this game for years to come.

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I remember how much I hated the last NHL.com redesign. I found it to be oddly laid out, clunky and at times difficult to navigate.

Not so with the new one. Everything looks great, and it’s more intuitive, especially (especially!) the stats page.

But what’s going to make NHL.com the ultimate official sports league website — and that’s not in any way hyperbolic — is the new GameCenter Live feature. This is literally going to be the worst thing that ever happened to my social life. Way worse than the way I acted and dressed in junior high.

Live video feeds with live stats, replay videos of hits, saves and goals appearing on an overview of the ice as they happen, full replays of what seems to be an extensive library of classic games, the ability to watch up to four games at once, in-game chat with other fans (won’t that be unbearable?), and best of all, the ability to view the same game from multiple camera angles. I don’t even know how they’re going to do that.

Yeah, it’s going to cost money, and it’s probably not going to be the same as Center Ice, but if this means I can watch five games at once (six with picture-in-picture!), I’m all for it. I don’t care what it costs, I’m buying this. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to purchase it yet, or even see how much it costs, but this can’t possibly be a bad thing. I am completely pumped for this.

The NHL gets criticized a lot in the blogosphere, and rightly so most of the time, but this is unquestionably awesome. Bravo.