It didn’t take long for hockey to remind us why its postseason is better and more dramatic than any other in professional sports. Two nights in, both No. 1 seeds have already dropped a home game—one of them in overtime. The No. 2 seed in the east is also down 1-0 to a team that needed a shootout in the last game of the regular season just to get into the playoffs. And the defending Stanley Cup champions are also down 1-0, having lost their opener at home. Even when the favorites did win an opener—Buffalo over Boston and Vancouver over Los Angeles—the games were one goal, down-to-the-wire finishes.
Danny Gare, the ex-Sabre who now does TV in Buffalo was so excited after Ryan Miller had (again) rescued his team that his opening comment on the postgame show was: “It’s always important to get two points on a night like this.”
I get what he’s saying, but we aren’t counting points anymore—just wins.
The fact that the Colorado Avalanche and Montreal Canadiens opened the playoffs with wins is certainly something for people to take note of even at this very early stage of the two-month grind that’s ahead. I think that’s especially true in the case of the Avalanche and the San Jose Sharks. A year ago the Sharks were the best team in the league in the regular season, then lost in the first round to the Anaheim (Mighty) Ducks. They have a history of playoff failures after sterling regular seasons. So I have no doubt that semi-panic is already setting in out there and, regardless of what the players say about this being a different year and all the clichés athletes spit out, they have to be doubting themselves just a little bit.
Of course in Washington there’s already mass semi-panic. One local radio host wondered this morning if the Capitals would be ‘blown up,’ if they lost this series to the Canadiens. This about a team that easily won The Presidents Cup this season (best regular season record) and is still one of the youngest teams in hockey. Plus, even though losing the opening game isn’t encouraging, there really isn’t any reason for the Caps—unlike the Sharks—to be all that nervous yet.
A year ago, the Caps dropped the first two games at home in the first round to the New York Rangers and trailed the series 3-1, largely because Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundquist was off-the-charts for four games. But Lundquist finally wore down under the barrage of Washington shots and the Capitals won the series in seven. They then lost in seven to the Penguins, who went on to win The Stanley Cup.
This is a better Washington team than a year ago. Jose Theodore had a much better year in goal and isn’t likely to be yanked again (as he was after one game last year) in favor of a 21-year-old kid with no playoff experience. They have more experience because of a couple of trades made by general manager George McPhee and their stars are a year more experienced.
All of that isn’t going to keep DC fans from getting into a state every time the Caps lose a postseason game. This is a town that has endured the worst owner in sports for 11 years in football; a star player who knocked himself out for a season because he thought guns were toys in basketball; and a baseball team that has gone through back-to-back 100-loss seasons. The hockey team is the town jewel right now and the thought of not making it AT LEAST to the Cup finals makes people around here a little bit ill.
Of course upsets happen in the hockey playoffs all the time. In fact, a No. 1 seed has lost to a No. 8 seed three times in the last 10 years. A seven seed beating a two seed isn’t uncommon either. Upsets like that almost never happen in the NBA. The reason is goaltending. A great goalie can make an inferior team competitive and an average goalie can make a superior team vulnerable. That’s why home ice seems to mean so little in hockey. I sometimes wonder if a road team wouldn’t struggle more if the fans simply sat silently throughout the game. Athletes get used to noise, in fact, even when it’s hostile, they enjoy it. Most will tell you that the hardest thing to do—home or road—is play in front of empty seats or a dead crowd.
One reason I believe The Philadelphia Flyers (the No. 7 seed that needed the shootout just to make postseason this past Sunday) can beat The New Jersey Devils is goaltending. Now THAT really sounds stupid doesn’t it? No one has been better in goal in the NHL the last 15 years than Martin Brodeur and he had another brilliant season at the age of 37 this year.
But I think he’s been overplayed—77 games. And I think the Devils are TOO dependent on him. He has to save 37 of 38 shots (or 38 of 38) just about every night for them to win. He’s certainly done it in the past but the Devils haven’t been a good playoff team for a while now (last Cup in 2003) and I think that has a lot to do with it. If they DO survive the Flyers I just don’t see how they can go deep unless Brodeur is even more superhuman than he’s been in the past.
Regardless of who advances—I still think the Caps beat Montreal in five or six in case anyone cares—the next two months are going to be fun. One thing I love about this time of year is finally being off the road for a while and getting to switch back-and-forth at night between the hockey playoffs and baseball—although I have to admit, as much as I love baseball it is tough to take your eyes off a hockey game that is either tied or a one goal game. On the rare occasion of a blowout, then you move over to the baseball. The last two nights I haven’t seen a lot of baseball—although I did get to see some of the Mets win over the Rockies yesterday afternoon. My guess is they will never lose another game. Omar has a plan.
That’s an issue for later. For now, I’ll look forward to seeing if the favorites can bounce back in their game twos (they usually do but not always) and I can’t wait until—almost inevitably—there are game sevens. There’s nothing quite like a game seven in a hockey playoff in sports EXCEPT a game seven that goes into overtime.
*****
One note on my Vin Scully/baseball broadcasters column on Wednesday: I would NEVER slight Ernie Harwell, who was wonderful to listen to (I used to be able to pick him up on WJR 760 at night when I was younger) and an absolute mensch—as my mother would say—as a human being. I was focusing on guys who are still working on Wednesday but completely agree with all the comments on Ernie. And for the guy who confused SKIP Caray with CHIP Caray, SKIP was one of the great characters both behind a microphone and in person. I once asked him how old his dad (Harry) was and he said, “Well, ten years ago dad was 74. Now I think he’s 72. I figure I’ll go past him in another dozen years or so."
Showing posts with label Philadelphia Fliers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia Fliers. Show all posts
Friday, April 16, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Review of the weekend – bowl games, outdoor hockey, college basketball and a 4am firing
Let’s start today with the big news of the weekend: The Islanders, after blowing a three goal lead on Saturday night, won a shootout against the Atlanta Thrashers to pick up two critical points.
Okay, just kidding. But I love having the NHL center ice package even though watching the Islanders some nights is about as much fun as listening to Mark Jones say that one of Navy’s football players will be reporting to “Quan-TEE-co,” this spring. Several people pointed out to me on Friday that I forgot to mention that one. I’m also told that Jones and his partner Bob Davie showed up in the TV booth not long before kickoff and didn’t have time to go through the usual ritual of having the SID’s (at least the Navy SID) make sure they knew how to pronounce all the players names.
Thus Davie managed to mispronounce the name of (his words) “the greatest captain in Navy football history,” Ross Posposil. Or, as Davie called him, “Poposil.”
Oh, one more thing: a friend who is a Missouri fan tells me they botched a number of Missouri players’ names too so let’s give them points for consistency. Then, during The Alamo Bowl, Davie kept going on about the “passion,” of the Texas Tech fans because they’re all so angry about Mike Leach being fired. What I heard directed at Adam James didn’t exactly sound like passion.
Okay, let’s move on to a review of the first three days of the New Year.
And, for a moment, let’s stay with hockey.
When the NHL started the “Winter Classic,” in 2008 I thought it was terrific. The whole spectacle worked. I also thought that by the third year or the fourth year the uniqueness would wear off and it would become an over-hyped regular season hockey game.
At least for me, it hasn’t happened yet.
Friday afternoon I kept wanting to hit the remote and switch back to Penn State-LSU or Florida State-West Virginia because both those games certainly had intriguing story lines and, in the case of Penn State-LSU a dramatic ending. But the setting—hockey in Fenway Park!—was just irresistible. The NHL and NBC have gotten lucky with the weather each year: cold enough to make it really feel like a game on a rink somewhere in Canada but not so much snow that you couldn’t play.
That said, the whole concept just works. Even though I can’t help but curse the day Mike Milbury decided to draft Rick DiPietro with the No. 1 pick, seeing him skate over to Bob Costas and talk about playing outdoors as a kid was cool. There was also the added bonus of a very good game between the Flyers and Bruins. Word is next year’s game will be between The Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins, probably in Pittsburgh because the risk of warm weather in DC is too great (not this year that’s for sure). If it is at all possible, I’m going.
Switching to the football games, the highlight of Penn State-LSU was hearing Joe Paterno screaming at Erin Andrews, “come on, let’s go, let’s go,” when Brad Nessler was a tad slow throwing it down to her for the mandatory (dull) halftime interview. That’s one thing about Joe, he is almost ALWAYS in curmudgeon mode.
A friend of mine tells a story about being at a dinner with Joe one night a couple of years ago. The appetizer was some kind of bruschetta and when the teen-age waitress—thinking Joe was finished—started to clear his plate he screamed at her, “What do you think you’re doing! I’m not finished here yet!” Poor kid apparently almost fainted.
Flashing forward to the end of the game: I am really tired of officials not using common sense and then falling back on the letter of the law (or the rules) as an excuse. Down 19-17, LSU had moved the ball to midfield with about 20 seconds remaining—maybe it was 25, I don’t remember exactly—and one of the Penn State players was doing exactly what he should do in that situation: lying on top of the ball for as long as he could to keep the clock running. One of the LSU linemen tried to move him off the ball and got nailed with a 15-yard penalty that, for all intents and purposes, ended the game.
Basically, the officials made LSU pay for their not taking control at that moment. As soon as they saw the Penn State kid clearly not getting off the ball, they should have stopped the clock, gotten him up and then re-started the clock right away. No penalty either way, let the kids decide who wins. It would still have been a long shot for LSU to get into position for a field goal, get their field goal unit on the field (with no time outs left) and get a kick off in the mud to win. But there was a CHANCE and the officials, basically being lazy, took it away from them.
That said, I was glad to see both old coaches—Paterno and Bobby Bowden—win.
Bowden, as you might expect, was all class all day. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the people running Florida State who kicked him out the door and couldn’t bring themselves to give him one more season as if he hasn’t done enough for the school to merit that. The spear toss was magical and Bowden’s wife Ann coming into his press conference to say, “it’s time to go honey,” was almost a perfect metaphor: Bobby Bowden always had time for everybody.
Back to field goal kickers for a moment. I really felt for the Northwestern kid who missed the three field goals in The Outback Bowl (is it over yet?) but much worse for Ben Hartman, the kicker from East Carolina. He had two chances from 39 yards to win The Liberty Bowl for his team in the final 67 seconds of regulation and then missed a 35-yarder in overtime opening the door for Arkansas to win the game, 20-17.
Hartman was a very good kicker at ECU but there’s no doubt it is going to be hard for him to forget the last game of his college career. I really feel for kickers at moments like that. I still vividly remember Ryan Bucchianeri, who as a Navy freshman in 1993 missed an 18-yarder at the buzzer that would have won the Army-Navy game. Even though Bucchianeri talked to the media afterwards and took full responsibility for the miss—it was a very wet field and a tough angle—but his response was simply, “I have to make that kick,” the miss haunted him during his entire time as a Midshipman.
I noticed in the Sunday paper that Hartman had not spoken to the media afterwards. I was curious who made the call: did the kid simply not want to do it? Did Skip Holtz, his coach make the decision? I dropped a note to Tom McLellan, the associate AD in charge of PR at East Carolina and asked him the question.
Tom not only got right back to me, he took the hit for the decision. He said he had made a judgment on the spot that Hartman was in no condition—emotionally—to speak to the media at that moment. I don’t disagree with Tom at all. His first job is to protect the players UNLESS they’ve done something really wrong like cheating on a test or getting arrested. This wasn’t close to that: he missed three kicks. No crime was committed.
Having said that, as I said to Tom later, I actually think Hartman might have benefited if he’d talked. Even if he broke down and cried, people would have respected him for giving it a shot. I’m also frequently amazed by athletes’ ability to handle themselves with grace under that kind of pressure. More often it is college athletes who do well in those moments because they haven’t been nearly as spoiled or over-protected as the pros (See James, Lebron).
Bottom line in it all is this: I had no vested interest in who won the game but my heart goes out to Ben Hartman.
One basketball note for the day: Did anyone see the 70-foot shot that Chandler Parsons hit at the buzzer to give Florida a 62-61 overtime win over North Carolina State? I happened to be watching, in part because State Coach Sidney Lowe was doing exactly what I would have done in that situation: fouling with a three point lead in the final 10 seconds and not letting Florida get off a tying three point shot. (Two hours later Xavier would allow Wake Forest to take a three in the last 12 seconds of overtime and would get burned by the decision).
Unfortunately, because Parsons threw in a miracle shot—which was RIGHT on line all the way and was, naturally, his only field goal of the game—coaches will now cite that as a reason not to foul. They’ll be wrong. Lowe got it right. He—and his players—just got amazingly unlucky.
There is so much more to talk about: the Redskins firing (at 4 o’clock in the morning) of Jim Zorn and their hiring (no doubt) of Mike Shanahan; the team formerly known as the Bullets and gun play; Kansas’ remarkable performance on Saturday at Temple and—did I mention the Islanders won in a shootout out?
More on that—okay, not the Islanders—tomorrow.
Okay, just kidding. But I love having the NHL center ice package even though watching the Islanders some nights is about as much fun as listening to Mark Jones say that one of Navy’s football players will be reporting to “Quan-TEE-co,” this spring. Several people pointed out to me on Friday that I forgot to mention that one. I’m also told that Jones and his partner Bob Davie showed up in the TV booth not long before kickoff and didn’t have time to go through the usual ritual of having the SID’s (at least the Navy SID) make sure they knew how to pronounce all the players names.
Thus Davie managed to mispronounce the name of (his words) “the greatest captain in Navy football history,” Ross Posposil. Or, as Davie called him, “Poposil.”
Oh, one more thing: a friend who is a Missouri fan tells me they botched a number of Missouri players’ names too so let’s give them points for consistency. Then, during The Alamo Bowl, Davie kept going on about the “passion,” of the Texas Tech fans because they’re all so angry about Mike Leach being fired. What I heard directed at Adam James didn’t exactly sound like passion.
Okay, let’s move on to a review of the first three days of the New Year.
And, for a moment, let’s stay with hockey.
When the NHL started the “Winter Classic,” in 2008 I thought it was terrific. The whole spectacle worked. I also thought that by the third year or the fourth year the uniqueness would wear off and it would become an over-hyped regular season hockey game.
At least for me, it hasn’t happened yet.
Friday afternoon I kept wanting to hit the remote and switch back to Penn State-LSU or Florida State-West Virginia because both those games certainly had intriguing story lines and, in the case of Penn State-LSU a dramatic ending. But the setting—hockey in Fenway Park!—was just irresistible. The NHL and NBC have gotten lucky with the weather each year: cold enough to make it really feel like a game on a rink somewhere in Canada but not so much snow that you couldn’t play.
That said, the whole concept just works. Even though I can’t help but curse the day Mike Milbury decided to draft Rick DiPietro with the No. 1 pick, seeing him skate over to Bob Costas and talk about playing outdoors as a kid was cool. There was also the added bonus of a very good game between the Flyers and Bruins. Word is next year’s game will be between The Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins, probably in Pittsburgh because the risk of warm weather in DC is too great (not this year that’s for sure). If it is at all possible, I’m going.
Switching to the football games, the highlight of Penn State-LSU was hearing Joe Paterno screaming at Erin Andrews, “come on, let’s go, let’s go,” when Brad Nessler was a tad slow throwing it down to her for the mandatory (dull) halftime interview. That’s one thing about Joe, he is almost ALWAYS in curmudgeon mode.
A friend of mine tells a story about being at a dinner with Joe one night a couple of years ago. The appetizer was some kind of bruschetta and when the teen-age waitress—thinking Joe was finished—started to clear his plate he screamed at her, “What do you think you’re doing! I’m not finished here yet!” Poor kid apparently almost fainted.
Flashing forward to the end of the game: I am really tired of officials not using common sense and then falling back on the letter of the law (or the rules) as an excuse. Down 19-17, LSU had moved the ball to midfield with about 20 seconds remaining—maybe it was 25, I don’t remember exactly—and one of the Penn State players was doing exactly what he should do in that situation: lying on top of the ball for as long as he could to keep the clock running. One of the LSU linemen tried to move him off the ball and got nailed with a 15-yard penalty that, for all intents and purposes, ended the game.
Basically, the officials made LSU pay for their not taking control at that moment. As soon as they saw the Penn State kid clearly not getting off the ball, they should have stopped the clock, gotten him up and then re-started the clock right away. No penalty either way, let the kids decide who wins. It would still have been a long shot for LSU to get into position for a field goal, get their field goal unit on the field (with no time outs left) and get a kick off in the mud to win. But there was a CHANCE and the officials, basically being lazy, took it away from them.
That said, I was glad to see both old coaches—Paterno and Bobby Bowden—win.
Bowden, as you might expect, was all class all day. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the people running Florida State who kicked him out the door and couldn’t bring themselves to give him one more season as if he hasn’t done enough for the school to merit that. The spear toss was magical and Bowden’s wife Ann coming into his press conference to say, “it’s time to go honey,” was almost a perfect metaphor: Bobby Bowden always had time for everybody.
Back to field goal kickers for a moment. I really felt for the Northwestern kid who missed the three field goals in The Outback Bowl (is it over yet?) but much worse for Ben Hartman, the kicker from East Carolina. He had two chances from 39 yards to win The Liberty Bowl for his team in the final 67 seconds of regulation and then missed a 35-yarder in overtime opening the door for Arkansas to win the game, 20-17.
Hartman was a very good kicker at ECU but there’s no doubt it is going to be hard for him to forget the last game of his college career. I really feel for kickers at moments like that. I still vividly remember Ryan Bucchianeri, who as a Navy freshman in 1993 missed an 18-yarder at the buzzer that would have won the Army-Navy game. Even though Bucchianeri talked to the media afterwards and took full responsibility for the miss—it was a very wet field and a tough angle—but his response was simply, “I have to make that kick,” the miss haunted him during his entire time as a Midshipman.
I noticed in the Sunday paper that Hartman had not spoken to the media afterwards. I was curious who made the call: did the kid simply not want to do it? Did Skip Holtz, his coach make the decision? I dropped a note to Tom McLellan, the associate AD in charge of PR at East Carolina and asked him the question.
Tom not only got right back to me, he took the hit for the decision. He said he had made a judgment on the spot that Hartman was in no condition—emotionally—to speak to the media at that moment. I don’t disagree with Tom at all. His first job is to protect the players UNLESS they’ve done something really wrong like cheating on a test or getting arrested. This wasn’t close to that: he missed three kicks. No crime was committed.
Having said that, as I said to Tom later, I actually think Hartman might have benefited if he’d talked. Even if he broke down and cried, people would have respected him for giving it a shot. I’m also frequently amazed by athletes’ ability to handle themselves with grace under that kind of pressure. More often it is college athletes who do well in those moments because they haven’t been nearly as spoiled or over-protected as the pros (See James, Lebron).
Bottom line in it all is this: I had no vested interest in who won the game but my heart goes out to Ben Hartman.
One basketball note for the day: Did anyone see the 70-foot shot that Chandler Parsons hit at the buzzer to give Florida a 62-61 overtime win over North Carolina State? I happened to be watching, in part because State Coach Sidney Lowe was doing exactly what I would have done in that situation: fouling with a three point lead in the final 10 seconds and not letting Florida get off a tying three point shot. (Two hours later Xavier would allow Wake Forest to take a three in the last 12 seconds of overtime and would get burned by the decision).
Unfortunately, because Parsons threw in a miracle shot—which was RIGHT on line all the way and was, naturally, his only field goal of the game—coaches will now cite that as a reason not to foul. They’ll be wrong. Lowe got it right. He—and his players—just got amazingly unlucky.
There is so much more to talk about: the Redskins firing (at 4 o’clock in the morning) of Jim Zorn and their hiring (no doubt) of Mike Shanahan; the team formerly known as the Bullets and gun play; Kansas’ remarkable performance on Saturday at Temple and—did I mention the Islanders won in a shootout out?
More on that—okay, not the Islanders—tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)