Day: May 14, 2013

Guest Blogger Predicting Round 2 of the NHL Playoffs (He Promises To Get More Than 1 Series Right This Time)

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

[Editor’s Note: Nkilla is back with his 2nd round predictions. I can’t even get away with watching two hockey games a night before my girlfriend is questioning how invested I am in our relationship. This friggen guy somehow has a wife, a kid and even a full-time job, yet somehow he’s allowed to watch every game?? Makes no sense, but glad to have him on board predicting (mostly incorrectly) all the results of the games.]

Round One of the Stanley Cup playoffs is in the books. Glad you all made it through with all your teeth still in place. Before we dive into the round two series rankings, let’s recap what happened in round one where my predictions went right and completely ignore any predictions I got wrong.

Chicago v Minnesota – As predicted this was a fairly uneventful series. The teams split two overtime games, and Chicago won the other three games easily. The most exciting thing that happened in this series is that Minnesota’s starting goalie got injured during pregame warmups for game one, so they had to go to their second-stringer at the last second. For those of you that do not follow the NHL very closely, players prepare for the goalie they are about to face similarly to the ways a batter prepares for a pitcher in the old man’s game (baseball): studying tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. So anyone that got excited because Minnesota forced OT in game one and thought the Wild might make a series out of it was ignoring the fact that Chicago would study up on the new goalie and make the appropriate adjustments.

Pittsburgh v Brooklyn – I was completely off on this series. This turned into one of the better series in the first round. The crowds for the games on Long Island were fantastic, which always helps elevate a series. I also did not see the Vancouver-esque goalie drama that was coming Pittsburgh’s way. Not that I thought their first-stringer, Marc-Andre Fleury was great, but I thought Pittsburgh would score six goals a game so the fact that he was giving up four a game wouldn’t matter. After Brooklyn had huge comeback wins in games two and four, Pittsburgh had to make a goalie change. The backup pitched a shutout in game five (see the pitcher analogy above) but started to let in goals in game six. It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward. Pittsburgh won the two overtime games in this series which was probably the biggest reason they advanced with a 4-2 series win.

St. Louis v Los Angeles – Here is what I wrote about this series in the round one preview: “In the last month or so the Kings have been getting back to form. I think this is one of those series that goes five or six games but seems like it was a sweep.” Nailed it. After losing the first two games, the Kings won the next four (which is essentially a sweep, right?) to take the series. All six games were decided by one goal, but other than a few late-game goals it was not all that exciting.

Anaheim v Detroit – Not to keep bragging, but nailed it again. Here is what I wrote about this series before round one: “This series may very well go all seven games and we will probably get a couple of OT games as well. The reason this series is not higher on the list is that there is almost no history between the two teams and not a lot of household names on either team.” This was a fantastic series that nobody noticed. Anaheim erased a three goal deficit with 12 minutes left in game two only to lose in OT. Detroit came from behind and won in OT in game four to stay in the series, only to have the Ducks return the favor in game five. Anaheim scored two goals in the final three minutes of game six, only to lose in OT capping off three consecutive OT games. Again, great series, just too bad almost nobody was talking about it.

Washington v New York – I stand by my statement that both of these teams are bad. What I did not calculate was that when two bad teams play each other they can cancel each other out and you might get an entertaining seven game series. As expected you have a ton of built-up hatred because it is two close proximity east coast teams. There were plenty of entertaining skirmishes and an extremely entertaining 5-on-5 brawl after the final whistle of game six.  What ends up diminishing the enjoyment of this series a bit was that game seven was a giant dud.

Boston v Toronto – Let’s just go with my tweet immediately after game seven since I still can’t believe how things unfolded in this series, especially the last ten minutes of this series, and I certainly cannot coherently sum it up yet: “Well then, that was something.”

Vancouver v San Jose – Well, at least I predicted that San Jose would win this series. And Vancouver was nice enough to switch up goalies at least once, but this was not a very entertaining series. Vancouver never had a chance, which I understand for most NHL fans is nice to see since I think most non-Vancouvans are sick of this team by now. But in terms of playoff hockey value it was not a great series. And my advice to the Canucks – blow it up. You have taken a step back every year since losing in the Cup finals. It is time for a fresh approach.

Montreal v Ottawa – So close yet so far away. For three games I was looking like a genius. Everything I wrote in the round one preview about how great this series could be was coming true. After three games Ottawa was up 2-1 in the series, there had been what I can only describe as a small lake of blood on the ice at one point during game one, and this happened in the middle of game three:

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how much you despise the Canadiens) Montreal blew a two goal lead with nine minutes to play in game four, eventually lost the game in OT, suffered some season-ending injuries to several players including their goalie, and Ottawa won the series in five games.

 

So now onto the second round. There are four series in this round, enough to rank them from worst to best in terms of predicted entertainment value:

4. Chicago v Detroit – It is not that I think this is going to be a bad series, I just think the other three series will be better. Two of the original Six teams meeting in the playoffs. Both these teams have great fan bases and long histories. Detroit was unable to beat Chicago in four regular season meetings, but based on what we just saw in the Anaheim series and their history you never count Detroit out in the playoffs. I suspect the intensity of this series to grow with each game.

The Pick: Chicago in 6.

3. Los Angeles v San Jose – Southern California vs Northern California, Dodgers vs Giants On-Ice, Snoop Dogg vs MC Hammer, I could go on for days. These two teams played four very even games in the regular season. As mentioned in the round one preview, the Kings seem to be rounding into title defense form very nicely. The Sharks are coming off of the only round one sweep. The Sharks have a nice little story going. This is their least hyped team in years and they just completed the franchise’s first playoff sweep. LA is not going to be caught off guard like the Canucks were though.

The Pick: LA in 6.

2. Pittsburgh v Ottawa – On paper, Pittsburgh should be able to handle Ottawa in five games. That is what I thought about the Islanders too. Ottawa may not have the explosive offense that the Islanders had to keep pace with Pittsburgh, but they are a much more physical team than Brooklyn. And the crowd for every game in Ottawa should be going bonkers. And what happens if the wheels come off with the Thomas Vokoun experiment? Let’s not completely rule out Ottawa and their zany coach.

The Pick: Pittsburgh in 7.

1. Boston v New York – All bets are off in this series. You’ve got a Boston team vs a New York team. I know most of North America is sick of that story line, but it is always a story line. Both these teams just survived seven-game series against lesser opponents. Somehow this is the first playoff series between these two teams in forty years. The Bruins had a better season and are probably a better team on paper, but, well, nobody is sure this Bruins team wants to try until their backs are against the wall. And New York has a very deep team that has played better the second half of the year. These teams played three very evenly-matched games during the regular season, and you know both fan bases are going to bring it. Let’s just fast-forward to the inevitable OT of game seven and see how it plays out.

The Pick: Boston in 7.

The Boston Comeback That Made Almost All Of Us Look Like Fools (With a Big Assist From Twitter)

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I’m sure guest-blogging extraordinaire Nkilla will be along later today with his Round 2 preview of the NHL playoffs, but it would be irresponsible of me not to post some disjointed, incoherent thoughts about what went down in Boston last night.

-I don’t care how spoiled Boston fans have been since the Patriots’ 2001 run. We were all thinking the exact same thing as last night’s 3rd period creeped closer and closer to the 10-minute mark: “Son of a bitch, we’ve been tricked again. This team is no different than last year’s gigantic disappointment. Only 115 days til football starts, thank the Lord.”

-God damn Twitter and Facebook. In the old days, I would have just told the person I was watching the game with that the Bruins were frauds, had no heart, should fire their coach before the final whistle…and then I could have denied it all after the comeback. Now my naysaying is all over the friggen web for eternity.

-Just imagine if Twitter was around during the 2004 ALCS. I can’t even fathom the type of hate I would have been spewing at the Red Sox after that 19-8 game 3 debacle against the Yankees in Fenway.

-Or even worse, imagine if they had liquor as tasty as Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey back in 2004. Dangerous.

-Here’s a sampling of some of my Tweets and Facebook posts that historians 100 years from now will be laughing at as they put together a complete history of my life:

  • “1 of 2 things happens in this game: Bruins lead by multiple goals the whole way, or I chug Jack Daniel’s Honey for the next 3 hrs” (No exaggeration whatsoever. I severely underestimated how much I’d need so during the first intermission I sprinted to the store to re-load on the Honey. Best move I made all night.)
  • “I would tell Lucic to take the sweater off and exit the building right now if I were Julien. Awful, Nice season B’s” (In my defense, this was written the moment after Toronto scored their third goal, a goal that only happened because Lucic, having beaten Phil Kessel to the puck in the corner of the Bruins defensive zone, decided he wanted to make contact with Kessel more than grabbing the puck and clearing it out. It was an inexcusable play in my mind. As for the “Nice season B’s” comment, remember that they were now down two goals with 18 minutes to go and had scored all of three goals in the previous 162 minutes dating back to the start of game 5. I don’t think it was so wrong to write them off here.)
  • “Choking away a 3-1 series lead when 2 of final 3 games were at home is greater than or equal to a baseball team losing 9.5 game lead in Sept” (Fine, this one was a major exaggeration. Of course losing a lead like that in baseball when all you have to do is win 8 out of your final 27 games is worse than losing three straight hockey games.)
  • “I’d bet on Titus Young Sr getting signed by Patriots over Bruins coming back in this game” (And I’d still make that bet if the situation came up again. Remember, three total goals in 162 minutes and they needed three in less than 15 minutes!)
  • “I refuse to stop tweeting about the Bruins demise…It might just be the thing keeping them alive” (Rule #1 of debilitating superstitions: If good things start to happen while you’re behaving a certain way, don’t you dare change that behavior. My negativity just might be the thing that saved Boston’s season. I accept thank you’s in the form of paid writing jobs or straight up donations to the “Keep Ross Unemployed Fund.”)
  • “The Bruins treat playoff series like I treated college papers” (Pretty self-explanatory. Slack off until it’s so close to the deadline that you have a stress-related ulcer and then do just enough to not get kicked out of school/the playoffs.)
  • “So, New York, we meet again” (I don’t know this Rangers team, but I don’t care. They’re from New York. That’s all that matters.)

-I want to talk to someone who left the Garden when the Bruins were down 4-1 or 4-2. Not to make fun of them (Lord knows I was thisclose to changing the channel to watch the other game 7 going on at the same time), but to hear them express their feelings as they were driving out of Boston and realizing what was happening. Must have felt like a kick squarely to the testicles.

-Logic says the Bruins don’t get out of the 2nd round. Not only did they get outplayed in 4.5 of 7 games against the Maple Leafs, but they continued to lose key guys throughout the process…Andrew Ference, Wade Redden, Dennis Seidenberg. Good thing they have a guy who annually ranks as the best defensive-minded forward in Patrice Bergeron because they might just have to ask him to line up on the blue line if things keep going this way.

-You can never feel confident when two of your defensemen are a 19-year-old rookie (Dougie Hamilton) and a guy with nine total games of NHL experience (Matt Bartkowski).

-But there’s apparently no place for logic when it comes to the Boston Bruins and playoff hockey in general (as evidenced by the fact that the number 2, 3 and 4 seeds in the West bowed out in Round 1, along with the number 2 and 3 seeds in the East).

-As far as I’m concerned, Peter Chiarelli and Claude Julien should grab a couple scrubs from Providence and sub them in for Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin for the rest of this playoff run. They are invisible. Marchand has all of three total points (all assists), ranking him 99th out of all players in the playoffs. But hey, he looks like Gretzky compared to Seguin….one point, an assist. There’s literally no one Julien can put in for them that will hurt the team more than they’re already hurting it.

-Bruins went 1-2 against the Rangers this year, but the two losses were as close as can be…one in OT and the other in a shootout. So there’s hope, I guess.

-Not that I would ever root for a triple-heart attack game again, but this just might have been the thing that gets my girlfriend legitimately interested in the NHL Playoffs for the rest of her life. I’ve been trying to tell her for the past week how amazing game 7’s can be, mostly because I wanted her to be OK with me hogging the TV for every possible hockey game, but now she’s going to think every game 7 is as crazy as last night’s. If that’s what it took, then I guess I’m glad it happened (Maybe her interest will stay with only the Bruins…she didn’t seem too thrilled this morning when I told her round 2 starts up immediately with two games tonight).

-I haven’t heard every sound byte from last night yet, but the leader in the clubhouse is Tuukka Rask saying “You’re either a hero or an asshole.” The Bruins seem to have a handful of both.

-Going forward I’ll make a deal with the Bruins. You play 60 minutes a game as if you actually care about winning in the playoffs, and I’ll stay away from prematurely writing your obituary on Twitter.