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Thursday night. Ottawa at New Jersey. Textbook Devils game — a 1-0 win. There really wasn't much else to say about it. It's the same game the Devils have played all season. They can shut anybody down. Ottawa tried to keep the tempo high, but it wasn't enough to throw the Devils off their game. There's very little that can throw the Devils off their game. Even waved off goals. I don't understand why that was even such a big deal. Yeah the refs missed a goal, but it was hardly an obvious one. And the Devils played through it. Stuff happens. I don't see why everyone is blaming the hurry off face-offs for this. You can't have a video review after every single play around the net. Games would take five hours. If I wanted that, I'd watch baseball.
From the "What Took Them So Long" File: The Flyers have let goalie Roman Cechmanek go. They're going to try and trade him, or more likely, release him.
Coach Ken Hitchcock seemed surprised by the news which sort of surprised me. What good is a solid regular season goalie if he falls apart in the playoffs? (And why is Hitchcock so blind to Cechmanek's faults? What does Cechmanek have on the man?) The Flyers had a strong, strong team this season. While Cechmanek isn't the reason the Flyers couldn't get out of the second round, an elite goalie might have kept them in there a little longer.
The unrestricted free agent goalie pool this summer isn't great. Boston's Jeff Hackett is the big name, and the Bruins seem pretty committed to keeping him. But the Flyers have a wealth of talent to trade. I wouldn't be shocked to see the Flyers move the oft-injured Simon Gagne for a decent net man.
It was pretty obvious early on that the Ducks were going to beat the Wild Wednesday night.
The Wild came out strong the first five minutes, but Jean-Sebastien Giguere was his usual unstoppable self.
The Wild are in a tough place. They weren't able to beat them with their patient, defense-centric system in the first two games, so coach Jacques Lemaire decided to explore some other systems that have been popular in the NHL over the years. He put some muscle into the line-up. He played his forwards down low at the expense of lots of odd man rushes. He basically undid his own carefully crafted if horribly boring system to try and break Giguere.
But Giguere might be unbreakable.
Like I said, I knew Anaheim would win but I wanted to see if Giguere would get another shut-out. The series is all about Giguere now. Does he have any limits? The Wild had some chances and he stopped them all.
ABC reported (and I can't find it in print), that in game five (or was it seven?) of the Wild's series with Vancouver, one of the Canucks told a Wild player to pack his golf bags since he would soon be off for the rest of the summer. This reportedly infuriated the Wild, leading to their miraculous comeback against the Canucks. Now maybe the Wild have nothing to get angry about — especially playing a fellow underdog.
It's a bad combination. An unbreakable goalie meeting a team whose spirit is broken. The Wild aren't playing for a win in game four. They're playing for a goal. Just one goal.
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Looking ahead to the Stanley Cup finals, there are a couple of interesting side stories.
* If it's New Jersey and Anaheim, you have brothers Rob and Scott Niedermayer playing against each other. Rob is an Anaheim forward and Scott is a grizzled New Jersey defenseman.
* New Jersey vs. Anaheim will also pit Petr Sykora against his former New Jersey teammates. Sykora was traded to Anaheim in a very public bid to break up his line, who rumor has is, many in the Devils organization felt was too popular.
* If it's New Jersey and Minnesota, you have the Devils playing their former coach, Jacques Lemaire. Not only is Lemaire their former coach, he's also the architect of their defensive mentality. He didn't just coach the Devils, he invented them.
* If it's Ottawa against Minnesota in the finals, it's kind of weird. You have two city's who both end in ah sounds.
Do you think Colorado and Vancouver feel like jerks now?
Minnesota just doesn't look so tough.
Although the way they're scoring against Anaheim, they do look a lot like the Red Wings.
Not to be annoying, but the Webby Awards have a People's Choice category where people get to vote. I was thinking it might be kind of cool if PuckUpdate wins a Webby for sports (although I think we'd be up against ESPN.com and lord knows what other deep-pocketed organizations). If you're a fan of the work here, though, maybe you could visit here, sign up to vote (it's free and pretty painless), and then suggest PuckUpdate as a write-in in the sports category.
I can't help but feel that by voting for PuckUpdate you're showing the world that hockey is a vital sport.
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As usual, Larry Brooks over at the New York Post has some great Sunday dish. This week, he reports that the Canucks and the Flyers should go after the retired Red Wing goalie Dom Hasek.
Our Mr. Brooks has sources who say Hasek might not mind coming back to hockey if he got a good offer from a good team. Apparently he's looking to help a team win their first Cup.
Hasek is still under contract to Detroit, though, so to deal with the Dominator, you have to be willing to pony up a lot to Detroit.
It all sounds kind of crazy, but really cool.
Speaking of goalies, Jeff Hackett will be the number one goalie in Boston next season. Hackett never played as well as when he was Jose Theodore's back-up in Montreal, making the Vezina-winning goalie look like a cross between Dan Cloutier and Roman Turek. But once he was traded to Boston, his game lost some edge. And breaking his finger right before the playoffs certainly didn't help anything. But Boston is sticking with him and he's not horrible.
The Boston Globe also reports Mike Sullivan is a favorite to become the Bruins' coach. The New York Post says they also might be interested in Larry Robinson, which is just kind of weird since the Bruins also might be interested in having current Devils GM Lou Lamoriello run the club and Lamoriello fired Robinson as the Devils' coach last season. Of course, Robinson still works for the Devils, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad.
