Obviously, I'm a little late to the Pittsburgh-Ottawa party, but I wanted to point out Jim Kelley's post completely throwing the fragile Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury under the bus in the Penguins' ugly loss to Ottawa. It just seemed so dramatic — especially when guys like Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Joe Starkey seem OK giving him a pass.
I'm not sure it's fair to define young goalies based on one game.
Meanwhile, I might be regretting picking the Flames to win the Cup.
But congrats to the Rangers for holding on in Atlanta. The Rangers were pure discipline. I've never seen them dump the puck so much. I felt like Pat Quinn was somewhere, coaching behind Tom Renney.

Versus sent me a note that they had put up something with the NHL's 30 (I only count 15) greatest playoff moments. I'm always cynical about these pitches, but the guy pitching me mentioned the 1994 Rangers, so I figured I'd click over as a courtesy. The site has a pretty nice setup, though. It's got a lot of cool videos, like Bobby Orr's upside-down goal, one of my personal favorites. There are also some odd choices, like Paul Kariya's goal after Scott Stevens stole his soul for a minute in the 2003 finals, but for the most part, it's pretty fun.
Do you know what else is fun? Don Cherry on American television. Personally, given what NBC is going through with Imus, I don't think Cherry will be very colorful. In fact, I'd be shocked if he wasn't on a six-minute delay while broadcasting in front of a team of lawyers, but maybe something interesting will slip through.

I can hardly even think about the playoffs knowing there's a line of hockey-themed romance novels.
There are a ton of great titles, like THE PENALTY BOX and CHASING STANLEY. And I'm proud to announce that I'll be contributing to the line:

You'll be able to pre-order by the second round of the playoffs.

Congratulations to the Islanders for really fighting their way into the playoffs, finally making it in via a shootout in game 82. Coach Ted Nolan started the season asking for character players: guys like Mike Sillinger, Chris Simon, Brendan Witt, and Richard Park. Simon, obviously, didn't 100% work out, but Park, a tough, fourth-liner, has been a monster lately, pushing the Isles into the playoffs. Park has eight goals on the season -- three in the past two games. I'm not quite sure how the Isles are going to match up against Buffalo, but for now, it's just cool to have all three local New York City area teams in the playoffs.
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The Red Wings locked up Pavel Datsyuk with a seven-year, $46.9 million contract, continuing the league-wide trend of not letting any first-line players hit the open market. I wonder if this is what GMs had in mind when they negotiated the last collective bargaining agreement. If you can consistently score around 30 goals in the NHL, you're pretty much guaranteed five to seven-year contracts at a clip.
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Also, yesterday's Times had a huge loveletter to Devils goalie Martin Brodeur. Interestingly, no mention was made of his alleged role in the canning of coach Claude Julien.
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Boston coach Dave Lewis has a list of things to work on with the Bruins next season: 1. systems; 2. meetings; 3. communication; 4. discipline; 5. structure.
So what exactly was he doing with the team this season? Was he just emailing everyone? I'm not an NHL coach, but those all seem like pretty standard first-season priorities.