Puck Talk
Random hockey thoughts while the NHL ticks down the days until the Winter Olympic break…
-If the NHL season ended today this is what we’d have for first-round playoff match-ups:
In the East it would be Ottawa-Atlanta, Carolina-Tampa Bay, Philadelphia-New Jersey and New York Rangers-Buffalo. Toronto, Montreal and, of course, Boston would all be on the outside looking in. Not the sexiest lineup I’ve ever seen but not terrible either. Ottawa-Atlanta would have the subplot of the Heatley-Hossa trade from last offseason. Carolina-Tampa Bay would be a great match-up from a pure hockey standpoint. From a TV-ratings standpoint, it’s a nightmare. Philly-New Jersey would speak for itself. And the Rangers and Sabres would pit the two biggest pleasant surprises in the conference this year.
In the West, the lineup would go Detroit-Edmonton, Colorado-Dallas, Vancouver-Calgary and Los Angeles-Nashville. I’d comment further on those pairings but the prospect of another Vancouver-Calgary series is just too exciting for me to think straight. (Regular readers of this space can attest to my obsession with the old Smyth Division rivalries. I’ve subjected everyone to multiple retellings of Mike Vernon standing on his head in Game 7 of their ’89 series and Kirk McLean making the greatest save in playoff history in ’94 for Vancouver and, so help me God, I’ll do it again if given the chance.)
-San Jose’s been better than Boston since the Thornton trade, they’ve got a few games in hand and Joe himself has been terrific but, oddly, as the standings read today the Bruins are actually closer to the 8th playoff spot in the East than the Sharks are in the West. That seems impossible.
-The only fun part of watching Bruins games lately for me is to watch Patrice Bergeron. It’s easy to forget but he’s still only 20 years old. When Thornton was 20 years old, Mike Keenan was still spotting him on the 4th line. Bergeron’s basically being asked to do everything short of selling Jeremy Jacobs’ $6 Banknorth hot dogs between periods. And that’s not a knock on Joe or the way Keenan handled him. It’s a compliment to Patrice. The 2 on 1 goals he set-up and/or scored with Marco Sturm last week were textbook. You’d have to go back to Adam Oates to find a Bruin that made more good decisions with the puck.
-Speaking of young guns, Alex Ovechkin has been absolutely ridiculous for the last few weeks. He’s been ridiculous all year really. Especially for a team as bad as Washington. But he’s been especially ridiculous lately. He’s not just scoring. He’s scoring every single night and the goals just keep getting better and better. He had two last week that were just complete filth….the one he scored from his back with a defenseman draped all over him and the one where he came down the off-side and torched the D so bad you could see his legs visibly buckle before he sniped a shot top corner. Extremely impressive stuff.
And so much the better that every time A.O. goes bananas on some poor goalie it’s two more points for my red-hot fantasy team.
-I might as well mention Sidney Crosby here too since it seems like his name comes up every time you mention Ovechkin. I actually overheard a guy in my building last week talking about how Crosby is a total bust. Uh, OK. He’s 18 years old and he’s in the top 15 in scoring for a last-place team. I guess that makes you a total bust. That seems fair.
-Did anyone else happen to catch where Buffalo killed off 35 straight penalties in a recent stretch? 35 straight penalties? That’s crazy.
-Also, I noticed where Philly picked up Petr Nedved last week from the Coyotes. Exactly how many different teams does that make for Nedved now? I feel like he’s been on every team in the league at this point. Every year he’s involved in some kind of midseason deal. Every stinking year. Why? What is it about Nedved that makes him so detestable to current employers while remaining somehow attractive to so many other teams? I don’t get it. And I feel like there’s no end in sight to the phenomenon too. He’ll be 53 years old and you’ll still see him get scooped up by someone at the deadline.
-The whole Bryan Berard/steroid thing? I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s all that interesting a story. The only thing I’ll say in his defense is that at least he came right out and admitted it. You’re 100 times better off taking that approach than acting like Palmeiro and McGwire. Although I guess that says something when we’re commending a guy simply for telling the truth about how he was cheating.
-I’m moderately fired up for the Olympics I guess. Not the most ringing endorsement I suppose. But that’s about how I feel. The luster of having the pros play has definitely worn off some but it is still compelling hockey to watch when the games start. I remember feeling kind of lukewarm about it heading into 2002 as well, and then finding myself completely roped in by the Belarus upset over Sweden, so who knows? I say I’m not that into it but then I’ll watch 15 games in a week when it’s on.
-Let’s see, what else? I hate the Rangers as much as the next guy but I watched Messier Night a few weeks ago and it was pretty cool. You have to respect Mess.
-Finally, I had a debate recently with a friend of mine about the worst hockey sequence ever captured in TV or film. We couldn’t agree on a final verdict but at least narrowed the choices down to Jason Bateman’s wave to the stands during the opening credits of The Hogan Family and Scott Baio’s performance in a lost after-school special titled, according to imdb.com, The Boy Who Drank Too Much. If you didn’t see it you’ll have to trust me although I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine a Scott Baio after-school vehicle called The Boy Who Drank Too Much being pretty bad. Well, I assure you, it was worse. I guess I would describe it as a much less funny, much more painful to watch version of Zapped. With hockey.
Questions? Comments? Please send feedback to Michael James at feedback@barstoolsports.com