Everything Else

What We Talk About When We Talk About Vegas

By Sam Fels 2619 0

I know. I’m the piss on everyone’s chips. This might start out like that, but I promise not all of this article is going to be that. Swear to God. Not even sure I totally believe it, but it’s the truth. Anyway, with Vegas winning the Western Conference yesterday, all the debate and arguments over what it means about the state of the league, the state of mind of some fans, and a bunch of other stuff that happens when something this unique takes place has basically exploded. Let’s sift through it.

There certainly are a lot of annoying aspects to the Knights, and I feel like I covered most of them here. But that post probably needs updating, and it also skipped a very large, perhaps most-annoying aspect that’s come along with them. This idea that the Knights’ run has somehow “healed” Vegas after the atrocity right before the season. That’s patently ridiculous, cheap, and manipulative, and a few other adjectives as well. This is always a safe-haven  sportswriters run for in times like this, either for easy heart-string pulling or they simply don’t have the capacity to deal with real-life disasters/horror in any real way.

I certainly don’t want to discount that those connected to those killed that night might have found some distraction in the Knights. If they could provide those people with any amount of time of levity, happiness, joy, then that is indeed a wonderful thing. But it’s not “healing.” Those deaths were senseless, and merely serve as a testament to our country’s demented priorities and broken political system.

You know what might “heal?” Meaningful gun control and mental health care expansion in the name of those who passed to assure something like that never happens again. That would mean those deaths weren’t empty or meaningless. A hockey team winning a few playoff rounds do not. And yet you constantly see this listed right next to Fleury’s .947 SV% as a reason the Knights are going to the Final. That’s abhorrent and wrong. It’s also too convenient. So does that mean the Panthers are moral failures because they didn’t make the playoffs after Parkland?  Or various other teams in various other locations of our sickeningly frequent other shootings and mass murder?

It’s a story, but it’s separate to the Knights success and should be treated as such. Yes, I have frequently written about the sports mattering and the connection to those we’ve lost. I wrote a whole book about it, in fact. But after the celebrations and the memories, those people are still gone, and the grieving and processing and healing–if such a thing is even possible–takes place within and away from arenas and stadiums. Secondly, while I wrote about the Cubs World Series win and what it meant to me because of my family, the Cubs were something we actively shared together for my entire life. The Knights didn’t exist before this, so there isn’t that connection for anyone there. Again, if any of those who survived or those connected to those who didn’t could find momentary distraction from the Knights, that’s great. But it’s not the overarching cure-all that every sportswriter is desperate to be, and all those who are desperate for it to be so we won’t talk about some real changes.

That doesn’t mean sports can’t affect things in the rest of the world. Didier Drogba stopped a civil war, for christ’s sake! Colin Kaepernick was able to keep a critically important issue in the public eye without even playing, while also exposing just how deep and cancerous racism is in our country. You may say you knew all along, but I guarantee there are plenty who didn’t realize how deep the problem went and had their eyes opened. They just don’t yell as loud as though who wanted Kap to just go away. It can be done, but it’s extraordinary circumstances like that.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the hockey aspect.

Admittedly, this is one of perspective. If the Hawks hadn’t won three Cups recently, I’d probably be livid right now. You get the frustration from some fanbases, but it’s misplaced. Just because your team has been moronically run for decades doesn’t mean everyone else’s has to be. Try and explain “mandatory suffering” to a Yankees fan. It doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, it seems unfair, but it’s not. Something is only “unfair” if you were promised a certain system or process. Sports is not that. You are not guaranteed a win, otherwise what would be the point? It just so happens hockey has a ton of teams that have been run by the stupid, drunk, bewildered or some combination thereof for far longer than any reasonable league should. And because of its lack of attention and/or its stone-resistance to any sort of change, it remains that way. Why are ex-players still getting GM jobs when every other sport has moved on to executive types for that job? Does anyone care Theo Epstein never played the game? The GM of the Warriors never played in the NBA, and that’s the best team of all-time (come at me).

That discussion also goes to age. A 25-year-old Patriots fan would know no suffering. A 40-year-old one would and could regale you with stories of sitting on a cold and uncomfortable bench in Foxboro watching Steve Grogan thrash about (I’ve been through this story). So that doesn’t hold up.

What I think it points at is just how stupid and backward this league is, at least to some people. And yet some of these decisions that landed players in Vegas aren’t as indefensible as it seems. Sure, Dale Tallon should be barred from ever working in the league again, and has basically proven that he got lucky with a few draft picks and was just conscious enough to not fuck up two top-three picks. We’ll circle back to this. Nate Schmidt was a third-pairing player in DC. And rightly so. William Karlsson had done nothing on two teams. The Ducks had three or four young defensemen ahead of Shea Theodore. The Penguins had a better, younger, cheaper goalie than Fleury. Alex Tuch wasn’t going to change the fortunes of the Wild anytime soon. James Neal’s departure sure didn’t hurt the Preds much.

And let’s face it, George McPhee isn’t a genius either. We know he’s not an idiot, he built that first wave of Ovie-era Caps teams. But he’s not redefining anything here. Everything just came up Milhouse.

The one thing to remember is above in this post. .947. That’s all you need to know. Without Fleury, the Jets might have swept this series. They certainly win both in Vegas. .947. He was .927 during the season. Again, that’s pretty much it, along with Karlsson’s 25% shooting-percentage. Look at the top-10 starters in SV% this year. All are on playoff teams.

What I think frustrates people is it is a testament to just how watered down the league is in terms of talent. All it takes to be a playoff team is a goalie playing well and two or three guys with a shooting spike. Which makes it seem random, which makes it seem pointless.

And yet…eight of the last nine Cups have been won by three teams. Now, of those eight Cups none of those teams that won had to play the same team twice in the Final. The Pens beat the Wings, Sharks, and Preds. The Hawks the Flyers, Bruins, and Lightning. The Kings the Devils and Rangers. So maybe it is random until it isn’t. I’m not sure what to make of it.

And yet we can’t have it both ways. The salary cap can’t handicap well-built teams while we also lament that no one knows how to build a team. Yet there doesn’t feel like any GM we can safely say knows what he’s doing completely. We’ve been over Tallon, and he constructed most of a team that won three in six. We could have the Stan Bowman argument all day. No one thinks Ken Holland is anywhere near a genius anymore when he can’t spend as much of Mr. I’s money as he wants. Jim Rutherford inherited a pretty great roster and stocked farm-system, and still gave up a 1st-round pick for Ryan Reaves. Lou Lamoriello had Roman Polak on the team. How deep do you want to go?

When it’s like this the answer is almost always in the middle. Yes, there are a lot of dumb GMs but they also have a near-impossible job thanks to the hard cap. And yet even that could be changing. There’s going to be a big bump this summer, bigger than previous seasons, and that could happen a couple more times before another lockout changes the landscape again.

What we can say is that goaltender is the definitive position in the four major sports right now, because of the flattening of talent-bases across the league. People claim quarterback, but he’s only on the field half to three-quarters of the time. Aaron Rodgers is the best I’ve ever seen (come at me), and he’s been to one Super Bowl because the Packers haven’t been able to figure out anything else around him and some bad/hilarious luck. It ain’t his fault. And goaltender will remain that until teams can amass and keep a level of talent overcome that. And even the Jets, who pretty much have, couldn’t do much with Fleury in this way. .947.

It doesn’t always work like this. Jonathan Quick dragged the Kings to a Final in ’12 but the next Kings team was really fast and really good. You can’t say a team has ridden a goalie only since until Fleury now. Murray was very good the past two years, but not other worldly. Crawford was really good in ’13 and when he straightened out in ’15, but he never carried a .940+. This happens every so often.

What we can hope for is that finally, hockey people will learn. Vegas is built on smaller, faster (and even they traded for Reaves). McPhee and Gallant saw the biggest obstacle to scoring was shot-blocking, and set their team to try and score before that could get set up. Gallant deserves praise for getting his team to skate as hard back as the do forward. But we’ve seen that before, too. Bruce Boudreau has made a career of doing that in the regular season, then acts shocked when teams match that effort in the playoffs. But Dubnyk, Andersen, or whichever goof in DC when he was there couldn’t bail him out the way Fleury has this year. This isn’t new.

Still, a league that eschews “harder to play against” for faster and better could be a better product. The Knights are fucking hard to play against and they don’t need Marchand or Wilson-esque bullshit to be so. They’re just always up your ass because they’re fast and work hard. And you can’t score on their goalie right now.

It’s an anomaly. It’s a strange one. It might never happen again. But there are lessons to be learned.

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Night Songs – Round 3 Night 7: Maybe There’s Just No Fighting It

By Sam Fels 1720 0

As I sat last night trying to figure out what I’d say about Game 3 between the Jets and Knights, it dawned on me that pretty much all of it doesn’t matter. I could sit here and talk about the ridiculous pace the Knights played that thing at last night. And I would say there’s no way that can be sustainable, but that’s kind of been their thing all season. Or I could talk about how the Jets slower d-men…which is basically all of them, kept insisting on taking more time with the puck than they were ever going to get. When the Knights are the opponents, you either gotta skate like your ass hair has been lit on fire or move the puck as soon as you get to it. It feels like the best way to play the Knights when they’re in this mood is maybe to not even pass in your own zone. Just get the puck and fire it around the boards and past their forwards and basically do what they do to you. You can also try and pick your way out, which is what the Hawks did in their prime, but that takes such a level of intricacy and precision I don’t know that any team is capable of it. Especially with the not-quite-that-fast blue line of the Jets. What I do know is that the Jets didn’t have time to contemplate Proust on every retrieval like they were attempting to take last night.

Or I thought I could write about how the Jets eventually did adjust, and slowly took over the 2nd and especially the 3rd. And maybe the Knights punched themselves out in the first half of the game, and maybe that will be a problem going forward.

And then I realized that almost none of it matters.

In a normal world, in a normal playoff game, the Jets probably score three goals in the 3rd period. Maybe six. Even when adjusted for score, the Jets had 13 scoring chances in the 3rd alone last night, which is a stupid number (according to Natural Stat Trick). But there’s Marc-Andre Fleury, and it just fails to be anything. Nothing matters, because he’s playing at Tim Thomas ’11 levels. What do you do?

Look at this shit.

There’s no logic to this. Sometimes he’s not even in good position and can just fling himself everywhere like he’s John Fucking McClane and it works. On that first highlight Scheifele should have scored twice. When he didn’t they should have just canceled the rest of the game. Maybe series.

I don’t want to claim there’s a fix, because if there is it’s on a cosmic level instead of a league level. Everything goes in for the Knights on some nights (UGH), and Fleury then does that. And then we’re forced to read a bunch of “Does Pittsburgh Regret…?” articles, even though the Penguins have/had a younger, cheaper, better goalie the past two years. You now who predicted Fleury doing this? No. One. He wouldn’t have even told you he could do this. This is Arc Of The Covenant shit.

Where this series is, the Jets should still feel pretty good. They just have to get one win in Nevada, and another effort with the last half of Game 3 probably sees them get one. I mean it normally would. But this isn’t normal.

But hey, we got another highlight of Dustin Byfuglien dragging two guys off a pile, which he assuredly isn’t doing for the attention it generates or anything, and certainly doesn’t distract cretin hockey followers from the fact that every time he was on the ice last night the Knights got an odd-man rush the other way. In just the first period, McClure texted me, “I’ve counted three times he’s been forechecking below the goal line.” When and if the Knights win this series, I assure you Byfuglien will be on the ice for the killer goal.

Which is fine, because Jacob Trouba has been even worse. And that’s the real problem for the Jets, is they don’t have a d-man who can consistently stand up to this pressure. Maurice will have to figure something out.

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Night Songs – Conference Final Weekend Wrap: So That Happened

By Sam Fels 1656 0

One in a state of shock, one game went exactly as planned. It’s the NHL on NBC!

Capitals 2-0 Lightning

I guess this is what everyone else felt last year when watching the Preds roll over the Hawks from the outside. But I think that made more sense than this. At least Game 1 of that series was close. The Lightning haven’t even been in the same zip code as the Capitals. And I can’t believe I wrote that sentence.

I suppose if there’s one thing we can point to, it’s that the Lightning’s blue line was overhyped. But it mostly didn’t matter because their forwards were so good, and there was “God Mode” within Victor Hedman to cancel it out even further. You saw in ’15. So you know it’s there. Well, the Caps don’t seem to care, and have greatly exposed Stralman, Girardi, Coburn and even McDonagh–who’s a good defensive guy but has never been a mover and that’s getting wildly demonstrated. Meanwhile Hedman has been tentative and unnoticeable, which is just really weird. The only d-man who seems to be able to survive the Caps’ forecheck is Sergachev, mostly because he’s fearless and not having to see the best the Caps have to offer. Stralman and Girardi look like they just discovered there’s a bear in their breakfast nook.

It hasn’t helped that Cooper has coached this series with both hands around his neck instead of his usual postgame belt in the shower. His team look completely shell-shocked, and they seem to be playing right into the Caps hands by either not bypassing the forecheck as the Penguins did the past two years or having his forwards help out. Then when the Caps set up three at their own line every Bolt seems content to just charge headfirst into it and lose the puck and the whole thing starts over. And then they panic, and their defense goes charging everywhere in the offensive zone and they’re giving up an odd-man rush a minute.

If there’s one team that could surrender this momentum it’s the Caps. But man they would really have to like, shit themselves to a dysentery-like level. Because it’s one thing to disrupt and it’s another to cash in, and right now at Ovechkin and Kuzentsov and Eller and Beagle, they all can’t miss. It’s been astonishing.

Jets 1-0 Knights

This was more to form, though only one game. But in Game 1, the Knights saw what was always going to be their biggest problem. A team that can play their game, is willing to, and can do it with better talent. The thing with the Knights during the season is it’s hard to find a team in February and January that’s going to want to skate back as hard to catch them going forward. It’s easier to inspire players to bust it up the ice during the season than it is to inspire them to bust it back. Think the mid-2ooos Suns. Or why Tom Thibodeau’s teams want to murder him by Valentine’s Day.

Well, inspiration isn’t a problem in the conference final. The Jets smell it. So they can get back and negate the get-it-the-fuck-up-there ways of the Knights by getting the fuck back there. How many passes did they pick off on what Knights players thought were odd-man rushes only to find a backchecking forward closing it off? That’s how the Knights get you, and if they don’t have it they’re proper fucked.

I don’t know what to make of Byfuglien. Everyone knows I’m probably the polar opposite of his fan but he was marvelous in Game 1. Then again the Knights didn’t try and get him off his game which is so easily done and it was so fast it didn’t matter that he was rarely where he needed to be defensively and he was making so much happen at the other end. Maybe you just accept the show. Anyway, if the Jets get Game 2 tonight in any sort of similar fashion as Game 1 you can start penciling them in. I don’t know what Vegas’s Plan B could possibly be.

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Watching The Party – FFUD’s Conference Final Preview: Knights vs. Jets or High Speed Dirt

By Sam Fels 1813 0

 vs. 

 

Now that we’ve officially buried the Predators, it’s time to look forward to the West Final. I feel like we’ve gotten to the point, or maybe I just have personally, where it’s time to stop fighting against the Knights. Because if nothing else, this series is going to be in 5th gear or however long it lasts. We didn’t quite get the Fury Road remake we wanted in the previous round, as the Preds could only win when they pumped the brakes on everything. The Knights aren’t capable, and don’t know, any other way than what got them here.

Goalies: That’s the strange thing about this series, is that no matter the speeds it attains, the vapor trails it leaves, or however many chances are created, it could still end up 2-1 for every game. That’s how well these two goalies are playing.

There’s really nothing to say about Marc-Andre Fleury at this point. He’s clearly gotten hold of some eye of newt or something. You can’t even say his defense helped him out, because he made over 30 saves in the first four games of the San Jose series. Granted, two of those were OT games but that’s still work. A .951 is a .951, much like a football in the groin is a football in the groin. He’s .965 at evens.

The one thing you can say is that Fleury hasn’t really seen a team of assassins in the first two rounds. The Kings plan of attack was hoping the Knights would pass out from boredom. The Sharks had two lines or so going, but without Thornton they were certainly limited. There are no such limits to the Jets, and you feel like Fleury is going to have to come up with a handful of 35-40 save performances just to keep the Knights in this.

It’s kind of weird that Connor Hellebuyck has a .940 at evens and he’s not even close to the other goalie in this series. Hellebuyck was marvelous in Game 7 after being pretty wonky in Game 6. He buckled under the pressure of the Predators at times when they were still trying to drag race with the Jets, and the Knights won’t shrink from that at any point. So he’s going to need more of his 36-save performance form from Game 7 than how he was early in the series.

Defense: You’d say this is the Jets’ biggest advantage, but much like the Penguins before them the Knights do the best they can to take their defense out of the equation. They don’t really care how many chances they give up, especially with Fleury playing like this, as long as they can turn the puck up the other way quickly. Still, that feels like death against this Jets team, who simply have more talented scorers and offensive players and I don’t care if William Karlsson shoots 76% this series. This defense is not keeping this Winnipeg hit squad from creating a ton of chances, and that seems like it’s going to be the end of it. McNabb, Engelland, and Theodore are going to smell distinctly of burnt wood by Game 3.

The Jets might have the same problems. With Byfuglien wandering all over the ice and not showing much interested in either being where he’s supposed to be or ignoring players who don’t matter, there’s going to be plenty of space for the Knights, too. Tyler Myers has some of the same issues and Ben Chiarot looks a lot like the Bears’ free safeties of this decade in trying to cover for him. Trouba and Morrison are going to get a lot of work in this series, and Maurice should be playing them the most instead of DAT BIG BUCK GUY. But he won’t, and he’ll pay at some point. Still, the Jets defense contributes more than the Knights’, and is a little more mobile.

Forwards: This is the fun part. The Knights top two lines have been excellent, but their bottom two weren’t as effective in the second round. Still, it’s packed with speed that’s going to have a lot of space to exploit.

The problem for the Knights is that the Jets have the same thing, except every line they have is better than the one Vegas has. Their top line is better, their second line is better, and so on. The Knights have seen this before, but not over seven games and not this big of a difference. If the Jets can go toe-to-toe with the Preds and beat them to a pulp in that style, they can do the same to the Knights. Like we said in the last round, the Jets only have to match or thereabouts the amount of chances their opponents get, because their talent says they’ll bury more of them. Same holds true here.

Prediction: Obviously, the Knights have something unquantifiable going on here. And if they maintain silly shooting-percentages along with Fleury being a an absurdist exhibition, they can win this. But the Knights need the unexplainable. The Jets don’t. They can skate all day with Vegas, and they have the better players to do it. Something strange definitely can happen here, but you don’t bank on that. Fleury himself probably assures this is a long series. I was tempted to say the Jets in five simply because of the disparity in scoring talent up and down the lineup, but beating Fleury four out of five times, without a return to his previous playoff form, is unlikely. So we’ll call it Jets in 6. 

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Night Songs – Round 2 Weekend 2 Wrap: The Truth Comes Out

By Sam Fels 1547 0

Found out a lot about a lot this weekend. Let’s get to it:

Winnipeg Leads Nashville 3-2

This series has basically been delicious. It confirms everything we thought about the Preds, in that they were more Pekka Rinne than they or any of their sycophants who just want to drink on Broadway again in the spring for free wanted to consider. The Preds got back into the series by trapping and basically playing 90’s Knicks basketball, and they still needed a miracle save from Rinne to make that work. Back at home and in front of a crowd too busy trying to memorize all their chants that are just variants of the word “suck,” they didn’t feel they could do that. They tried to go toe-to-toe with the Jets, and they got stomped. Sure, the shots and attempts charts will tell you this was a more even game. But an even game with the Jets isn’t an even game. They have more firepower than just about anyone in the league at forward. So if you’re getting the same amount and type of chances they are, most likely they’re going to bury more of them.

And Kyle Connor turning Treat Boy into bucket-and-mop material didn’t do my heart any worse either.

So now Laviolette has a choice. He can try and trap and stall his way back home to a Game 7, a method that works but has a very low margin for error. One bad deflection undoes all the work. And if it doesn’t work he’s going to face some tough questions about why he was fucking with his lineup all playoffs long to get guys like Scott Fucking Hartnell in the lineup but not Calle Jarnkrok or Kevin Fiala. It’s especially hilarious because next year is almost assuredly the time on Lavvy’s clock when his players start to regard him as a bellowing meat sack and tune him out. It’s happened everywhere he’s been, and it’s a miracle he’s lasted in Music City this long. A lot rides on tonight.

Knights defeat Sharks 4-2

I had suspected that the Sharks weren’t all that good, but hoped for better. Then again, I don’t know what you do when a goalie is throwing a .965 at you at evens, which is what Marc-Andre Fleury is doing. And that’s really what it comes down to. It’s not that the Knights aren’t deserving winners of this series. But if Fleury were playing at a mere mortal level, even with like a superb .930 or something, this series is headed back to the desert for a Game 7 or it’s already over the other way.

The Sharks will have some decisions to make this summer, as every key player they have is over 30 with the exception of Martin Jones. They’re considered the leaders to get Tavares, which would certainly change the complexion of the next couple of years whether Thornton stays or retires or goes because of it. If they don’t get Tavares though, you wonder how much longer they can keep coming up with decent seasons and playoff runs. Especially if  Calgary and Edmonton were ever to get their act together (don’t need to worry about the latter, thought).

As for the Knights, my suspicion, based on anything normal, is that this all comes to an end against whoever’s next. They can’t outrun the Jets for sure, and though the Preds’ might isn’t what most think they can match Vegas’s forwards and have a fleet defense that won’t be overawed by Vegas’s forecheck. They also wouldn’t insist on playing Paul Martin for a portion of it because they’ve been hit with a brick when they weren’t looking. But that assumes a normal goalie performance, and Fleury is doing anything but that. To bet against him is a fool’s errand.

Also, with Rinne and Fleury having career renaissances at 33 and 34 as they have, that gives you faith that should Corey Crawford ever be healthy he can maintain the level he was setting too.

Capitals lead Pittsburgh 3-2

Oh, Caps. Won’t you ever learn? Don’t you see where this is taking you? Haven’t you walked this road again and again? We know this road. We know exactly where it ends.

As sick as I am of Caps fans everywhere nailing themselves to a cross every four minutes, it’s about time Alex Ovechkin broke through. Sure, they’ll get railroaded by the Lightning in the next round, who are now going to be rested and having played just 10 games to get this far. But do you trust them? Do you trust Holtby to play well enough to keep the Penguins down for two games? Do you trust the Caps to get goals from anywhere else besides their top line? Do you trust Tom Wilson not to completely fuck up Game 7 when he comes back?

It could happen. These things always seems to reverse at some point. Even the Canucks got to a Final once. The Penguins just might be out of gas. Their defense might just be too creaky and the Caps might have sensed they can get behind it whenever they want. Maybe Sid doesn’t have any magic jewels left in his bag.

But which way would you wager?

Lightning Beat Bruins 4-1

We’ll save most of our thoughts for the eulogy, but the Bruins might have been the biggest mirage we’ve seen in a long time. They were one line and a goalie playing well, and because that one line was so other worldly it masked all their other problems. But when that one line couldn’t go for three a night, they got utterly stomped.

The hockey season is long enough that there’s plenty of time to outthink yourself. The Bolts were the best team before the season started, and there really was never a reason to think they were otherwise other than boredom and injuries. They have four lines and three pairings, though someone is going to expose Dan Girardi and Anton Stralman. It won’t be the Caps or Penguins though, at least not the Caps. We should be all in for a Lightning-Jets Final, not only because it would piss NBC off to no end and you’d get many hockey writer tears about not being able to go to Nashville or Vegas on the company dime, but because it would be a Final packing more firepower than any since at least 2013, probably 2010, and maybe even longer than that.

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Night Songs – Round 2 Day 7: He’s Just Not That Into You

By Sam Fels 1501 0

Bit of a comedown last night from Tuesday night’s Fury Road type action, and maybe we all needed it.

Lightning 4 – Bruins 1 (TB Diddlers lead 2-1)

Watching the Bruins more and more these playoffs, I can’t help but think I’m seeing a one-line mirage. Granted, that one line might be the best line we’ve seen in the league in quite some time, and they clearly bandage all of the numerous wounds the Bruins have elsewhere. But even though it’s only 2-1 and it felt like the Bs could get their way back into last night’s game at any moment, they’re still basically getting held at arm’s length like the younger sibling while flailing their too-short arms hilariously nowhere near the target.

Again. Bergeron’s line was mostly great, and because Chara and McAvoy mostly play behind them they came along. And even Krejci’s line was good last night. But the bottom six, because the Lightning are just deeper, are getting turned into chum pretty much every shift, and the Bruins defense behind that top pairing, which just might not be that good to begin with, look like those twisted Little Lungs ads after every shift. And seeing as how Tuukka Rask isn’t doing Marc-Andre Fleury things, the Bruins seem pretty doomed.

All of this could flip, of course. Rask could get hot or Bergeron’s line could get off the chain for a few games and then we’re back to square one. But when that line doesn’t score, whatever their possession numbers might be, and score a lot, this team is waiting for the vacant gapes of Rick Nash and David Backes to contribute. Let’s ask all of their former teams how that’s worked out for them in the past. That weird sound you hear is multiple fanbases curling up into a fetal position simultaneously.

Knights 0 – Sharks 4 (Tied 2-2)

Amazing what happens when Fleury isn’t stopping 98% of the shots he sees, no?

The Sharks womped the Knights last night, which is the first time really they’ve done so this series. While the past three games have seen them at least be able to control the Knights to an extent at evens and then make good with their power play or even at 4-on-4, which is weird because you’d think the Knights would have the advantage there, last night was the first time they were better everywhere. I’d like to believe it was because they finally sent Paul Martin to a farm upstate and inserted Joakim Ryan to give Brent Burns a minder, but that wouldn’t explain all of it. The Sharks 4th line had the best of it again, which isn’t a huge shock because at the end of the day the Knights’ 4th line is still comprised of bottom of the barrel castoffs and rejects, and no amount of chips on shoulders and “revenge on the world” rhetoric is going to change that.

If Fleury is merely good the rest off this series, Vegas will lose. If he goes back to other-worldly, they probably won’t. Sometimes it’s simple.

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Night Songs – Round 2 Opening Weekend: This Is Better

By Sam Fels 1607 0

I think we can all admit without turning in our hockey fan cards that the first round was pretty middling as far as entertainment. And that’s actually fine. When you have a few, clear, really good teams as the NHL does, the first round probably should be underwhelming. The Jets, Preds, and Lightning were always going to bludgeon whoever they saw (which the Preds eventually did). The only long series of intrigue really as the Leafs and Bruins and that was more for the comedy of what we all knew was coming. But this round shaped up to be the true must-see theater, and it really has been.

Jets-Predators goes plaid, and 1-1

It’s with a slight twitch of pain that I say this, because it’s always cool knowing your team played in the best playoff series of the post-lockout era even if it lost it, but this Jets-Preds has every chance of being as good if not eclipsing Hawks-Kings ’14. The pace last night simply was ridiculous, and both of these teams seemingly have accepted they’re going to give up chances to get their own. Last night was an example of how the Jets defense might be the first to crack, as on Arvidsson’s goal Chiarot got caught wandering and the Preds have the forward depth to make that a problem, and then for the winner a clearly still rusty Toby Enstrom got caught on a pinch and Byfuglien played the ensuing 2-on-1 like the dog that he is in his own zone. He was awful from the 3rd period on and it’s a small miracle he didn’t help create the winner for the Preds before that.

Encouragingly for the Jets though, it was the top line that basically had to do everything for Nashville as Winnipeg rolled over the rest. Not encouragingly is that Peter Laviolette was happy to let the top lines go at each other and Scheiele did not come out ahead, but also he kept throwing Byfuglien out behind them. Maybe Paul Maurice thinks his top line is enough protection for Buff and Enstrom, but it most certainly was not last night. Look for Trouba and Morrissey to be the ones getting the assignment in Winnipeg. And for this series only to get faster and more frantic, which is great for all of us.

Sharks and Knights split with 2OT as well

Clearly the Sharks weren’t ready for Vegas in Game 1 and everything that could have gone wrong did. They were hellbent on slowing the game agains the Knights in Game 2 and it mostly worked. You get in trouble with Vegas when you let them get behind you in the neutral zone or hit the line with speed with or without the puck and harass your d-men. The Sharks made sure their d-men backed up at the first sign of trouble, basically put three across their own line so even when the Knights dumped it in they couldn’t come over the hill like starving Scotsmen painted blue on the forecheck. It requires you basically bury a good percentage of your good chances because you won’t get as many as normal, but the Sharks did. Interesting to see if they can do this at home with a more expectant home crowd. Then again, Fleury can’t keep this up, can he?

Pens Caps Is Pens Caps

I’ll admit I basically thought that once the Caps coughed up a two-goal lead in the time it takes to take a shit in Game 1 at home that this series is basically over. And it may still yet prove that way. Of course, this being the NHL, we can’t talk about how it’s been really entertaining and both Ovechkin and Crosby are giving this series the battling star-power the league has been dying for because it’s overshadowed by either the league’s incompetence or stupid shit like Tom Wilson braining Brian Dumoulin.

Do I know it was a goal? No, I don’t but you can’t tell me the call was confirmed when there was no call. The refs just blew the play dead and then high-tailed it for the headphones. And I get that different angles can skew things, but we can pretty much conclude that thing was over the line. As for Wilson, he’s lost any benefit of the doubt and the league would do well to try and cap any future stupidness from him by sitting him again. But they won’t, and it’s not like it would work from a real life Venom anyway.

Bs kneecap Bolts

This was a surprise, but sometimes the team that’s sat around for a while just isn’t as sharp as the one that played two nights ago and this is what that looked like. Also, why is Brayden Point and Anton Stralman your choice to deal with the best line in hockey? If you have any hope of beating the Bruins you have to keep Pastrnak-Bergeron-Marchand on a leash and you’re not doing that with Brayden Fucking Point, whatever his season was. And Stralman might be dead, and if he isn’t he’s definitely on a lot of tubes. The Bolts might have the second best line in hockey so they should be fighting fire with fire and if Victor Hedman is a Norris candidate then he should be out there trying to keep Bergeron’s line in their own end. Ryan McDonagh is fine but he’s a second pairing guy now. Then again, if they’re going to insist on pairing Dan Girardi with Hedman maybe that’s the problem. They’re going to have to figure out something, because letting that line go off or multiple goals is a great way to assure you’re going to enjoy the Florida sunshine full-time right quick. Ha, just kidding, no one enjoys Tampa.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – FFUD’s 2nd Round Preview: Sharks vs. Knights or That’s About Enough Of This

By Sam Fels 2366 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: WE DON’T KNOW BECAUSE THE NHL IS A BUNCH OF STUPIDHEADS!

HOW THEY GOT HERE: The Sharks fustigated the Ducks in 4, and the Knights did worse to the Kings in 4

At some point, the bubble has to burst. Thanks to the Kings deciding to play their first-round series like they were relegation fodder, the Knights got to simply waltz into the second round in their first playoff asking with barely a sweat. A steam-room for half an hour would have been more taxing. The Sharks won’t be as cowardly or stupid, but then they don’t have a horseshoe and salt and a rabbit’s foot jammed in their colon like the Knight have had all season. The Sharks come with no less playoff savvy than the Kings had, they just have a much better roster. One hopes this is where the Knights dance of the seven veils finally comes to an end, because this has been a bit silly.

Goalies: Whatever we said about Sergei Bobrovsky, the opposite just might be true of Martin Jones. He threw a .970 at the Ducks in the first round, though to be fair the Ducks didn’t post much more of a threat than a veiled suggestion at him. But this follows his .935 in the first round loss last year to the Oilers, and his .923 in the Sharks’ run to the Final in ’16. Jones just might be a playoff goalie, and he’ll get more support than Jonathan Quick got.

You used to toss all sort of jokes at Marc-Andre Fleury, and then he’d let those jokes pass by his glove or through his legs into the net. Not so now. Fleury was even better than Jones in the first round with a .977, but then again he faced even less of a threat than Jones did as the Kings barely sent one forward over the red line all series while Dustin Brown looked at things with his Dustin Brown face. We can say for sure that Fleury will get tested more here, but this is the same guy who backstopped the Penguins through the first two rounds last year. Where and if the Knights break, it’s unlikely to be in net.

Defense: While it doesn’t get the pub outside of Brent Burns, this is the Sharks’ strength. It’s not as good as it could be, as for reasons he can’t even understand or explain Peter DeBoer has eschewed Joakim Ryan for the smoldering husk of Paul Martin to play with Brent Burns which is a really bad idea. The Sharks defense actually spent a lot of time on the back foot against the Ducks, though with all of the Ducks merely looking at their watch the whole series they didn’t give up a lot of good chances. You’d still take this top four, and Vlasic and Braun have a better chance at nullifying the Knights’ top line. It’s not the quickest outside of Burns, making the not-playing of Ryan even more curious, and they might have to play it cautious to keep from the Knights getting behind them a lot. Which was the Kings’ problem.

I feel like I’m done trying to explain anything that goes on with Vegas. On paper, this defense sucks. Nate Schmidt is the only one you’d want. Maybe Shea Theodore if you’ve had one too many, which is the state I assume most NHL general managers operate in. But McNabb and Engelland suck and we know this. I couldn’t pick Colin Miller or John Merrill out of a lineup. And yet because the Kings didn’t do anything other than occasionally try and spread germs to them, they were untested in the first round. You’d think they’ll get no such breaks from the far deeper Sharks, especially as Donskoi and Hertl seemed to get going in Round 1. This has to be the weak point the Sharks can exploit.

Forwards: Hanging over this series is when and if Joe Thornton will return. The real question is whether the Sharks are better without him right now. Pavelski has been a much better center than wing, and he was a pretty good wing. The Sharks play faster without Thornton, and their goal-, attempt-, and scoring chance-rates have all risen since Thornton got hurt. If the Sharks jump out to a lead in this series they can hold Thornton back even longer, though it sounds like he’s never going to be healthy. Even without him, this is a deep team. The Sharks got contributions from all four lines in their ass-stuffing of the Ducks, which has been a calling-card of the Knights. When Thornton does come back it’ll be interesting if they don’t try and simply get what they can out of him and just have him replace Eric Fehr on the fourth line. For right now, they’ve got enough.

The Knights were a little more top-heavy than the Sharks in Round 1, though given the way the Kings tried to play a Panic Room game there weren’t a lot of chances to go around. They only needed seven goals to get through. Seven goals won’t get it done here, and while the Sharks will be more open than the Kings were the Knights are going to have to get more from the likes of Eakin, Nosek, Haula, and the bottom six to get out. Because the likelihood is that Pavelski, Kane, Hertl, Donskoi are going to match whatever the Knights’ top six does.

Prediction: This one’s going to go a while, because both goalies are playing too well to see either team get out of this in four or five. Each will get at least one goalie win. And while everything seems to be breaking the Knights’ way, I trust the Sharks’ defense and bottom six more than theirs. The Sharks also probably get an emotional boost from Thornton’s return, especially as it looks like it’ll happen, in whatever form, at home in Game 3 or 4. Sharks in 6. 

Everything Else

Night Songs- Round 1 Day 7: It’s much funnier when it happens to someone else

By Adam Hess 1763 0

Last night was an exercise in the duality of these NHL playoffs. I can’t really remember the last time I felt like the NHL playoffs were somewhat resembling the NBA’s tournament, but this year kinda feels like that – there are a few series which have a clearly dominant team for whom winning seems inevitable, and then a few series that definitely could go either way. In this case, we watched Winnipeg continue their dominance of Minnesota, which has felt inevitable since puck drop of Game 1. We had Washington and Lumbus, which has been very even – because both teams suck, not because they’re both good – and went to OT for the third time in three games. Vegas and LA was kinda even but the Knights ended up completing a sweep because the NHL is a urinal.

Capitals 3 – Jackets 2 (20T) (CBJ leads 2-1)

Barry Trotz finally stopped out thinking himself and put Braden Holtby in net. I know Holtby didn’t have a stellar season, but ultimately I still think it was foolish to not start him in this series to begin with. And yeah, I don’t know how much of a difference it would’ve ultimately made given both of the first two games went to OT as well, but overall Holtby is a better netminder than Grubauer and I’m willing to bet he stops that Panarin winner from Game 1. This game was just as evenly played as the other two have been, and I think CBJ might really end up eliminating this Capitals outfit. And hey, Caps fans, at least losing to the Jackets would save you from losing to the Penguins again.

Jets 2 – Wild 0 (WIN leads 3-1)

We all would’ve been better off if the Wild had just accepted reality and let Winnipeg run over them in Game 3 as well, just accepting the defeat of a sweep. Instead they got mauled again last night – the Jets controlled nearly 60% of the shot attempts in all three periods! – and are in for another belt-over-a-raw-ass beating again in two days. I wish I could feel bad for them, but I most definitely do not. Chicago is the state of hockey, bitches.

Golden Knights 1 – Kings 0 (Knights sweep series 4-0)

The NHL is a urinal. A team made of paper mache and scrap heaps just swept the Los Angeles Kings out of the playoffs. Look, I know the Kings were hardly a force to be reckoned with this year, but neither should Vegas have been. I think there’s probably something to the idea that the underdog status and borderline disrespectful expectations for them, even as champs of the Pacific Division, is motivating them, but an expansion team with a bunch of guys who have had to add “who?” to their name in their career sweeping a team with one one of the league’s best 1C/1D combos is just outrageous. There is no way this kind of shit happens in any of the other leagues that isn’t a single entity. But, this league is a urinal.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 1 Day 3: Disband The Kings

By Sam Fels 1706 0

Clearly the highlight of the evening were the reaction shots of Bruce Boudreau as the Jets put his Wild to the sword again last night. You can tell he knows he’s utterly fucked here, and would have been even if Ryan Suter had been healthy. I wonder if that filters down to his team. We know his panic stations-like attitude in previous Game 7s always did. Anyway, let’s run it through on this drippy Saturday.

Flyers 5 – Penguins 1 (Tied 1-1)

See, a lot of people think the Brian Elliot Experience means he’s getting punctured like Boromir every outing. Not so. The Elliot Experience means that he’s going to put together just enough good games, or stretches, to make you believe in him before he becomes a turned-over turtle. So was last night. He was excellent, Matt Murray definitely wasn’t, Flyers win, and now they’re believing again. But don’t you worry. Elliot will shit a chicken either in Game 3 or Game 4, and the Penguins will assuredly win the next two, whichever it is. This is the way he wants it.

Wild 1 – Jets 4 (Jets lead 2-0)

There probably isn’t going to be a more lopsided series than this one. The Kings-Knights one has been but Jonathan Quick has kept it from getting silly. Devan Dubnyk quite simply is not capable, nor are the Kings facing the firepower the Wild are. It sounds weird to gush about just how loaded the Jets are, but there was their fourth line, a dominant fourth line, getting their third and icing goal last night. There’s nowhere for the Wild to turn. And the first two Jets goals were a result of a d-man simply going cowboy. That’s Dustin Byfuglien’s thing of course, it’s not as much Tyler Myers’s. But that’s what it takes at this time of year, because it’s the only way you’re going to outnumber the defensive team and get coverage to break down. This looks a lot like the Wild’s 2013 series against the Hawks, where they hung around in Game 1 but didn’t have another gear to find in Game 2 when the superior team could relax a bit. Sure, they might spasm a home win, but they’re toast.

Kings 1 – Knights 2 OT (Knights lead 2-0)

Everyone needs this series to end now. The Kings might point to the absence (deserved, by the way) of Drew Doughty as the reason they basically went Mourinho on this one, but it’s no different than what they did in Game 1 when they had the gap-toothed scumbag in the lineup. They’re terrified of the Knights’ speed, because their blue line is slow and basically bad, so they’re going to do everything to keep it under wraps. The result has been two games that have set the sport back 20 years, and basically have us longing for the NBA Playoffs today. Compare Kopitar and the Kings this year to Toews and the Hawks all you want, but if the Hawks put on this kind of faire you wouldn’t watch and we’d resort to doing ketamine or something. Maybe Kings fans constantly complain about the individual awards their players don’t win simply so they can feel anything after watching this team all season. The lyrics to “Comfortably Numb” were written about watching a full season of this.