Everything Else

Fallacies, Vegas, And Whatever Else In This Goofy Final

By Sam Fels 2072 0

Not that I normally like to waste any more space on Tom Wilson than I have to, but here we are. It’s the NHL, so even after a frantic and exciting, if not elegant. opener to a very intriguing Final one of the main talking points remain the #43 Dipshit Train.

Still, I have to love the pure illustration of where hockey is in the sporting consciousness and the major tenets of the sport getting torn to shreds. Let’s review.

It’s hard to argue that Wilson didn’t at least commit an interference penalty, which he eventually got when one of the linesmen went to the two refs and said, “I don’t know if you’re blind, clueless, a total coward or all three, but you have to do something here.” Sadly, as all NHL refs do at this point in the season, they looked for any way to not grant a power play, and called the Knights for investigation of what happened to their brained teammate. In reality, Wilson was out to injure Marchessault and I’m guessing the only reason he didn’t hit him in the head is because he simply missed. Wilson should be suspended, probably for the rest of the series, but because the NHL is afraid of yelling white men (and even worse if they’re associated with Vancouver), he isn’t.

And it’s in that yelling that I find so funny. Contrast it with the current controversy in baseball. Whenever we get a hit like this in hockey, there are more than a few and far too many who will shout something like, “Well he should have had his head up!” or “You can’t admire your pass in this league!” or “He turns at the last minute!” (this last one is sometimes true and muddies up the water a bit, which provides far too much shelter for those who still type with one finger at a time). And yet they maintain a prominent position in hockey. Now take Anthony Rizzo’s slide/dragon screw to Elias Diaz. Yesterday we had Joe Maddon go full-on belch about how Elias Diaz shouldn’t play the position if that’s how he’s going to end up.

And everyone thinks Maddon is idiotic for saying such a thing. We don’t get into blaming the victim in every other sport. When someone gets clobbered in the NFL, rarely do you hear someone say, “Well he shouldn’t have been running a post!” And if someone does they probably worked for the Bears until this offseason. No one claims an NBA player shouldn’t leave his feet for a shot or rebound if he doesn’t want to land on someone’s strategically placed foot when coming back down. Yet in hockey, somehow there’s always a case to be made against the injured.

Yes, hockey is a faster game and the decisions come much quicker. These are also players who have done nothing else for most of their  lives, including school, and have been trained to make decisions and plays at that speed. You and I can’t, but the reason they’re in the league is that they can. The one second Wilson had is equivalent to the two or three any free safety would have sizing up a receiver. And yet every time he does this, enough people including the league’s disciplinary committee, can throw enough shade at the one being hit to weasel out of a hard decision.

Secondly, and Ryan Lambert already got to this, is the fallacy of having a goon on your team prevents this. In the most deluded minds of the hockey world, Ryan Reaves’s presence deters this. Except he wasn’t on the ice. And when he was, Wilson wasn’t. And the knowledge that they could be on the ice together didn’t stop Wilson. Maybe Reaves fancies himself a real scorer now with two goals in two games, though he had to commit a penalty to get one that a once-again sack-less ref didn’t whistle.

“Oh sure”, some will say, “but Game 1 of the Final is too important of a time to do that stuff.” Which only makes the other side’s argument. If it’s needless and pointless at the most important times, then it’s pointless and needless at all the other times, too. And it makes any player like Wilson only feel more free to wreak such havoc in a game in November because what does a penalty or fight matter then?

I’m all for all of these fig leaves falling to the wayside. It’s a slow process, though.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Final Game 1: The Reactors Won’t Take It…Just FYI

By Sam Fels 2157 0

So that’s what Game 1 in 2010 looked like to everyone else.

It’s been a while since we’ve had two teams that haven’t been anywhere close to this in the Final, or at least hadn’t been in recent history. Basically 2012, and neither the Kings or Devils played a system that could get loose at times. The Penguins had been there the past two years and still had players who had been there seven years before, and the four before that were populated by the Kings or Hawks. So it’s not a huge shock that nerves might have gotten the better of both sides, at least to open Game 1.

At the top, before going any further, let me say that and I and most every other hockey fan would take last night’s disjointed, frantic, kindergarten recess of a hockey game as entertainment every damn time over whatever shlock a trapping or conservative or outright scared team like the Kings, or one coached by Mike Babcock would offer. It was fun, if not particularly graceful, and if that’s what the series ends up being, so be it.

But for all of the gushing, and it was exciting, it wasn’t particularly good. Or particularly well-executed, let’s say. The Knights force such a pace, and we saw this in last year’s Final too, that it’s hard for either team to play what you’d call a “smooth” game. It’s very hard for teams to complete passes, and it’s very hard for their to not be turnovers and defensive breakdowns, such is the rate that everything is happening. And it’s open and there are chances, but they’re not built out of skill or brilliance so much as just cracks forming, Which is fine, it’s just not art. Only Carlson’s goal that tied the game at 3 last night would you say was well-worked, along with Nosek’s winner. But the latter had Devante Smith-Pelley make a mistake to lead to it (and the make sure everyone in the arena and at home knew how upset he was with himself. Oh my god so upset. Look at how upset he is everyone! Can’t you see how upset he is?! ARGH SO UPSET!). And Carlson’s goal was the result of Marc-Andre Fleury looking like the drunk trying to negotiate his keys at 4am. Still, better than most alternatives.

The Knights don’t really care if their passing isn’t crisp, as they don’t really attempt that many. They chip and flip pucks into the neutral zone and only worry about passes when they’re on the rush and the offensive zone. I don’t know if the Caps can play like this and win four of the next six, but we’ll find out. They’ll feel they missed a real opportunity because Fleury wasn’t all that good and you probably have to win the “Fleury Isn’t Fleury” game this spring. Then again, MAF was always do for some kind of regression, be it now or October.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the NHL if it didn’t have its head in its ass at crucial points. And when you have Ryan Reaves and Tom Wilson out there, your game’s head is going to be even more firmly lodged in its colon. I have always fucking hated the policy refs have in the playoffs of swallowing the whistle and “letting the players decide.” All that is is abdicating responsibility and sinking into spinlessness for those who are supposed to be officiating the game. Ryan Reaves is a dolt, and he essentially “cheated” to score the equalizing goal in the 3rd. The players have decided. A superior player in Carlson has good position on him and Reaves illegally moved him. The players have “decided” that should be a penalty. The refs have “decided” to simply give Vegas a crucial goal. I’ll forgive a missed call here and there in the neutral zone where a lot more has to happen before it results in a change on the scoreboard. This led directly to a goal, and a big one. That’s not the players deciding. That’s the refs deciding by losing any gumption to do their jobs.

As for Wilson, in a league that made sense and wasn’t afraid of yelling old white men (and it’s not the only one, as you can recall the Yuri Gurriel fiasco from the last World Series), Tom Wilson would be thrown out for the rest of the Final. This is a repeat offense. It was an attempt to injure, and calling it “finishing a check” is the height of idiocy. There was nothing to be gained from clobbering Marchessault three seconds after he had the puck, other than to knock him out of the game. And it was from the blind-side, so it’s not like he was “pressuring” Marchessault.

Wilson quite simply is a menace, he’s a hazard to his fellow professionals and tossing him for the rest of the most important series the sport has to offer might finally be the lesson that gets through his and any other’s leaden skull. Just fucking chuck him. The league will be better off without him.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – Stanley Cup Final Preview

By Sam Fels 2034 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Tonight, Game 2 Wednesday, Game 3 Saturday, Game 4 Monday

When it’s been 90 degrees for a few days you’re probably not thinking about hockey. You’re even less likely to be thinking about hockey between these two teams. This was not the Final predicted, and in the NHL’s supreme marketing strategy it’s going to put it’s showpiece curtain-raiser up the night after LeBron had THAT Game 7 and Game 7 between the two best teams in that league tonight. Good thinking. Anyway, this series has a chance to be good, and it also has a chance to be bad, because predicting anything with these two the past two rounds has been folly. Let’s get through it and then get about our holiday.

Goalies: He’ll be the least talked about goalie in this series, but Braden Holtby certainly has nothing to apologize for. He’s carrying a .928 throughout the playoffs since he came in on his white horse against the Jackets. While the Caps certainly played it back at times against Pittsburgh especially and the Lightning at times, he didn’t give the Bolts much at even-strength at all. Other than last year’s minor slip against the Penguins, Holtby has been a playoff stud for pretty much his whole career. Sure, it’s his first trip here, but it was his first trip to the thrid round and that didn’t seem to phase him much.

Then again, it might not matter. Nothing the Caps do might matter if Marc-Andre Fleury is going to continue to look like something from North Of The Wall in net. The numbers at this point are stupid, and while a five-game win looks like a pounding, in point of fact the only reason the Knights got out of that series was Fleury and the top line. Fleury isn’t being shielded in any form like Holtby has, and it hasn’t mattered. Ok, sure, Fleury will be seeing an inspired Ovechkin, but he just turned away the Jets who have at least three lines of scoring. If Fleury keeps this up, you really don’t have to dig much farther than that. If Holtby continues his form, you might see a lot of 2-1s in this series.

Defense: On paper, this is a pretty big advantage for the Caps. And they’ve seen what the Knights are modeled after in the Penguins and found a method for keeping them bottled, which was keep them in the neutral zone. The top four has more mobility than any of the teams Vegas has seen so far, and more discipline to go with it. Sure, Brooks Orpik is going to need an oxygen tank on the bench, but he’s been well-spotted and it hasn’t cost the Caps much and it’s unlikely to now. Carlson and Orlov are a threat to help get play the other way when the Knights get stretched as well. The stage might jar them, the script won’t.

I’ve written it four times but they got here with this blue line so I guess I have to stop. Still, I’d only want Nate Schmidt on my team but again, the Caps don’t have the firepower the Jets do and they just beat them. That said, the Jets carried a lot of that series and even though the Knights do their best to take their defensemen out of the equation by just asking them to get the puck out, the Caps won’t be as caught off-guard by it. The Caps do have enough speed to expose McNabb and Engelland and whatever other goofus is back there. But then so did Winnipeg. It doesn’t have to make sense because it’s hockey. That’s what “Hockey Is For Everyone” actually means, that every player will get his day because the sport is basically random.

Forwards: I’m sure if Ovechkin doesn’t get a goal in every game the stories will be about how he froze in his first Final, but he and his line have been excellent. Fleury kept Scheifele and Wheeler on a leash in the last round, but one thinks if Ovie sees some of the same chances He might score a couple more. Backstrom and Oshie on the second line and Eller on the third actually give the Caps slightly more depth, based on what’s been going on lately. But with the way Fleury is going, if Kuznetsov and Ovie don’t score and probably score a fair amount, they’re going to be up against it. And sadly, if this series is going to get national attention away from the Warriors third title in four years, it’ll probably be because Tom Wilson did something assholic.

While the going story about the Knights is how they’re “All For One” and all that, really they’ve been the top line and grunts for two rounds now. Marchessault, Reilly, and Karlsson have kicked everyone’s skull to dust to the tune of a near 60% attempts-share, and everyone else has kind of been backing up. Sure, Tuch, Haula, and Neal have chipped in goals here and there, but the process has been in efficient. Sure, the fourth line has been good as well, but the Caps have one as well and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Ryan Reaves is going to be a difference maker in this series without renouncing everything I am as a human being. If the Knights’ main trio doesn’t remain dominant, Fleury might not even save them. The Caps top pairing has more mobility and smarts than they’ve seen in the playoffs, as Trouba and Byfuglein (in his own end) were both awful in the last round. Chances are Niskanen and Orlov won’t be, and Carlson and Kempny aren’t likely to be either.

Prediction: You’d feel pretty stupid going against Fleury now. Continuing his .947 means they win, plain and simple. Holtby has been really good too, and the Caps have kept pulling rabbits out of their hats. The Lightning were a better team than the Knights. The Penguins certainly had more pedigree. Feels like this one goes the route but again….947. Knights in 7. 

Everything Else

Bury My Heart At Michal Kempny

By Sam Fels 2630 0

It’s something of a spring tradition, at least it is when your team doesn’t go anywhere or misses the dance altogether. There’s always a player or two or six who make it to the Final and some of those even win it (funny how that works). And you sit there and curse the brainpower of your local/favorite organization, and are convinced if only they saw the world they way you saw it, there’d be a never-ending parade. Often, this involves a player you didn’t even like when they sported the colors you prefer, and what you often do is lament that your coaching staff doesn’t know how to get the best or even good out of said player.

The case of Michal Kempny is a little more tasty than that.

Most players don’t get a 180 from one Edward Olczyk. And yet that’s what we had last night, as Eddie lauded Kempny’s performance in Game 7 and throughout the playoffs, and remarked he was more comfortable in Washington because he knew “one mistake wouldn’t mean getting benched.” That certainly wasn’t the theme in the booth when Kempny was here, and Eddie wasn’t alone as pretty much everyone covering the Hawks leapt to point out his foibles when the coach was basically throwing him under the bus. And the mistakes weren’t always there.

There is more to unpack here than the untrained eye might guess. And we’ll get to all of it. But let’s not bury the lede.

Michal Kempny’s resurgence, or I guess simply “surgence,” with the Capitals would raise the curtain or lid on what was and might still be a dysfunctional system between the Hawks front office and behind their bench. While we try and guess or claim we know what goes on, it’s probably safe to conclude the Hawks always try and reach a consensus. They have many voices in there, Bowman and Quenneville are the two biggest, but MacIassac and Maciver get heard as well (Irish much?), as well as Kelley, the elder Bowman (even if he’s what they’re moving Sue over at the Field to display), Stewart, Hallin, et al.

Still, Kempny was a player that Bowman clearly wanted, given that he signed him twice, and their European scouting recommended. As as we’ve said in previous posts, the Hawks’ European scouting is probably the strongest of the three areas (pro and amateur the others). They had clear plans for Kempny.

And yet he could never win any affection, or barely attention, from Quenneville. We rarely saw him in anything more than a third-pairing role, even though this was a blue line that’s been screaming for mobility for two seasons. He even played with a snarl in his own end that Q supposedly loves. Kempny only played more than 18 minutes with the Hawks five times this season, and he exceeded that six times with the Caps in just a quarter of the season, basically. In these playoffs he’s exceeded 20 minutes five times, with only one of those being an overtime game. It is clear that Barry Trotz is not a moron, so what does he see that Q couldn’t.. or more to the point, wouldn’t?

We had written at many points last year how Kempny’s pairing with Seabrook, despite all logic, actually worked. The dude carried a 58% share with Michal Rozsvial for fuck’s sake! He clearly had use.

And yet he was another player that the front office, whoever were his fans and whoever weren’t, had to toss overboard because they knew simply the coach would never give him a chance. And because of that, they had to know he wouldn’t re-sign here and had to cash in whatever they could. Most players the Hawks have lost over the years were due to cap considerations, but their coach’s use and view of them always played a part. And for the most part, the Hawks have gotten it right. Kempny now, Teuvo this season are generally the exception of who’s gone on to be successful. And we’ve written this article before.

It’s the sideswipe from Olczyk that makes this more interesting, however. It’s not something we’ve ever heard, and there’s been no bigger water-carrier for the organization and how it sees its players than those in the booth. From protecting Marcus Kruger in his rookie year to the over-the-top criticisms of Teuvo to the shielding of Seabrook this year, to his one-man band that basically handed Duncan Keith his second Norris with the Leddy-bashing thrown in, this list could go on. Where Eddie was getting his info is up for endless debate, but clearly this one didn’t come from the coach. Does Eddie perceive a less secure Q, one that he doesn’t have to cozy up to quite as much now? Does he just disagree with his methods more than he did?

If I can put my tin foil hat on–the sun is out after all–I’m curious what Eddie is getting at. Sometimes I wonder if Eddie hasn’t looked at Q’s job with envy, and wouldn’t mind positioning himself in line should it finally become open. But that seems far-fetched, though he’s stated his desire to try coaching again. Perhaps he just became frustrated, like a lot of us, at the handling of the lineup on a nightly basis and couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe he’s just like a lot of fans who want to criticize after a season gone wrong, even if it involves players he himself criticized when they were hear and now the winds have shifted. I don’t really know.

What we can do is be wary of how things are going to go from here. Because the Hawks aren’t going to get older, and they’ve said as much, as far as how they want to develop the team under the aging core. Sure, they may make a splash or two in free agency this summer, but the fortunes of this team are still greatly dependent on Schmaltz, Top Cat, Sikura, Ejdsell, Duclair, Hinostroza, Saad, Murphy, or at least whoever among them sticks, to go along with other kids through the system and signed out of Europe (Ian Mitchell and Jokiharju would be the two names at the top of that list). And at the very least, Eddie is pointing at a disconnect in how the front office and scouting wants players developed, and how they’re actually getting used and developed.

Everything Else

Night Songs – There Isn’t A Record Of Anything Until There Is

By Sam Fels 2088 0

It’s probably harder to compare to other eras, but it feels like across all sports we’ve seen the breaking down of a lot of “truths” the past 15 years or so. “Truths” in that teams that would never win or couldn’t get past a certain point have done so. I suppose it starts with the Red Sox in 2004. Then the White Sox…wait, that never happened. Sorry. But then the Colts, who it was thought would never break through (PUKE). Phillies. Saints. Hawks. LeBron. Giants. Bruins. Kings. Seahawks, though they didn’t really have the tradition. Royals. Cleveland in any way. The small matter of a plucky baseball team on the Northside. Eagles.

Not that that list is completely correct. The Royals had won somewhat close to that before, but you get it. And now the Capitals are going to play for the Cup. It’s not a total, out-in-the-wilderness story, because if you really rack your memory files you may recall that the Caps were in the Final in ’98. You don’t remember anything about that series, because it lasted just two games and then afterwards the Caps became the first team to surrender, such was their outsized deficit in every category to Scum. I think Peter Bondra was on that team? I know it didn’t matter, and the Caps basically were stand-ins and and extras for the rest of the league until Alex Ovechkin showed up. The only other memory I, and probably every other hockey fan my age, have of the Caps before Ovie was Dale Hunter poleaxing Pierre Turgeon ten seconds after Turgeon scored to essentially send the Caps out of the playoffs in 1993.

But since Ovie debuted, and ever since he basically became the game’s greatest scorer–and that’s what he is, given the environment and style of the game today–the questions have followed of when he will win a Cup. The skepticism started before he’d ever played a game, given his nationality and given the leanings of hockey media. They only got louder when it took Sidney Crosby, with whom he has been and will be forever linked through no doing of his own other than playing in the same conference, only took three seasons to get to a Final and four to win it. Being that he wasn’t born on these shores, and being that most of hockey media has never had the patience to mask its xenophobia with much more than a Kleenex,  the questions and commentary quickly gained a sharp edge.

And Ovechkin and the Caps kept running into the same wall. Well, two walls. Either it was the second round or it was the Rangers. The latter doesn’t make any sense, because the Rangers have never been remarkable in any way other than their goalie. The former did, because it was usually Crosby waiting. But Crosby had Malkin. And Crosby had a goalie playing out of his mind, be it Fleury or Murray. Ovie had Backstrom, but something always went wrong, and it was never Ovie. Oh sure, he took the blame. And he never shied from it, because that’s what you do when you’re the face of a team for over a decade. You could tell it hurt him. You could tell he cared, perhaps too much, which frustrated the amassed writers as it robbed them of a favorite cudgel that they used to beat players from the other side of the Atlantic. How could our beloved trophy mean as much to “dem ferners?!” But it was obvious it did to Ovie. So they had to find other things. So did his coaches and team. He didn’t backcheck. He only cared about scoring. He didn’t work hard enough. Bruce Boudreau, Dale Hunter and Adam Oates tried to cover their own incompetence by throwing Ovechkin under the bus, and given they were “good hockey men” it must be true, right? Perhaps Trotz’s greatest move upon arriving was just letting Ovechkin be Ovechkin and not prepare him as a human shield when things went wrong. Strange how Trotz and Ovie are now where those three coaches have never and will never be, mostly because Hunter really likes yelling at children.

After the last two years, when the Caps were probably the best team in the league and absolutely no one thought they would beat the Penguins and then promptly didn’t, you’d be forgiven for thinking it would never happen. They had their best bullets, they missed, and you know the lesson when you come at the king.

You could write all those things about Barry Trotz as well, who is also here for the first time. He’d never been this far either, and was discarded from a team that thought he couldn’t ever get them there. While it hasn’t always been the most pleasing on the eye, Trotz has coached the hell out of this team. They’re not as good as the Lightning. They might not be as good as the Penguins, whatever the standings might have said. Maybe they are. And they’ve roundly beaten both at times. Sure, maybe they got bounces in Game 7, but they earned their spot there by beating the shit out of the Bolts in Games 1, 2, and 6. They also did so in Game 4, and didn’t get the luck. The Caps have trapped at times. They’ve attacked weak points furiously at others. They’ve done everything, and Trotz has gotten this team to buy into whatever he’s asked that night. This is his masterpiece.

And here they are. They’ve broken through, with one more step to go. Should they get four more wins, there won’t be too many teams that will remain “cursed,” as bullshit as that term is. Ill-starred maybe. The Canucks for sure, who have lost two Game 7s in the Final without ever winning. I guess the Leafs, their fans do talk about it on occasion. The Blues, though there’s nothing epic so much has comedic about their history. But the Sharks haven’t been around long enough. Neither have the Panthers. Or the Jackets. No one cares about the Senators enough, and same thing. The Flyers would like to tell you it’s them, but it isn’t really.

The list is dwindling. And that’s the thing about sports. As Barry Petcheskey pointed out on Deadspin today, “the story is always being written.” Whatever narrative is current among your team, it’s not forever. Even if it takes 108 years, in some cases. The Caps were that team. Now they may not be. Some times hockey just bends that way. Sometimes sports bends that way. 1000 monkeys and 1000 typewriters and such.

Go get it, Alex. You’ve more than earned it.

Everything Else

Night Songs – You’re Only Going To Get More Caps

By Sam Fels 1689 0

It was quite the viewing to have the Capitals on one screen last night and the Cleveland Cavaliers on another last night. Both played with a unique desperation and frenzy against teams that not only didn’t match it, they didn’t seem very interested in doing so either. As Ryan Callahan said, “They played like they had to win, we played like we had another chance.” You could put that quote on any Celtic and it would work as well.

The Caps were simply everywhere last night, in the kind of effort I’m not sure you can manage for more than a game or two. But the thing is, they don’t. They have to do it for one more…and then maybe like five or six more against Vegas. But they probably won’t come up against such a sloppy opponent again.

As furied as the Caps were skating in both directions, the Lighting were simply awful. They couldn’t complete two consecutive passes. As the Caps sank deeper and deeper, the Lightning kept trying to make plays at the offensive blue line, and the three times they ran into each other there is a pretty good symbol of how all that went. Victor Hedman went back into witness protection, they didn’t score on their power plays, and that seems to be the impetus for this Lightning team.

Still, I don’t know where this leads us for a Game 7. The Lightning are still the better team, and yet they’ve infrequently been intent on proving that this series. They were clubbed in the first two games, and then “did enough” in Games 3 and 5 while having Vasilevskiy bail them out in Game 4. At some point you’d think they wouldn’t be so flummoxed by Trotz’s defensive ways, and yet here we are.

Still, this is where the Bolts have been before. They beat the Rangers in a Game 7 at this stage in ’15. They lost to the Penguins in ’16 in the same situation. As strange as it sounds, the Bolts really have been part of the league’s aristocracy for a while now. Meanwhile, it feels like the Caps just set themselves up for a greater heartbreak. Unless you really believe these Caps, THE CAPS, are going to close out three straight series on the road. Just doesn’t seem to be their way. What does is finally breaking through to get just close enough to realize they’re just not quite good enough this time around, when their past two teams most certainly were (yes, those Caps teams would have gone on to win the whole thing if it wasn’t for Pittsburgh, I’m fairly sure).

There’s another thing I wanted to get to, a bugaboo of mine for years. These were the postgame comments of Brooks Orpik. The playing surface across the league have been something we’ve been calling attention to for a while. The one here in the United Center was routinely voted among the worst in the league, which didn’t make a lot of sense for a team that was on the vanguard of playing fast and skilled.

Obviously, there are a lot of challenges, given that almost all of these buildings are holding multiple events, not just sharing with a basketball team. It’s May, and especially on the East Coast humidity is going to be a problem. All understandable.

But it affects the quality of the game. The Lightning weren’t good, but they weren’t helped by a puck bouncing all over the place. Trotz and the Caps are right to use that and sag back, because it’s near impossible to pass your way through that when the ice is descending into slurpee. For a league that should be striving to be as pleasing to the eye as possible with passing and skating everywhere instead of guys just battling in the neutral zone like it’s No Man’s Land, this should be something they talk about.

But it isn’t, because whatever fixes are needed to keep all playing surfaces as clean as possible would cost money. So I’ll just shout at the rain some more.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Conference Final Weekend Wrap: So That Happened

By Sam Fels 1685 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.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – FFUD’s Conference Final Previews: Capitals vs. Lightning or You Come All This Way For Nothin’

By Sam Fels 1738 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Friday, Game 2 Sunday, Game 3 Tuesday, Game 4 Thursday

They’ve broken through. After more than a decade in the Ovechkin Era, and repeated attempts to run head-first (sometimes literally) through the forcefield between the second round and the conference final, the Caps finally found the weak point and got into the back half of the journey toward the Cup. Good for them, Ovie certainly deserves it. Seems a shame it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a very long stay, because they’re going to find an unholy machine waiting for them.

Goalies: Before this whole thing started, we said it might be better for Braden Holtby, who’s not ever really been a playoff dog except for last season, to come in and be the white knight to bail out Barry Trotz and the Caps after trying Phillip Grubauer in the first two games against the Jackets. That didn’t work, this did work, and now Holtby is playing awfully well. He only gave up 13 goals in the six games against the Pens, but then again he wasn’t asked to do all that much. The Caps only gave up more than 25 shots twice in six games, and that’s just about the best they can do. Holtby isn’t going to have a full-out meltdown with that kind of workload, but sadly that workload is probably going to get a whole lot heavier in this round.

You could say Vasilevskiy has had even less to do. He only had to face one player in the first round in Taylor Hall. He only had to face one line in the second round against the Bruins, and after Game 1 he gave up only seven goals in their four wins. He only saw over 30 shots once in those four wins, but the Lightning can probably hold the Caps to the same kind of output which certainly isn’t the case vice versa. Neither Holtby or Vasilevskiy have been here before so we have no idea how they’ll react. When this is all over, I doubt it’ll be because of either goalie primarily.

Defense: The Caps defense in the second round was basically what it was all season. John Carlson scores a ton on the power play, some at evens, and then they kind of turtle well enough to keep the other side from tearing the walls down. Orlov and Niskanen have been more than just useful, and basically nullified Crosby and Guentzel when the last series got decided. They’ll get the Stamkos and Kucherov assignment you’d think as often as possible, and based on how the last series ended the Caps are probably going to send their stall out to help them as much as possible with a trapping style that’s going to make you really understand Ibsen and welcome the void into your life.

I’m still not totally convinced by the Lightning’s defense, but because it hasn’t been seriously tested, and the Caps are likely to play this very conservatively, I don’t know that I have to be. Hedman might be enough, and will see plenty of Ovechkin with McDonagh you would think. Or if they wanted to play a funny joke they could throw McDonagh and Girardi at Ovie’s line just like the Rangers did and it always seemed to work even though everything tells you it shouldn’t. Also, Dan Girardi sucks. Anton Stralman isn’t much better these days as he gets older, but he’s enough. What the Bolts do have that the Caps don’t is a young, third-pairing bum-slayer in Mikhail Sergachev who has run wild most of these playoffs. That is when he’s played which really has been barely at all. Cooper needs to let this guy off the hook because the Caps will not have an answer and they’re probably going to need all the neutral zone busters they can find as the Caps dig trenches and set up barbed wire there.

Forwards: Even if the Caps were fully healthy, this is where the Lightning have the biggest advantage. And Backstrom and Burakovsky are not healthy. If they could not make the bell for an elimination game against the Penguins, only Washington’s Sisyphusian boulder they finally got up the hill, you have to imagine they’re really hurt. They’ll suit up at some point in this series, though Backstrom’s status for Game 1 is up in the air. Without him, this team is really just one line, and we saw what the Bolts did to a one-line team the last round. Lars Eller is great and all but he’s not enough. Especially when Tom Wilson is assuredly going to give away a couple dumbass power plays to the Lightning by trying to eat someone’s face in a bid to one-up Marchand or something.

We derided Swingin’ Jon Cooper’s choice to send Brayden Point and Palat and Johnson out against Boston’s main threat after Game 1. They spent the rest of the series giving that line a swirly. That goes with Stamkos and Kucherov and Miller (who’s been great) on the top line. Killorn and Gourde are a very decent third line. Basically, the Lightning are two to three times deeper than the Caps, and there just isn’t much they can do about it.

Prediction: The Caps have to gum this up as much as possible. They cannot run with the Lightning in any fashion. They don’t have the depth at forward. They’ll get outscored. So they’ll have to make everything 2-1 and hope Holtby goes nuclear or Vasilevskiy goes blind. They’re counting on Ovechkin or Oshie getting really hot, but if neither do they just don’t have the goals. The Lightning have the guns and they have the numbers. Crash before my eyes…Lightning in 5. 

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 2 Day 12: All Good Things…

By Sam Fels 1576 0

Let’s jump right into it:

Caps 2 – Pens 1  OT (Caps win….wait, what?)

There’s a lot to take out of last night’s seismic shift. I think the one that sticks with me most is that since the Islanders won four in a row, no team that’s going for its third straight Cup has gotten past the second round. Now, that’s a touch of a misnomer. If Steve Smith hadn’t fired the puck into his own net in ’86 the Oilers almost certainly win five straight Cups, and the Flames back then were actually an all-time great team that just kept running up against probably the best team of all-time. When they went for a three-peat the second time, they had the small obstacle of TRADING WAYNE FUCKING GRETZKY before that season started. Speaking of which, what would Twitter have been like then if the Kings traded Gretzky and then lost to him in the playoffs, and then won a Cup without him the next year? You think the treatment of LeBron is bad?

BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED.

What I’m saying is the Penguins looked a spent force last night. The will was there but the legs weren’t. Because of Burakovsky’s and Backstrom’s absence, the Caps had no choice but to gum this one up, which they did very well. The Penguins the past three seasons have always been a high-wire act, and it’s something of a miracle they’ve gotten as far as they have. Much like the Jets–there’s going to be a continuing theme here–this is not a team really built to bust traps. You’d think they would be with Letang and Schultz but both seem to be better joining a rush than starting one. The Penguins have lived by pushing and pushing and if their d-men get caught so what? Murray will bail them out. He couldn’t any more last night or really this series, and now they’re going home early for the first time since the Hawks last won, 103 years ago.

At some point, Malkin (who clearly is not healthy) and Crosby run out of miracles. It’s also official now that Olli Maatta sucks. I highly doubt the Pens won’t be contenders next year, but it also feels like things need to go right for them a lot. Then again, that’s true of any team.

I got a huge kick out of Pierre McGuire coming to their defense with the players they’ve lost from last year: Trevor Daley, Ron Hainsey, Fleury, Nick Bonino, Ian Cole. The three d-men aren’t any damn good, the goalie wouldn’t be playing for them anyway, and I guess Bonino is fine but was replaced by Derick Brassard is basically the same thing.

For the Caps, it’s impossible to prove if everyone kind of ignoring them this year helped or didn’t matter, but they’ll take it. You can’t help but be happy for Ovechkin, who’s had to eat a lot of shit because his coaches were fucking morons or his goalies weren’t up to it or they just ran up against a better team. Sure, this won’t matter all that much when they’re turned into processed waste by the Lightning, but at least he’ll get a glimpse.

Predators 4 – Jets 0 (Tied 3-3)

We all would have asked for a Game 7, but I’m not exactly encouraged that the Caps and Preds got to where they are today by having to turn the game back to 1997. The Preds did exactly what they did in Game 4, admit they can’t run with the Jets and hence trap the shit out of them and wait for their opportunities. And once again, because Paul Maurice hasn’t quite left his moron tendencies behind, has Dustin “Have You Tried The Nacho Fries?” Byfuglien skating five more minutes than any of his other d-men. Buff is not a trap-buster, he’s too stupid and lazy. He’s going to provide the mistakes the Preds can capitalize on, which they did. Trouba, who admittedly didn’t cover himself in glory on Forsberg’s ludicrous second goal, barely played more than Tyler Myers, who’s doing a damn fine Byfuglien impression himself. When the Preds put this on the Winnipeg defense instead of their forwards, they’re a lot better off.

Again, just like Game 5, the question becomes do the Preds have the gumption to do this at home and bore the shit out of their fans? They won’t care as long as they win, but they didn’t in Game 5 and they got smoked. And again, the margins are small when you do this. They’ve gotten away with it twice but a third might be asking too much. What happens if the Jets can manage to score first? What if all the dumb penalties the Preds are taking, and there’s a lot of them, finally puts them behind when they just want to trap?

They don’t really have a choice. Giving any space to the Jets is pretty much death. We’ll see if Maurice has the light hit him and figures out a way for his team to stop panicking with the puck when faced with three guys back. The Jets are big and fast and there’s really no reason they can’t find something if they just have to keep putting pucks behind the Preds’ defense and win it back. They seemed reluctant to do so last night, instead just turning it over at the blue line repeatedly.

It should be a fascinating Game 7. I don’t know that it’ll be entertaining.

Everything Else

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

By Sam Fels 1572 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.