2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs - Conference Quarterfinals

Once again, I'll offer predictions for the Stanley Cup playoffs, the finest professional sports postseason there is. The usual caveat -- other than the Flyers, my fountain of knowledge of teams is limited at best, so if you're looking for "expert" analysis you won't find much here. And as I'm writing this two or three of the series-opening games have already started, but I only know one partial score and it's not affecting my pick for that series. I've been watching the Phillies anyway, since the Flyers don't begin until tomorrow night.

By the way, did you know that there are three teams based in California in the playoffs, but only two from our hockey-crazed neighbors to the north? Woe, Canada...

EASTERN CONFERENCE

(1) Washington Capitals vs. (8) New York Rangers - The Rangers made a late run, then kind of backed into the playoffs at the end. Capitals in 5.
(2) Philadelphia Flyers vs. (7) Buffalo Sabres - see below. Yes, I'm being a tease again.
(3) Boston Bruins vs. (6) Montreal Canadiens - This should be a war. Bruins in 7.
(4) Pittsburgh Penguins vs. (5) Tampa Bay Lightning - Penguins in 6, although it worries me that they're still playing without Sidney Crosby.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

(1) Vancouver Canucks vs. (8) Chicago Blackhawks - This should be great even though the defending Cup champs backed in (even moreso than did the Rangers) on the last day of the season. Canucks in 7.
(2) San Jose Sharks vs. (7) Los Angeles Kings - Thanks to some of their employees (on- and off-ice) who used to work here, the Kings are kind of like Flyers West, so I wouldn't be sad to see them make a run, but they have some injury issues (just like Flyers East often has!) and the Sharks are better anyway. Sharks in 6.
(3) Detroit Red Wings vs. (6) Phoenix Coyotes - Please, dear (insert your preferred deity/deities here), get that team out of Phoenix once and for all, please? Red Wings in 5.
(4) Anaheim Ducks vs. (5) Nashville Predators - I can honestly say I know very little about either of these teams. However, I read that Flyers color analyst/Versus studio cohost Keith Jones says the Predators are going to be in the Stanley Cup finals, and that just seems ludicrous, so...Ducks in 6.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...my Flyers-Sabres pick!

MixBlog 12-15-10

The usual 1:20 am blogging time slot. So awesome. Anyway...

• Yesterday (Tuesday) I made a small donation to a toy drive for BEBASHI, a local HIV/AIDS services organization, after a column last week in the newspaper that said their donations were falling well short from previous years. Considering my financial situation I didn't spend much, but I still felt it was necessary. If you read this quickly there's still time to donate before Thursday's deadline. Information is here.

• After that I went down to Citizens Bank Park hoping to run into Cliff Lee. However, he hadn't arrived in town yet. Then I tried to see Roy Halladay but, as you can see from the picture, he was not around either. Okay, actually I was at the ballpark because the Phils were running a "12 Days of Christmas" promotion at the Majestic Clubhouse Store. Different discounts each day and other special things, and today the special was a free tour of the team's clubhouse. Here's a tip from the employees giving the tour: go for the full ballpark tour, during the season when the team is on the road. Then you see the players' cubicles with their uniforms and other stuff inside. They really have a nice facility. I took a few other pictures with the camera in my phone and I'll post them somewhere sometime.

• It was quite a day sports-wise. Besides the big Cliff Lee news,

The "Mikey" Blog: Reality vs. Internet "Reality"

You may be surprised to learn that this post isn't about TV shows such as "The Real World" or "Survivor" or, God help us, "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew." This is about reality as found, or not found, on the Internet.

Back in December, an item was posted on the Outsports.com Jock Talk Blog about a blog written by a closeted 17-year old guy who was a high school hockey player in the Minneapolis area. "Mikey" wrote about his life, being closeted to all except his younger brother and his best friend, and about hockey.

"Mikey" wrote his posts as if he were texting, often abbreviating and being very...casual...about punctuation, spelling, etc. For example: "ive pretty much known i was gay for awhile but tried to ignore it for a long time but its just hard to do it. i told [a friend] and my lil bro this summer and there the first to know bout me, i wish i could tell everyone but im chicken and scared that bein out would screw up chances to play hockey after hs. it toly sucks cause like everyday i lie to everyone i know and love and that just sucks bigtime."

Then there was his comment on Sidney Crosby when he wrote about his favorite hockey players: "someone asked about other guys, like sid the kid. hes amazing but a lil bit too whiny for me." Of course, when I read that I was hooked. ;-)

Some Sports Illustrated Stuff

A week ago tomorrow, the cover of Sports Illustrated featured a headline for an article on baseball's spring training: "The Unlikely Genius Behind the New Moneyball." I wanted to vomit. Wasn't the old Moneyball bad enough? The premise of "Moneyball" -- that a focus on statistics, including newly invented and bizarre statistics, is more important in building a great team than things like scouting, watching games and actually seeing how players perform, not to mention spending lots of money -- has always been flawed. The main practitioner, the Oakland A's under general manager Billy Beane, won a few division titles but never got into a World Series, and haven't been a winning team in the last three years.

So what of this "new" Moneyball? The article itself, while it does delve into some statistical stupidity, actually makes a good point. It features the Seattle Mariners and their GM, Jack Zduriencik, and the team's concentrating on defense, leading to improvement overall (from 61 wins in 2008 to 85 last year). Good defense makes the pitching staff better, and we know how important good pitching is. And what Zduriencik says his team is doing is blending the old and new -- using some statistical analysis while still relying on good scouting. This seems to me like good common sense. With the M's getting Cliff Lee from the Phillies, they should be even better in 2010.

As for the SI that will arrive in my mailbox tomorrow, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that this is the cover:

 

The good news is there's this thing called the Sports Illustrated cover jinx...

Now Back To Your Hockey Season, Already In Progress

The Vancouver Olympics are over. The United States won the most medals overall but host Canada won the most gold medals, including the one they needed the most, the men's hockey gold. Team USA gave a great effort, coming from behind to tie the game on a goal by Zach Parise with 25 seconds left to force overtime, only to lose when -- ugh -- Sidney Crosby won it for the Canadians.

Despite the result, it was a great game, a great spectacle, and certainly can't hurt hockey's popularity in the USA. How much will it help? Honestly, I don't know. It's not like hockey is going to become our national pastime. And as great as hockey is in the Olympics, the NHL regular season can never live up to it.

Why? The talent is diluted among 30 teams. The 82-game schedule is bad enough, but when the league shuts down for the Olympics it's really condensed. There are more instances of teams playing on back-to-back nights or three times in four nights. It affects the quality of play. The teams have been sitting around for the better part of two weeks. And for the Olympians, those players could wear down from the extra games. For the Canadian players, having been forced into an elimination game, their "regular season" is now 89 games. And the travel will be worse in 2014, when the games will be held in Sochi, Russia instead of North America.

Unlike in international play, fighting is not only condoned, it's practically encouraged. (By the way, we saw hard hitting throughout the Olympics without one single fight. Any rationale for the allowance of fights in the NHL is, frankly, shot to hell...wait, what's that noise? Why, it's a bunch of angry Flyers fans marching to my door demanding my head on a platter for that comment! Here, I got a picture of them...)

Speaking of those Flyers, they were on a four-game winning streak a couple of weeks ago. They won two huge home-and-home sets, first rallying from a pair of 2-0 deficits to beat New Jersey twice, and then taking two more from Montreal, one of the teams in the Eastern Conference playoff morass. That momentum came to a screeching halt thanks to the league's shutdown. Sure, it might be regained, but the Flyers have had enough trouble being consistent without a two-week vacation thrust upon them. And Mike Richards and Chris Pronger are two of those Team Canada guys who got no rest, with Pronger being 35 years old. That's not good for the Flyers.

The NHL derives little real benefit from stopping for the Olympics. It's great for Olympic hockey but not for the NHL. There may be a ratings increase but it won't be huge, and it won't be enough to get the league a better TV contract. As I stated above, it affects the quality of play, it disrupts the season. It could work if the league cut back the schedule during Olympic years -- or, better, cut the schedule every year -- but the league won't be willing to give up the revenue from those games and the players won't want reduced salaries as a result.

A final decision hasn't been made as to whether NHL players will participate in the 2014 Olympics. The players want to play, the league isn't fully committed. If I had my way, they wouldn't go, but since when do I get my way in these matters?

USA Beats Canada: I Guess "Tarzan Boy" Works After All

In my previous post I made light of one of the choices on the pregame musical playlist of Patrick Kane from the USA Olympic Men's Hockey team (and the Chicago Blackhawks). "'Tarzan Boy'? Really?" I wrote. I find it hard to be inspired with lyrics like these:

Jungle life/We're living in the open
All alone/Like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek/We play along while rushing
Cross the forest
Monkey business/On a sunny afternoon

But hey, that's just me. It seems to work for Patrick Kane. And the United States team came away tonight with a surprising 5-3 victory over Team Canada -- in Vancouver, making it essentially a road game for the USA -- in the final preliminary game of the Olympic hockey tournament. The USA hadn't beaten Canada in a game at the Olympics since 1960. That year, the USA went on to win a surprise gold medal at Squaw Valley. Twenty years later came the "Miracle on Ice" win over the powerful Soviet Union at Lake Placid that led to another gold.

It's now 50 and 30 years later, respectively, and although these Olympics aren't in the United States they are on the same continent, so perhaps Team USA is due, if not destined to win gold. The win over Canada certainly makes their path easier -- they get an extra day of rest before the quartefinals, while Canada will have to play Germany to get into the quarters, and then are likely to play Russia in the quarterfinal game. Thus, team USA will only have to face one of these two in order to win gold.

The Canadians outshot the Americans* 45-22 but USA goalie Ryan Miller was superb while Canada goalie Martin Brodeur was, well, not. Miller and the USA held on under relentless pressure after a Sidney Crosby goal got Canada within 4-3 with 3:09 left, until Ryan Kesler (at left) scored an empty-net goal with 45 seconds to go. (Ironically, Kesler plays for the Vancouver Canucks so he was a visiting player on his home ice, and Canucks fans have to be conflicted.) Watching those minutes between the Crosby and Kesler goals, I half-expected Canada to tie the game. It was that intense.

*Yes, I'm fully aware that Canadians are technically also Americans, since we're all part of North America.

The thing is, while there's still a talent gap between Canada and the USA, it's not as wide as it used to be. So this isn't like those 1980 and 1960 teams (especially with the NHL players involved). What team USA did tonight was limit their mistakes and capitalize on those made by Canada. Do that, and get quality goaltending as Miller provided, and any game is winnable. So tonight's win is a surprise, but not too much of one.

So team USA wins and I've made my peace with "Tarzan Boy" as inspiration, but I have no idea what the deal is with this picture of Kesler:

Strong start for the Flyers

I still can't quite get around the fact that it's fall, the NFL and college football have been in full swing for weeks, and now it's hockey season. Where does the time go? At any rate, the Flyers began the 2009-10 season with 2 fine road wins. Last night's 2-0 win at Carolina was followed by tonight's 5-2 win at New Jersey. Beating Martin Brodeur and the Devils has been difficult over the years, so to get 5 goals off him (in his 1,000th career game, no less) is very nice. And if the info I'm getting from the post-game show on TV is correct, it's the first time in about a decade that the Flyers have started a season with two wins.

Prior to the season I was skeptical about the additions of Chris Pronger (due to his age and how much he'll count against the salary cap) and Ray Emery (due to his various team-disruption issues). But the Flyers' retooled defense, anchored by Pronger, looks much more secure than it has in recent years, and Emery has been very strong. These two games don't exactly end my skepticism. After all, Pronger is still getting up there and there's plenty of time for Emery to self-destruct. But so far, so good.

The Flyers start the home portion of their schedule with games on Tuesday and Thursday against two Eastern rivals, the Washington Capitals (featuring the awesome Alexander Ovechkin) and Pittsburgh Penguins (featuring the whiny Sidney Crosby). If anyone has extremely inexpensive (or better yet, free) tickets for me, please get in touch.