Stanley Cup Finals Preview

Well this is it, after three hard fought rounds, the NHL Playoff picture has been wittlled down to two teams: representing the East are the Ottawa Senators who have largely flown under the radar this season and are not really a team nany picked to make it this far. From the West is the fighting mad and hard-working Anaheim Ducks who are making GM Brian Burke look like a genius right now, as just two seasons ago they might have struglled to even make the playoffs, never mind dominating the Western Conference.

Goaltending: The top 2 goalies this season will be featured in this series in Ray Emery and J.S. Giguere. Both goalies have been great when it counted and expect both goalies to be on their game again. Giguere perhaps has a slight edge due to slightly better numbers to this point.

Defense: The Sens defense will have a huge task of clearing the front of the net and preventing the hard-charging Ducks forward from running over Emery, something which the Red Wings, Canucks and Predators showed is not an easy task. Beauchemin and Redden will once again be matched against the Ducks most dangerous line featuring Selanne, McDonald and Pahlson. This will leave Phillips and Preising to contend with the "kid" line of Getzlaf, Perry and Moen. Meanwhile, the Ducks have two Norris Trophy candidates in Chris Pronger and Scott Neidermeyer who have separate partners, meaning one or the other will be on the ice 75% of the time. The edge is even here.

Forwards: Both teams caan roll four lines, although the Sens are likely to play their fourth line more often than the Ducks who have been apt to use only three lines most of the time. Thus far, the strategy of shortening the bench has been a good one for the Ducks. The Ducks have a lot of speed and will be a handful to contain. The Sens top line ghas spots one-through-three in the scoring race in the playoffs and thus far no one has been able to slow down the determined line that is led by Captain Alfredsson and complimented by snipers Heately and Spezza.

My Pick: Sens in 6

random thoughts

The weather outside is brutal. I took my dog outside a little earlier, just around the block, and by the time we got back it was like the two of us had just had a cold shower together. I was thinking of going golfing but I felt that the ball would either not go very far or it would be sitting in standing water. Maybe next week sometime.

Congratulations to the Ottawa Senators for making the Stanley Cup Finals, making this the third straight year that Canada will have a team representing the country in the final. Being a hockey traditionalist, I'm really hoping to see the Cup where it belongs -- In Canada. In a perfect world, the NHL would only exist in places that get decent winters like Northern US and Canada.

I went to game 1 of the Memorial Cup between the local Vancouver Giants and the OHL Champs Plymouth Whalers. It was a great game featuring end-to-end action, good hitting, decent goaltending and some nice goals. The Whalers looked a bit rusty after a two-week hiatus after storming through the OHL losing just once the entire playoffs.

NHL Playoffs: Round 3 Predictions

With the NHL Playoffs taking a breather for a couple of days, I will make my predictions now. First I want to point out an interesting trend that has occured these playoffs. In the West, the 2 teams that did the worst in the post-season with the man advantage, my Canucks and the Sharks, are now golfing. My one prediction about the stanley cup final is the team that has the highest PP% will take lord stanley's cup. A second interesting trend that has transpired is that there have been two match-ups that have essentially been re-matches, that is the teams met in the playoffs within the last five years (Wings-Sharks and Sharks-Predators) and in both cases the team that prevailed previously won a second time. Heading into round three the Sens and Sabres will meet for the second consecutive year. The Sabres won the first time, can they do it again. The Wings and Ducks met in 2003, with the Ducks knocking off the Wings. I went 3-1 in the second round, my only bad pick being choosing the Canucks to beat Anaheim.

Eastern Conference:

#1 Buffalo Sabres (53-22-7) vs. #4 Ottawa Senators (48-25-9): season series: 5-3 Sens

How these two team got to this point:

Senators: In round one they easily dispatched the youthful and inexperienced Penguins in 5 games. The second round wasn't much more of a challenge as the NJ Devils also were defeated in 5 games

Sabres: The NY Islanders were gone after five hard-fought games against the Sabres, while the other team from NY, the Rangers, managed to take them to six games, when they were sent packing.

Goaltending: The two goalies in this series have been playing well with Miller having a slight edge in save percentage (.928-.916) and Emery having a slight edge in goals against average (2.04-2.07). However, based on the games I've watched, and I've seen most of them, I would have to give a slight advantage to Miller because he has had tougher saves to make and he appears to have faced more quality shots. Both goalies can expect a solid attack as both teams are capable of rolling four lines. To beat either goalie, the key will be getting men in front of the net and lots of shots on goal.

Defense: Both teams have great shut down d-men, the Sens with Redden and Bolchenkov. They really have a strong six and Buffalo gets a little weaker after four. Give the Sens the edge here.

Forward: Up front, both teams can roll four lines, however Ottawa's bottom two lines are really struggling right now and will need to get going soon. I'd give a slight edge to Buffalo on this one.

My Pick: Sens in 6

Western Conference:

#1 Detroit Red Wings (50-19-13) vs. #2 Anaheim Ducks (48-20-14): Season Series: tied 2-2

How these teams got to this point: The Red Wings knocked off the Calgary Flames in 6 games in round 1 and they defeated the San Jose Sharks, also in 6 games in round two. Meanwhile, the Anaheim Ducks sent the Nashville Predators pn vacation in 5 games and they ended my Vancouver Canucks dreams of a championship season in 5 games.

Goaltending: Although 42 years of age, Dominik Hasek is defying father time with his usual fine playoff performance. What makes him so tough to beat is that he never gives up on a play. However, Hasek is prone to injuries and the Red Wings have been somewhat lucky he's been healthy up to this point. At the other end of the rink is J.S. Giguere, who is showing his play of '02 when he went on a goaltending tear. His key to success is positioning and rebound control, 2 things he's done very well. This promises to be a low-scoring series with these two in net.

Defense: Ths series features four norris-trophy calibre defensemen, one of whom (Chelios) is the oldest active player playing a playoff game this year. Chelios is past his prime, but his teammate Lidstrom, is a favourite to win the Norris Trophy this season. With the Ducks Pronger and Neidermeyer play with separate partners, meaning they'll be on the ice pretty much the entire game. On the PP, Pronger loves to skate into the middle of the ice and wrist the puck through traffic. Both Pronger and Neidermeyer can really let it rip. Beauchemin and O'Donnell aren't too shabby either.

Offense: The Red Wings took a real gamble in dealing for Bertuzzi because he missed so much time with injury this season and to say the least he's inconsistent. Datsyuk, Calder and Zetterb are going to have to be the go-to guys for Detroit to be successful. The Ducks will counter with the rejuvenated Selanne who seems bound and determined to win the Cup this year. He's complemented by Getzlaf, Perry and McDonald. Kunitz and Rob Neidermeyer will be given the task of shutting down the Red Wing's top line.

My Pick: Wings in 7

Canucks season over: post-mortem

First of all I am really peeved off that my Canucks didn't show up for game 5. If it wasn't for Roberto Luongo, the game would have been over, if not in the first period, for sure in the second period. I'm going to give ten good reasons why the Canucks didn't deserve to beat the Ducks this series.

1. Lack of discipline: we took too many penalties and against a PP like the Ducks you can't take more than one or two penalties a day.

2. Power Play or lack of it: The Canucks finished the Playoffs something like 4-60 on the PP, including 23 straight times, including 2 long 5-on-3's in games 4 and 5. In the Playoffs, special teams are usually what decide games.

3. Speed kills: Anaheim has loads of speedy players on their team from sniper Teemu Selanne to young speedsters Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry

4. Endurance. Even though the Canucks were rolling four lines and the Ducks were primarily playing three, they seemed to have more jump as the game wore on. It was especially notable in the third period of game 4 when they came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie it up.

5. Puck battle: The Ducks were better at winning the battle in the corners for pucks. Case in point, during the Canucks PP, if they shot it in, Pronger or Neidermeyer would calmly skate to the corner and come up with the puck.

6. Two words: Norris Trophy defensemen: Most teams would be thrilled to have one Norris Trophy winner on their side, but the Ducks are blessed with two Norris Trophy winners in Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer and they are rarely paired together except for on the PP. This means that for over two-thirds of the game, the Ducks can rest easy and be rest assured thaat they'll rarely be scored on.

7. Injuries: Nobody likes to use the injury/flu bug as an excuse. However, clearly the Canucks missed not having Bieksa for half the series, resident pest Cooke for the entire serues, Cowan for the final two games, PK specialist Kesler for the entire series. One wonders if things might have been different if we were more healthy. Heck, the Canucks were even without the booming slapper of Sami Salo for the first 2 games.

8. Marque Players: Clearly the Sedin twins struggled against the stiffling checking five man unit featuring Rob Niedermayer, fellow countryman Samuel Pahlson, Kunitz, Scott Niedermayer and O'Donnell. Also, Captain Markus Naslund, while scoring in three straight games also put his team short-handed all too often. Morrison appeared to be struggling to keep up with the play at times. Selanne, meanwhile looked dangerous most shifts and McDonald had a hat trick in game 1, but nothing else the entire series.

9. Puck Possession: Not only were the Ducks beating the Canucks to pucks, outside of three minutes in game 5, they were great at passing it back and forth. On the Ducks PP, it looked like the Harlem Globetrotters against the sucky team they played against.

10. Goaltending: this was the least of the Canucks problems. Roberto Luongo played great most of the time, although he misplayed the puck in game 3 leading to the opening goal that took the home fans out of it and he had a mental break-down on the series-winning goal.

Now that the Canucks are out, my support is with the only Canadian team still alive: The Ottawa Senators.