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Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Stanley gets a tan

I’m not going to say I told you so to all you hockey-blogging fans who insisted that the Flames would win this series, because, in fact, I did not tell you so (I called Tampa Bay in six).  I wasn’t even rooting very hard for the Lightning, personally-- I just thought, on the basis of the first three rounds of the playoffs (and the last three months of the season), that they were a slightly better team than the Flames.  I’m perfectly willing to admit that the Flames outplayed them in games one, three, four, and five, and I would have been perfectly happy if they won it all last night.

But they didn’t deserve to win it last night, and they know it.  I started off watching the game with Penn State Ph.D. and fellow blogger Marianne Cotugno at Champs Sports Bar, an institution that seems to have roughly the same relation to sports bars as the Wang Chung song “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” has to actual fun.  It’s cavernous, characterless, corporate, and-- get this-- their TV reception was lousy.  No kidding, the picture was full of snow.  What is this, 1956?  The game was on in high-def, people.  There’s no excuse for not having a video system that allows-- or compels-- me to see every hair in Jarome Iginla’s scraggly playoff beard.  The one good thing about the place was that a mess of local hockey players showed up, including some of my more talented teammates (these would be the 19-year-olds who are now playing in Junior A in their real lives), and we said hello midway through the first period.  Most of them were pulling for Calgary, and when they asked me if I had a dog in this fight, I said, “Tampa Bay, I guess, but right now I’m just rooting for shots on goal.”

I wasn’t kidding, and I rooted in vain for two periods.  Is there a decent explanation for why the Flames managed only seven shots in the first forty minutes, and only one or two in the next eight?  It’s not like the Lightning have a smothering defense-- though I have to admit they did a first-rate job of backchecking, and didn’t allow an odd-man rush for two periods.  On the Bolts’ side, what was up with Cibak shoveling a pass over to Cullimore when he was 15 feet from the net, with a clear shot and Kiprusoff already cheating off the post?  Sure, Cibak’s not a sniper, but then, neither is Cullimore (each of them scored two goals this year).  Seriously, if it weren’t for Fedotenko’s extraordinary hand-eye coordination on the first goal (it’s impressive that he even got his stick free, never mind spinning and slapping home a crisp-- and luscious-- rebound) and Lecavalier’s deft skates-and-stick pass to Fedotenko on the second, we’d have been looking at a scoreless and mostly juiceless game seven.

So for the third period we abandoned Champs for the darker and seedier Sports Cafe (I swung home and picked up Janet, delivering her from essay-revision hell), where we ran into a bunch of serious hockey fans and English doctoral students.  That was fun, as were the final twelve minutes of the game.  When the Flames got that power play with 11 minutes to go, Steve Schneider (serious hockey fan and English doctoral student) suggested that they take a page from the early-90s Penguins and put five forwards on the ice; I swear on my blogging honor that I replied, “yeah, they could put Conroy on the point-- that would work” about fifteen seconds before Conroy scored from the point, having drifted back to cover Leopold’s spot on right D as Leopold fought for the puck along the boards.

A word about the penalties, especially for you Calgary fans who feel you wuz robbed.  Yes, the call on Ference with a minute to go was a terrible call.  Marty St. Louis got cut and banged up, but it was a legal hit-- a good deal more legal, ahem, than the skull-crushing hurt put on Fedotenko by your Robin Regehr in game three.  And Flames coach Darryl Sutter’s complaint about the five-minute boarding call on Ville Nieminen at the end of game 4 (you’ll recall that Sutter suggested that the NHL had some inexplicable desire to throw the series to Tampa Bay) was, for me, the low point of the series.  Look, you throw a man’s head into the glass, you get penalty, you go in penalty box, you feel shame.  I don’t care whether it’s the preseason or the Cup finals.  But while we’re on the subject of questionable calls, exactly how was Bolts D Nolan Pratt interfering with anyone on that interference call-- you know, the one that led to Conroy’s goal and the only real excitement in the game?

Last but not least, Gelinas’ phantom goal in game six was just that-- phantom.  Let’s not have any crying in the Labatt’s over that one.

OK, back to game seven.  Here’s another question:  how did it come to pass that the Flames’ best chance to tie the game came from defenseman Jordan Leopold?  (On that one, the entire bar exploded: we could all see that Khabibulin had given up a huge rebound, and that Leopold had at least half the net to shoot at-- and then, just like that, he had no net to shoot at!  Sheer athleticism on Khabibulin’s part, and it saved the game.) Leopold took another good shot a few minutes later-- and you know what?  He and fellow defenseman Rhett Warrener were the only Flames to get more than one shot on net in the third period.  Iginla almost made a beautiful play late in the game, juking around two befuddled Bolts, but finished the game without a shot.  And it was the consensus of our table that Shean Donovan’s absence from the lineup in games 6 and 7 made a real difference, just by decreasing the Flames’ aggregate speed and forechecking intensity.

To put all this in historical perspective (as Fred Shero wrote in The Political Unconscious, always historicize!):  the two best teams met in the finals, and that’s a positive good in itself.  It’s rare that that happens, though thankfully it’s getting less rare:  you could say the same about the Devils-Avalanche (2001) or Devils-Stars (2000) final.  But for most of the league’s last thirty years, it’s seemed as if the playoffs were designed to get the best series out of the way early on.  It’s also rare that the finals themselves go seven:  from 1972 to 1993, only one series went the distance, and that was only because the 1987 Oilers forgot that they had to win four games.  (The Flyers climbed back from 3-1 thanks to incredible goaltending from Ron Hextall, but c’mon, folks, there was no doubt about that series, not really.) At the Sports Cafe last night, Tony Ceraso (serious hockey fan and English doctoral student) and I agreed that the 1994 finals were qualitatively different from the ‘87 finals (even though both involved heavy underdogs coming back from 3-1), precisely because there was no sense whatsoever that the Rangers would-- or could-- blow out the Canucks at will.  That, plus the fact that the Rangers had given up last-minute tying goals in three recent playoff games (games one and seven against the Devils in the conference finals, game one against the Canucks), and could not sustain a two-goal lead into the third period, made 1994’s game seven truly entertaining.  I’m sure former Canuck Nathan LaFayette remembers very well how he hit the post with the score 3-2 and five minutes left, having beaten Mike Richter cleanly to the glove side.  But for a mind-blowing, ESPN-Classic-worthy game 7 in the finals, you really have to go back to 1971, when the Canadiens came back from 2-0 on Chicago ice to beat the Black Hawks 3-2.  (And this blog will do just that, in a way, sometime next week.)

So all in all, not a great game seven.  Not a snooze like last year’s Battle of the Teams Whose Home Cities are Parking Lots, and not a genuine thriller either.  But for half the third period, a fine and fitting ending to a genuinely surprising and (therefore) enjoyable year.  I wish it had gone into overtime, I really do.  But congratulations to the Lightning and their fans, even those of you who don’t really know what you’ve won.  And a sentimental cheer for the grey-bearded Dave Andreychuk, whose impressive lifetime stats are available right here.

Posted by Michael on 06/08 at 10:23 AM
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