Here we are mired in the middle of the first round of the playoffs, and my own view of a beautiful second round is coming together just a little bit here.
To have a beautiful second round and subsequent semis and finals, a few things need/needed to happen:
- Elimination of the New Jersey Devils
- Elimination of the Boston Bruins
- Elimination of the Calgary Flames
- Someone dropping a bomb on the arena containing the Stars-Ducks series
The New York Rangers have already achieved the success of Point No. 1 and for that, we thank them profusely. Consider me also highly entertained with Martin Brodeur’s extreme lack of class in losing to the Rangers. I’m entertained because this playoff series has showed what a prima donna Marty is. While I may not condone the actions of Sean Avery all the time, I am greatly entertained by him exposing Brodeur as a cry baby and a pansy.
An apparently fat pansy. To the quote board! First up, Martin Brodeur:
“I just shook everybody’s hand but one.”
Gee, who could that have been? Hey Sean Avery, do you know who he missed?
“Everyone talks about how classy, unclassy I am, and fatso there just forgot to
shake my hand I guess.”
I love it! Give me more, Sean!
“Yeah, you know guys like Clarkson, he’s not much of a player, and really he’s
not that effective when trying to play with me and we know he can’t. I just
tried to keep my head on straight and play through it. It’s more important that
I’ll be playing in the next round and they won’t.”
SICK BURN!
Those quotes were all carefully edited in NBC’s story, apparently either them or the NHL doesn’t like hockey players talking trash. Who needs attention anyhow?! Not the NHL that’s for darn sure! Hokey do-gooder morons.
And talk about your petulant French-Canadians…come on Marty, give up the facade here. I know Mike Milbury tried to bail out Brodeur on NBC’s coverage today, but think about this to put it in perspective:
In 1996, Dino Ciccarelli, then playing for the Detroit Red Wings, made the ultimate statement on what it means to be a sportsman. After Detroit was beaten by the Colorado Avalanche in a series that saw Claude Lemieux lay one of the dirtiest hits in NHL history on Kris Draper during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals.
It was the final game of the series and Lemieux received a five-minute major and a game misconduct for the hit. He also was hit with a two-game suspension and a $1,000 fine by then NHL disciplinarian and current Ducks GM, Brian Burke. The suspension was the second one earned by Lemieux in the playoffs. He got to sit out of Game 4 against Detroit after being punished for sucker-punching Slava Kozlov in Game 3. Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Brian Burke was responsible for such light-handed work in suspending a goon.
Draper suffered a broken nose, cheekbone and jaw as well as having his teeth broken, damage to the orbital bone around his eye and cuts to his face that needed 30 stitches to close.
During the post-game, after the end-of-series handshake, Ciccarelli, a tough veteran near the end of his career was asked about the hit and said:
“I can’t believe I shook that guy’s friggin’ hand.”
Dino would never get the chance to beat (or beat up) Lemieux as a Red Wing as he left the team at season’s end. It’s a shame because Dino probably would’ve beaten Darren McCarty to the punch the following year, but that’s neither here nor there. Fact is, Marty Brodeur is now a cranky old man as well as a spoiled brat and apparently spends his time running his mouth more often than not. I’m sure he really sent the message home to Avery by not shaking his hand. I hope he enjoys being run in every game against the Rangers next season.
The Montreal Canadiens are busy dicking around and not securing Point No. 2 and the meltdown of goaltender Carey Price in Game 5 was particularly startling. Settle down Beavis and go get ’em in Game 6. After all, the game is in Boston and that’s the Canadiens southern home base. Don’t believe me? Listen to the crowd when the Habs score in Boston.
For all other sports teams in Boston, it’s the self-named City of Champions. However, if you’re the Boston Bruins not only are you dreadful to watch but you play in the subdivision of Boston titled, “City of Apathy” where chumps like these guys live.
No thanks.
As for the Flames needing to flame out of the playoffs, that is for the sole purpose of having San Jose run roughshod through the playoffs. They’re the best team by far, but if the Flames are doing something at all in this series, it’s exposing that soft underbelly of the Sharks. The Flames were able to do this somewhat to Detroit last year and it appears they’re playing the playoff version of a spoiler this year again. The Sharks, however, have an awful habit of doing this to their fans each year – Sharks fans are quite the tortured group. This team managed to get over the thuggish Ducks and win their division and happen to be the fashionable pick to win it all this year.
Of course, the playoffs are a different season unto themselves – rule book and all and the Sharks have had the bad habit of getting hit in the mouth and wilting quickly. They did it against Detroit last year and they did it the year before as well against Edmonton. In both of those series, the Sharks held leads in the series only to have something dramatic occur where they couldn’t get their heads together to overcome.
Against the Oilers it was a Game 3 loss in overtime. Even while still holding a 2-1 series advantage, the Sharks were toast as they went on to lose the following three games. Against Detroit, they were moments away from being up 3-1 in the series when with 33 seconds left, Robert Lang tied it at two. Mathieu Schneider beat them in overtime and the Sharks went down the drain losing the next two games 4-1 in Detroit and being shutout at home 2-0.
The Sharks have been taking body blows this whole series with Calgary. They got up 3-0 and chased Flames goalie Miikka Kiprusoff in favor of Curtis Joseph. CuJo turned the clock back and shut down the Sharks while the Flames rallied to win the game. The flashbacks started happening, but the Sharks have turned it around and have all the big names getting on the scoresheet. Should they survive this, their second round fate resides in either Dallas or Anaheim unless the Minnesota Wild get their heads out of their rearend. This leads me to the final part…
Dallas vs. Anaheim has been horrendous to watch, mostly thanks to the typical goonery of the Ducks and also thanks all-around inept officiating. Trevor Daley of the Stars had a goal disallowed because, apparently, Niklas Hagman interfered with Jean-Sebastian Giguere. Problem was that Hagman never touched Giguere nor did he stand in his crease. All Hagman did was get mauled by the Ducks defenseman in front of the net and keep Giguere from seeing Daley’s shot from coming in at all.
Somehow, someway Giguere gets these calls. He doesn’t appear to whine to officials as much as Martin Brodeur does but that makes twice this year where he’s gotten such a call, the other time coming in a game against Detroit where the Red Wings thought they had tied the game up late in the third period only to have it disallowed due to another phantom interference call because Tomas Holmstrom was standing in front of Giguere. Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice…it’s a budding conspiracy.
I’m not a fan of Dallas. At all. That said, it’s better for hockey in general to have the Ducks get a quick exit. Unfortunately, quick at its quickest will be six games. All bets are off if it goes seven and you know damn well it’ll be prison rules hockey in a seventh game and the Ducks play like they’ve escaped from Oz. This is why we need the bomb dropping on the place. Spare the rest of us from one atrocious to watch team from moving on.
God help us all if it’s Anaheim.
