Of all the nights to have men’s league hockey this week, I’m have to miss TWO game seven’s tonight?? After Ovechkin turned the 3rd period of last night’s game into “Ovietime” to force game 7 tonight, Washington and Philly start the party at 7pm tonight. I should be able to catch the first two periods of that game before mine.
That’s followed by Calgary @ San Jose @ 10pm. If you see a red Jeep hauling ass from New Hyde Park to Woodside tonight around 11:30p…that’s me racing home to catch the end of that game. Go Flames!
Anyways…the point of this post is not my impending speeding ticket tonight. It’s this article in the Globe and Mail about the CAL/SJ tilt tonight. It’s the first trip to the playoffs for the Flames’ Eric Nystrom, who’s famous father knows a thing or two about playoff heroics.
This may be Eric Nystrom’s first visit to the NHL playoff party, but he spent his whole life hearing stories from and about his famous father, Bob Nystrom, a member of the New York Islanders’ four Stanley Cup championship teams.
Nystrom, the Calgary Flames’ rookie left winger, doesn’t remember a whole lot of talk about famous seventh games; mostly because his dad’s most famous playoff heroics came in overtime of a sixth game to give the Islanders the 1980 Stanley Cup.
“But he’s talked to me about the time they were down 3-0 and they came back and won it in seven,” said the younger Nystrom.
That came in 1975, when the Islanders, just an up-and-coming team three years removed from their expansion birth — they came into the league with the Atlanta Flames — rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Then they almost did it again next round, overcoming a 3-0 deficit to get it to 3-3 against a Philadelphia Flyers’ team that would eventually win the series and go on to win the Stanley Cup that season.
Only the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs earned a similar distinction.
“He just said, they focused on one game at a time and slowly climbed back,” said Nystrom. “That’s what you need to do in the playoffs. You can’t let one game upset you or rattle you. You’ve just got to keep focused and push the envelope next game.”
Nice! Mike Milbury now has TWO whole franchises & fanbases ready to lynch him. Only 28 more to go and this guy will finally be completely unemployed.
“I reached out to Mike Milbury last night via NHL commissioner Gary Bettman,” Leonsis wrote. “Gary called me, and we spoke. And then Mike called me, and we spoke late last night.
“Mike calmly explained that he meant no harm. He had a slip of the tongue when trying to start a commentary about our play. He meant to say the Washington Caps but instead he said the Washington Craps.
“He laughed and then stated we weren’t playing well at that time in the game and we were playing like the ‘Crapitals.’ He was trying to be funny and trying to recover - on air - and he misspoke.”
The Flyers downed the Isles 4-1 yesterday. Another bad loss to a team serving as a roadblock to a playoff spot for the OrangeAndBlue. The loss puts the Islanders seven points back of Philly for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Islanders now reside in 12th place out of 15 teams in the East.
They have 12 games to play. How likely is it a team can make up seven points in just 12 games? Not bloody likely. Even if the Islanders go 9-3, which would qualify as their best 12-game stretch of the season, the Flyers, who have 13 games left, would have to go 5-8. That would leave the Islanders with 89 points and the Flyers with 88. The Flyers would own any tiebreaker if the teams ended the season with the same amount of points, as they have dominated the season series winning five of six contests.
The two teams play each other two more times - Sunday, March 23 at Philadelphia and Saturday, March 29 at the Old Barn. If the Isles have any chance of grabbing that last seed, they need to win both games in regulation. There’s no other way. They simply cannot afford to lose any more ground to the Flyers.
To make the uphill climb even steeper, using the 9-3 scenario for the Islanders’ last 12 games, the team would still need Buffalo, Washington, and Florida to stumble. If the Isles finish with 89 points, they would need Buffalo to finish no better than 7-6 (for 88 points), Washington no better than 7-5 and Florida no better than 7-4. There’s a good chance that can happen but when you’re talking about the need for three teams to be no better than mediocre, one team, the Flyers, to be pretty bad, and the Islanders to be pretty damn awesome, the odds don’t look good. I wouldn’t take that bet. Would you?
The good thing is the Islanders are saying all the right things. Captain Bill Guerin told Newsday after yesterday’s loss “We’re making it a lot harder on ourselves. Is there enough time? Not a lot, but there’s time.”
Technically, he’s right. But it’s almost last call. No time to waste.
OK here’s what I saw of last night’s game…the last 30 seconds of regulation and OT. During that time I saw the Caps hits three posts including two by Ovechkin, and then Comrie scored the shootout winner. It didn’t look very pretty, but fortunately pretty isn’t a column in the standings.
Chris Simon returns tonight as the Isles host Tampa Bay.
So I already mentioned how I watch their On The Fly recap show every morning now. I turn on the TV to watch something else tonight and it’s still on the NHL Network…just in time to catch the replay of all 12 rounds of the Washington/Edmonton shootout. It was awesome. One of Washington’s 4th liners scored the only goal in the 12th round. Souray went last for Edmonton and just wound up and fired on Kolzig, who made the stop for the win. Brashear even got sent out there for Washington in the ninth inning round, he actually fared better than a couple of Edmonton’s players - one snapped his stick and another stumbled mid-breakaway.
Another day in the NHL and another multi-year, multi-million dollar contract being signed. The Washington Capitals locked up super-stud Alexander Ovechkin to a 13-year $124 million dollar contract yesterday.
Crazy. Insane. Asinine. All these words were thrown around last year when Islanders owner Charles Wang signed Rick DiPietro to a 15-year deal. Here’s another word for you…trend! Philadelphia signed Mike Richards to a 12-year deal just a couple of weeks ago, now Ovie, who’s next? Sid the Kid is already locked up for another 4 seasons, but surely we haven’t seen the last mega-deal of this new NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Ovie gets $9 million a year for the first 6, and $10 million a year for the last 4. That buys a lot of Crocs, or even some real ^$@%! shoes.
In addition the awesome graphic above that I borrowed, our friends at FauxRumors had a nice write about Wang and Ovie’s deal. FAUXRUMORS: Wang: Visionary or Nut? Great title.
1) When it was announced late yesterday that the Washington Capitals have extended the contract for their super star left wing Alex Ovechkin to an unprecedented 13 years we couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Wang was quietly chuckling to himself. After all, until this year such contracts were unheard of in non-Islander quarters.
2) You may recall that earlier this season the Flyers extended the contract for forward Mike Richards for 12 additional seasons. Is there a trend developing here? Did the NY Islanders/Wang know something that others didn’t last year when they signed Rick DiPietro to a 15 year deal? As we wrote after the Richards deal, many fewer folks derided the Flyers for that contract like the hockey media did when the Isles gave Ricky his. Now, only 16 months later Charles Wang is looking more like a visionary and less like a Kook (at least on this issue)
They have 4 more points to make…check out the whole article.
Gonna keep it brief this morning, headed to good ol’ Roosevelt Field this afternoon to fight the hordes finish my shopping and then headed to the Coliseum for tonight’s game.
- Nice game by the Isles last night - four freakin’ goals?!?! Nice! They played hard, traded goals with the Pens in the first and second, and then two quick goals in the third got them the win. Blake Comeau got his first NHL point on an assist on the game tying goal, and then his first NHL goal was the game winner. He also picked up his first NHL first star of the game award. Congrats Blake on an impressive night. Trent Hunter scored 37 seconds later to give the Isles a 2 goal lead. As usual - Pens get all the calls - 6 PP for the Pens, 2 for the Isles. How about that last penalty to Guerin? What a joke - it certainly looked like he might hook Crosby on the play, but Crosby skated right out of it and was barely bothered by it, while the over-protective zebras called the penalty anyways. Joke. Good to see Sid “The Thug” Crosby kept his gloves on last night.
- Isles take on the Caps tonight, losers of two straight. Check out Caps’ blog Japer’s Rink preview of tonight’s game.
Basically, there are two ways the Caps can head into the Christmas break - on a high note and no more than seven points out of eighth place in the Eastern Conference or… well… “other.” Tonight’s game on Long Island, of course, will go a long way towards determining how merry the Caps’ collective Christmas is, and while it’s never easy to win on the road in the NHL, the Caps have a lot going for them tonight.
- Ted Nolan will not be behind the Isles’ bench tonight, and no, that doesn’t mean Al Arbour is coaching again (damn!). Ted’s son Brandon will be making his NHL debut in Tampa. Ted Nolan told Greg Logan:
Now you have a sense of what fathers feel like when their sons play for the first time in the National Hockey League. Fathers are very proud, and I’m no different. My wife [Sandra] and younger son will be flying down to Tampa to watch him play tomorrow night, and we’ll all get together for a Christmas celebration.
That’s all I got this morning - check the recommended links to the right for some more reading materials. See you late tonight or tomorrow morning for the Isles/Cap recap as the Isles head into the short holiday break (Jason Blake and Toronto come into town the day after Christmas).
Check out On Frozen Blog’s coverage and photos of the Capitals special outdoor practice from Tuesday night. A very cool (no pun intended), fan-friendly idea that I thought was worth mentioning. I’d totally show up if the Isles did something like this (hint, hint),
Want ideal weather for an outdoor skate conceived to thrill hundreds of young hockey fans in lower Montgomery County, Maryland? Try Tuesday night’s 32 degrees at 6:00 p.m. in Chevy Chase, Md., where the Caps — many outfitted in ski caps under their helmets — skated for 45 minutes under the lights at the gorgeous Chevy Chase Country Club’s outdoor ice rink.
This was the second straight year that the Caps traveled to Chevy Chase for such a skate, and being there among the club’s spectators, we left it hoping that it becomes an annual tradition. Coach Boudreau told us afterward, “Every [NHL] team should do something like this . . . [the fans] see the human element of guys laughing and having fun.” He’s right. The practice itself was as easy-going as the holiday mood surrounding it (complete with strings of seasonal lights hung about the plexiglass): basic passing drills, some two-on-ones against goalies at boths ends, and finally a bit of non-checking three-on-three shinny. This was an event mostly about the team connecting with its community, in a novel setting, in perfect conditions.
Did you know? The Capitals new coach Bruce Boudreau was an extra in the movie Slapshot. That’s awesome. I hope he makes the team bus look mean.
His odyssey included one season playing for the Johnstown Jets of the North American Hockey League, the team that was the model for the Charlestown Chiefs led by Paul Newman’s player-coach in the 1977 film “Slap Shot.”
Boudreau didn’t have a speaking part but managed to make it into the final version.
“I was just a hot dog enough to hang out where the cameras hung out,” he said. “Talk about your 15 minutes of fame being a lot longer than that.”
2007-08, Bob Nystrom, Calgary Flames, Philadelphia Flyers, Playoffs, San Jose Sharks, Stanley Cup, Washington Capitals
