Even if the Stars don’t score in the next 18 minutes of game time, I’m grateful for 3 out of 4 of this round going to game 7.
Wow what a game that was. Joel Kiviranta comes out of nowhere and scores a game 7 hat trick including the OT winner.
Indeed, even if the team I was rooting for hadn’t won, that was an amazing fucking game.
I’ll say it again, I never thought I’d get into hockey in August and I was so wrong. Great games without me having a real rooting interest
Yes, Trots got one of them.
That was some pair. It was like McDavid and Draisaitl, or Gretzky and Messier.
You have to love the Stars resilience. Down by 2 in the third and they come back to win the game and series. It’s not the first time they were down by 2 in the playoffs and then won.
Khudobin has been lights out. 1.69 GAA in the conference finals. Vegas was the better team for much of the series but Khudobin kept coming up big and the Stars made the most of their chances.
I am now hoping that the Islanders can win at least one more game but I imagine that it will be Tampa coming out of the East.
Agreed, but I, too, would like another win or two for the Isles. I watched the Giants last night instead of hockey, but I hear that game was a doozy.
Peter Laviolette to coach the Caps. This should be interesting.
Hope he’s not doing the dry island thing again
Things were much higher scoring back then, around 25% higher than now.
Double OT, but the Isles survive to fight another day. Man, that was a late night for me. The Islanders mostly held their own, but Tampa was the better team.
The Bolts D average about 18 min/game.
Hedman’s at 30.
Beast.
He’s incredible. My daughter, a pretty good hockey fan, thought he was on O since he spent so much time in the O-zone shooting, getting so many points, etc. He’s coming close to Coffey’s record for most goals for a defenseman in the playoffs.
The Islanders had a good run and I would say they outperformed. If they can add one or two key players, they will be for real next year.
This seems like the must-win year for the Bolts – they will be in cap trouble next year.
A few days ago Vegas was eliminated while on the PK for a puck-over-the-glass penalty.
According to scountingtherefs.com, that call makes up 3% of all penalties in both the regular season and playoff regulation. For playoff overtime, that call jumps to 21% of all penalties. The automatic nature of the penalty combined with the refs “letting them play”, gives this rule an unwarranted impact.
How would you change it, though? One minute penalty? If defensemen could throw it over the glass whenever, it would be really disruptive.
My counter to not wanting the refs to decide the outcome has been that the refs need to make sure that a hockey match is decided not a street brawl. Therefore my solution would be to consistently call each game from preseason to the Cup final.
Beyond that I don’t have a solution. Intent judgements are a problem. Reviewing penalties is a problem because you wouldn’t be reviewing missed calls.
I think players and fans both want the players to have some more leeway in the playoffs. It keeps the energy level high.
damn whistle.
Good game last night! I was sort of hoping that Tampa Bay would dominate so I could say, hey, the Isles could have gone all the way! Now, I’m hoping for seven games of that kind of play. Wow!
NHL plans an 82 game schedule next season, starting in December or January. My guess is that they let the NBA have Christmas Day and then the NHL uses what would have been the winter classic on January 1 for their start.
Not sure how you get 82 games in on a compressed schedule. Summer hockey seems to be a success this year, not sure it’ll happen twice if you drag the playoffs out into deep summer. And, then you’re delaying the next season as well and I don’t think a January-August schedule is ideal as a long term plan