No surprise on the Canucks and Pens. Flyers can’t seem to play with disciplne for a full game and St. Louis doesn’t have the offense to get through Luongo
Game 2 Rangers vs. Capitals has just started.
The poor Capital Goalie (Varlamov) still has his mask painted in the Hershey Bears motif. 
The dreaded 2-vs-7 matchup is well on its way to claiming another victim. Lunqvist is playing amazing right now.
Another great performance by Ozzie and more offensive domination as Detroit pastes the Jackets 4-0. Columbus couldn’t do anything tonight except parade to the box. Mason looked shaken, particularly on goals three and four. Three beat him glove side and four bounced off of him and into the goal. Hitchcock (true story: his name gets censored on the fox sports blogs leaving him as Ken Hitchbleep) better get his team more disciplined and stop worrying about how Detroit runs their faceoffs.
I could of swore hearing self appointed sports gurus lambasting both Detroit’s powerplay and goalie during the reg season. They both showed up tonight. 
Whats up with the the Rangers taking a 2-0 lead against the Caps? I heard a rare hockey statistic tonight from Fox Detroit, that is, teams that take a 2-0 lead win 87% of the time in the NHL. 2-7 “curse”(:)) looks good for the Wings, bad for the Caps. Also looks like I may have mispredicted Hawks/Flames series.
Dude. I heard that too. The Curse.
I think that this year, at least, the Caps are a better road team. Let’s hope so.
Not to switch gears, but I was just watching the NBA game one DAL @ SAS. Spurs lost. They threw a stat up there saying something like “there’s a 79% chance that the team that wins game one wins the series.”
I need a friend.
The Ducks just stole another one, the Blues are toast and the Flyers finally showed up.
On behalf of all of the Red Wing fans, in consideration to all of the Shark fans wondering about the possibility of a disappointing President’s trophy first round sweep I offer the following:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA.
Yours truly, Wolfman
Don’t get too chuckleheaded. If the Wings and advance and the Ducks beat San Jose, Detroit could be next in line for an upset. I didn’t want the Wings to face them in the first round. Second round? Not much better.
Sorry for my late arrival here. Obviously I will not make any predictions for the 1st round since some of these series are dramatically tilted already. So, let me add this instead:
I did listen this morning on XM204 (the NHL network), and the guys were discussing percentages for comebacks for teams that were down 0-2 in the series…12.7 or 12.8%.
Down 1-3? About 7 or 8%. (They had accurate stats…it’s my fuzzy memory to blame)
Down 0-3? Well, only the '42 Leafs and the '75 Islanders came back from those deficits…evah. Maybe not even 1%? Good Luck St. Louis.
And…uh, Go Ducks…I was gonna pick Ducks in 7. So-Cal homer and all that.
I wonder what the percentage is for teams that went 0-2 as the home team. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even lower.
I’m not sure about that. Team that went down 0-2 at home had to be the higher seed, and therefore theoretically the better team.
But losing the first two games at home? That’s less a rude awakening as it is a punch to the soul. A team should take at least one of their home games. Losing both as a higher seeded team means you’ve lost all the momentum that you spent a season gaining. You’ve given your opponent momentum and swagger and yourself nothing but doubts and an awareness of the history of 0-2 teams in the playoffs. You’ve made the first game in the opponents barn a must win game, and those are hard to win under ideal (2-0) circumstances.
I know what you are saying, but for example, who do you think is much more likely to come back this year. San Jose, or Columbus. I would assume it would be an over-whelming majority who think that San Jose would be the better bet, even though they have fewer home games left.
I could be wrong and I don’t know what the actual stats are, but among teams that go down 0-2 away, there are just a lot of teams simply over-matched and long forgotten about. While 0-2 home contains a fair number of good teams that stumbled but have the pure ability to get back on track.
However 4-5 are always toss ups, And with the divisions all getting top three seeds, often a 3 seed is atop a weak division, but realistically is the 4 5 or even 6th best in the conference. So of 3 seeds who go down 0-2 at home I would guess a fairly bad comeback record.
All-in-All it is a very interesting question with lots of factors. I’m just saying looking at home and away games left possibly misses something.
Wow big time play in the Caps-Rangers game. NY missed an absolute slam-dunk goal, and Semin put it in the othe net before most of the Rangers realized theirs bever went in. That might be a series changing sequence.
There is that factor. But home ice is so important in playoff hockey. The ability to get the matchups you want is massive.
I can’t decide if St. Louis is playing worse than I expected, or Vancouver is playing better. I’m thinking the latter.
Still, good to see the young line playing well for my Blues.
(Notice I’m not leaning on our injuries as an excuse. :))
Flyers outlook, grave. Blue Jackets, even worse.
Canes/Jersey Game 4 = Un-fucking-believable!
Canes get winning goal with .2 seconds left on the clock. Not 2 seconds…POINT TWO!
Wooooooooooo!
Crazy, I just watched that. Brodeur was pissed!
Score still knotted at 2 in St. Louis.
I found some playoff series statistics here.