The 2004 SDMB NHL Playoff Hockey Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
262

I met a hockey fan from up north somewhere,
Who said: Our precious, priceless cup of silver
lies in Tampa. Around it, near the stands,
Win-drunk, a bunch of warriors on skates, whose joy,
and scraggy beards, and heart as big as Florida,
Show that it was a hard-fought battle
With but one conclusion, the trouncing of the Flames.
And on the Forum these words appear:
“They are the Lightning, Champ of Champs!
Look upon their Stanley Cup, nay-sayers, and despair!”
Nothing else remains. Around the glory
Of this immortal triumph, the hopes of
Islanders, Flyers, and Flames fans seem ashen grey.

For one year I shall post “Home of the Stanley Cup” as my location; I suggest all Lightning area dopers do the same!

263

Okay. Do you think the Cup has been to the Mons Venus yet? (I’m kind of hoping our guys are too classy for that, but it wouldn’t surprise me). Or Ybor City last night? I expect it on the Gulf Beaches at some point.

I will sadly miss the parade on Wednesday since I have to fly to Ohio to get my kids. Anyone know what time it will be? Maybe I can look out of the plane and see the procession…

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

The Bolts are the Champions!!!

(Slightly less loud this morning as I have a wee bit of a headache)

264

I am sad my boys lost - but they played a hell of a series.

However - I am pleased it is all over with and can stop spending every second evening at the bar, drinking bad beer and screaming at the tv.

265

I’m hoarse this morning, but the beer was very good. Franz the brewmaster found I spoke some German and tried to get me to sample every one of his beers. On the house. Fortunately I was able to stop him at eight beers. High alcohol microbrews ranging from 6-11%. I wish someone would stop ringing that damned bell.

266

Okay - now I’m jealous.
Place I was at has nasty beer, which they wouldn’t even serve pitchers of.
Of course, we suspect that was due to the breakage of a number of them by our party the game before (they make a nice noise when you bang them on the table)

267

Bastards!

268

Yes. Yes it is.

The idea that the Stanley Cup could possibly spend any time in Florida contradicts all reasonable notions of what is right with the universe. If there’s any justice, Tampa will do as well next year as the Bucs did the years after winning the Super Bowl.

I think the NHL should make it a requirement that a certain percentage (say, 25%) of each team’s roster must be players who have grown up and played their junior hockey in the local area. Let’s see how Tampa does then. :slight_smile:

As far as the game itself goes, i think that some people have been tricked by the last ten minutes into believing that it was a really exciting game. While the second half of the third period was indeed edge-of-the-seat stuff, the rest of the game was generally mistake-ridden mediocrity punctuated by a few moments of brilliance. Calgary, in particular, looked really sluggish in the first two periods, with bad turnovers and unnecessary icing of the puck.

In terms of the whole game, i don’t think the quality of play was anywhere near as good as the three games that preceded it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen during games 5 and 6, but last night’s first two periods were pretty dull, IMO.

Next year is the Canucks’ year! :dubious:

269

What next year?

270

I know that you’re generally a level-headed guy, so I’m going to dismiss most of your post as the jealous rantings of a jilted Canucks fan. Aren’t you Australian anyway? But I want you to take some time and think about what you’ve said. If we followed your rule then hockey might have never made it out of Canada, or at best would have stopped at NYC, Boston and Chicago. In which case it would be a low money, minor-league sport with as much attention in the US media as Major Indoor Lacrosse (or whatever it’s called; a great sport by the way, but just try and watch it in a Sports bar anywhere in the US).

Then let’s apply your logic to the NFL. Tampa, Jacksonville and/or Miami would win the Super Bowl just about every single year. So maybe I like your system. :slight_smile:

271

Unlike baseball or football, it’s probably easier for a team to repeat as Cup champs in the NHL. For one thing, 16 teams make the playoffs. For another, each series is seven games long, which makes it a little easier for an “unknown” team to win.

Also, it seems to me that success breeeds loyalty. Players want to stay with a team that goes deep into the playoffs each year, hoping that this year will be The Year for them. If you have a solid management team and players who would rather stick it out with you than go to the open market, you can build a dynasty. A dynasty in the NHL, however, just means the team makes it deep into the playoffs each year, always a threat to win it all.

This is why organizations such as the Devils, the Avalanche, the Red Wings, and the Stars are so successful, of course. Every now and then there are sleeper teams, teams who no one expected to do much, and sometimes these teams gut it out and win it all. But I think teams that go from not making the playoffs at all or losing in the first round to winning the Cup can find themselves taking a step back the following year, resting on laurels they don’t have.

It’s possible TB is in this category - Calgary, too - but we won’t know until next spring. They each have plenty of young talent, so I would expect both to be in the thick of things in next year’s playoffs.

272

By the way:

http://tampatrib.com/News/MGBPAJIF7VD.html

The Tampa Tribune apparently published an editorial as if the Lightning had lost the Cup. As is conventional newspaper practice, the paper prepared two editorials: one for a loss, one for a win. The wrong one was published.

273

In case you didn’t notice the smiley, i will take pains to point out that my post was completely tongue-in-cheek.

I am indeed an Australian citizen, and have spent most of my life there. I was, however, born in Vancouver (we moved away when i was 3) and still hold a Canadian passport. Also, i lived in Vancouver for a couple of years in my early twenties, and for all hockey-related purposes consider myself a Canucks fan and a Canadian. The latter applies during the Olympic Games, and also during the NHL once the Canucks are out of the running. I will support any Canadian team (even the Habs :slight_smile: ) over any US team. I few years ago saw a game at Madison Square Garden, and was the only person in my whole section cheering for Montreal against the Rangers. I got some good-natured ribbing from some NY fans, and some death stares from others.

Also, in case you hadn’t noticed, even as a so-called major sport, hockey gets jack-shit in the way of US media attention. If you want to see more than about ten games a season you have to subscribe to cable TV and watch stations like ESPN or Fox Sports. The only place i can get any hockey at all here in Baltimore during the regular season is very occasionally on ABC on Saturday afternoons, and even then the hockey is often shoved aside to make way for golf or a bad movie, or even local college lacrosse, ferchrissakes. The Stanley Cup finals over the past couple of weeks were the first hockey games i’d seen in months.

Personally, i think the playoff system in hockey sucks. Any organized sport where more than half of all competing teams make the playoffs is a joke. I think hockey would be better off following a baseball-type system, with three division winners and one wild card from each conference. If they can’t bring themselves to halve the number of playoff teams, they should at least cut the number to six per conference.

In terms of unknown teams, i actually think that the longer series make it harder for unknown teams to win, because over a longer series talent and experience is more likely to come to the top. In a single game, an upset is always possible, but it gets less and less likely as more games are played.

274

It’s the “Dewey defeats Truman” of the sporting world!

275

I say, I say hold hard there young man! You’re in Baltimore, of course lax is going to reign supreme! It’s the greatest sport in the world. In Canada they preempt baseball for curling, for heaven’s sake.( I love curling, BTW :slight_smile: ) You want hockey all the time, move to…um…well, I don’t know. :wink: :smiley:

276

You know, in the 2+ years i lived in Canada, i don’t think i ever even saw curling on the TV. I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe i just missed it, or that i intuitively avoided it, but i never saw it replace a baseball game.

But maybe that was just Vancouver. It doesn’t get quite as cold and icy there as it does in the rest of the country, so that haven’t been subjected to the crushing of the skull from large furry hats that causes people to enjoy curling. :slight_smile:

277

Don’t forget America’s “Hockey State” - Minnesota. (Oh, yeah. And Detroit. :rolleyes: )

On the subject of curling and lacrosse, when curling is on television in Canada, it tends to get the highest ratings of anything on. And, while hockey is “Canada’s Game”, lacrosse happens to be “Canada’s Official Sport” (and, apparently, a regular pastime of teenage boys in Quebec. :wink: )

And now, in light of Tampa Bay’s Stanley Cup win, a bit of trivia. What was the first American team to win the Stanley Cup?

Anyhoo…

278

You said this before, and it is false. From here:

Also false:

TSN’s highest rated programs, you’ll notice curling is not on the list:

279

Mhendo, I thought my language would also make clear that in your case I was taking the proverbial piss. No offence intended, although I would like to see the Ravens play without Ray Lewis, Corey Fuller, Travis Taylor, Peter Boulware, Damion Cook and Ed Reed. And those are just the guys that played college ball in Florida, not to mention the ones from other schools that may be from Florida but didn’t attend college there. :slight_smile:

My point was that although hockey wasn’t invented here, or perfected here, or even played here* at any sort of competitive level, there has been a hardcore faithful few here. We even get to watch it on TV all the time, as the Sunshine Network broadcasts all/most of the Lightning games on basic cable. I’m fairly certain that viewership is better for the Lightning than the Devil Rays. The final game of the Stanley Cup drew in 220,000 households, with way more than that in number of viewers, as the bars/sports bars were packed and most watching were families. Tampa Bay was the number one audience for the final game, Orlando was second and it got decent viewership in traditional hockey towns like Detroit, New York, Chicago, etc. Sadly, nothing compared to Canada, but that’s not just a Tampa Bay thing.

As to the Newspaper thing, there is a huge rivalry here between the St. Pete Times and the Tampa Tribune. The Times gave the Tribune a big black eye by getting naming rights to the former Ice Palace and so the home venue for the Lightning, in the City of Tampa, is the St. Pete Times Forum. You could probably hit the Tribune offices with a well hit hockey puck. To their credit the Times only reveled a bit in the Tribune’s mistake, and the Editor of the Times said it could happen to anyone. (Don’t know if he meant it) What was great was that Tuesday morning the Times ran a full page photo of Andreychuk (I think) hoisting the Cup. They’ve been running multipage sections on the Lightning since the cup began, in addition to the regular sports section. This has been the news in the Tampa Bay area for the past several weeks. Nothing else comes close to headline attention, save the death of the former president. Even the much ballyhooed state funeral took a bit of a backseat as all of the local TV stations led with images from the Lightning’s victory parade yesterday and chose to cut to the funeral later.

Net, this place has gone nuts over hockey over the past two months. Sure a lot of the fans have jumped on the bandwagon, but a good deal of them will stay on. And hockey will have found new fans. If they can challenge or win again soon it will cement hockey as a favourite for many of them. Because it is a damned exciting sport to watch when it’s played well. Of course we prefer the more open version here, and it did get slowed down a lot in the Cup Finals, but we can also admire a good hit or defense, having grown up with the Bucs. This has to be good for hockey to reach new fans.

How far the Lightning go next year, beyond the threatened work stoppage, is going to be a function of how much this relatively small market team can manage to keep the core of it’s current players. Tortorella is developing into a top rate coach, and the GM Feaster has been able to get him the player’s he’s needed. They’ve got great talent and amazing depth at this point. But a lot of players are up for renewal and big raises. Martin St. Louis only made a bit over 1 million this year. Khabibulin’s contract is also up. As is Richards, I believe. And a lot of the mid level guys are up for arbitration. If they can keep the core together and stay healthy then they should be able to make a strong run again next year.

Wouldn’t that be great! :cool: