Buffalo allowed 242 goals during the regular season, Ottawa 222. Buffalo has allowed 24 goals in 11 playoff games, Ottawa 20 in 10.
Ray Emery’s save percentage in the regular season was .918, Ryan Miller’s was .911. I like Ryan Miller, but Emery’s a better goalie in my opinion. Nobody seems to notice, but Emery had a hell of a year.
By any measure, Ottawa is a better defensive team. They’re much better shot blockers and generally play better team defense, especially on the backcheck. Buffalo was able to finish slightly ahead of them because they had more offense, not more defense.
This’ll be a good series, but it’s Buffalo who’re the higher scoring team, and they’ll need to put goals on the board to win. It would be advantageous to Ottawa, not Buffalo, to keep the scores low.
It’ll be nice to have a team come out of the East that actually has fans!
Detroit vs. Anaheim: Detroit finally gets an easy matchup. :rolleyes: Yeah right. Anaheim is deep and now has a better defense than Detroit does. That they have better goaltending goes without saying. Without Lidstrom, Hasek’s penchant for wandering while bored takes the San Jose series to seven. Anyone know of a place that sells a good goalie tether?
That said, Detroit had made it this far beating teams that they were not supposed to beat while Anaheim has been the favorite. Minnesota was a dark horse at best and noone in their right mind thought Vancouver stood a chance. Detroit was supposed to fall apart against Kiprusoff and Calgary’s grit. Then they were supposed to lose to Nabokov and San Jose’s depth and size. Now it’s Giguere, depth, defense, and toughness.
Giguere is everything Hasek is not: rock solid and dependable. He’s fronted by a defense that Detroit has not seen the likes of this playoff year. Offensively, Anaheim can match Detroit almost line for line with two solid tops and a shutdown line equal to Detroit’s famous grinders. Their physical play could wear down the Wings over three periods and lead to costly mistakes as long as it doesn’t put Anaheim in the box
Anaheim hasn’t played a team like Detroit yet either. Minnesota relied on a team game to hide the fact that they were a one line team. Vancouver was Luongo and not much else. Detroit has four lines rolling with two solid tops and a shutdown of their own. Their defense, while battered, still features the reigning Norris trophy winner Nick Lidstrom, the tough and underrated Danny Markov, and ageless freak of nature Chris Chelios. Hasek is spotty but can take over a game when needed. He’ll likely have to.
No prediction again. It’s worked well enough so far.
I can’t watch the game right now, being at work and all…and the fact that I don’t have the right channels…But NHL has a wonderful real-time shot counter and score board on their website.
I didn’t get to watch the game, or even follow it on the internet. Can any one give a breif summary of how it turned out to be 5-2? Runnin’ & gunnin’? Can’t say I saw that one coming.
And re: the Pronger v Alfredsson for the Conn Smythe bet- keep in mind that a lot of people felt Pronger was robbed by not getting it last year. If the Ducks make the final I’d say Pronger is a lock based on that alone. His numbers this year are again out of this world. Of course my prediction is that the Ducks lose, but that’s worth exactly nothin’.
Fisher opened the scoring for Ottawa with a shorthanded goal. The Buffalo point man mishandled the puck, Fisher stole it and scored on a clear-cut breakaway.
Alfredsson made it 2-0 on a 4-on-3 power play goal. Corvo had the puck at the blueline, walked to the middle of the ice from the left point to draw the forward to the middle, and then made a quick pass back to Alfie at the left point who blasted a one-timer in.
Afinogenov made it 2-1 midway through the first off of some terrible defensive-zone coverage by Ottawa. A point shot rebounded to Afinogenov who was wide open at the left side of the Ottawa net, and he tucked it into the open cage.
Toni Lydman tied the game midway through the second period on a great individual effort. Buffalo won a faceoff in the offensive zone. Heatley fell trying to get out on Lydman, who walked up the boards and around a pick inadvertently put on Spezza by the linesman. Before Ottawa’s defencemen could recover, Lydman had skated to the lip of the crease a put a quick shot through Emery’s pads.
Saprykin gave Ottawa the lead back in the third period. Ottawa dumped the puck into the corner and Numinen tried to make a quick pass along the boards. No Sabre was in position, though, and McCammond intercepted the pass and through it to a streaking Saprykin, who tipped past Miller.
Spezza restored the two-goal lead on the power play. Redden took a shot from the point that was blocked, and Spezza found the puck in the slot and put a quick shot through the five-hole.
McCammond rounded out the scoring with a late empty net goal.
ETA:
Ottawa 2-6 on the power play
Buffalo 0-5 on the power play with a shorted handed goal against(1 shot on goal on 9:28 of PP time).
Buffalo’s power play has been poor in the playoffs, a very strange thing for a high-scoring team that’s actually won most of its games.
Ottawa was completely the better team tonight. They outshot the Sabres in every period and made far fewer outright mistakes. Buffalo needs to step it up, big time, if they don’t want to be making tee times before two weeks are up.
What? Am I the only one that watched the Wings/Ducks series? Well the rest of you missed some right ugly hockey.
Sure the Wings are up 1-0 in the series, but there really wasn’t much positive to take from the game. Hasek was spectacular and the Wings penalty killers came up huge, but that’s really it. They got two flukey goals off of Beauchemin. Good that they took advantage of the crowds in front of the net, but you can’t count on those kinds of breaks for a series. Other than that they were outhit, outshot, and outplayed. They definitely need to work on clearing their own zone (something they had problems with in the San Jose series) and on not taking so many penalties. More glaring were the four on four. Anaheim plays a very rough style and you can count on them giving you power play time. No reason to go ruining them by sending a player of your own off with them.
As for Anaheim, they need to do a better job of keeping their net free of clutter, including themselves. Two goals in off Anaheim players is a lousy way to run a railroad. Holmstrom doesn’t need the help. Giguere is a good enough goaltender to stop the puck when he sees it. Other than that, work on the penalty kill. It’d be better to simply avoid taking penalties. The longer the series goes, the more the refs will be looking to cut back on the crap. Of course, they want to keep playing that way so the penalty kill is going to have to step up another notch.
Last thing. Corey Perry and his trash talk. “Tell Samuelsson he’s gonna get it. You better tell him Pavel. You’re gonna get it too Pavel.” That’s trash talk? While you’re at it, why not threaten to take their lunch money during recess. Yeesh. If you’re miked up, please try to make your trash talk entertaining. Maybe Sean Avery can tutor.
Can you believe that there are some Red Wing players who are privately telling the media that they feel that they have a huge advantage in goal, because while they know that Hasek can steal a game, they don’t believe that Giguerre can do the same? Wasn’t more than half of the team around in 2003?
Personally, I don’t see any advantage in net. I can see why someone would say something like that though. I think it’s due to the more spectacular nature of his saves vs. the dependable and nowhere near as flashy Giguerre. Giguerre is always in good position, and it doesn’t hurt that his defense is right there to break up the play when he gets caught committing to the wrong player. Hasek will come out of nowhere and flat out rob a player. Gives a goalie a bit of an aura when they do that enough.
I’d rather have Giguerre though. He doesn’t get bored and go out wandering. Easier on the heart.
YES! YES! Joe Corvo with the knuckleball in OT! Ottawa wins, and takes a 2-0 lead home! Buffalo is getting out-classed in this series. Even with that stomach-punch game-tying goal with 5.8 seconds left, they never lost their composure. What a great game.
Buffalo is now what, 0 for 12 on the power play against Ottawa? Jesus, either Ottawa has the best PK in the league (which, actually, is not hard to believe; they look phenomenal) or Buffalo has picked a bad time to go into a PP slump.
Joe Corvo. I love the guy. He’s played well the whole playoffs and it’s nice he gets the OT winner. He’s a hell of a defenceman.
When Corvo was playing so badly earlier in the year and everyone was calling for his head, I said that he be a huge factor in a playoff series against Buffalo. He’s exactly the type of defenceman we didn’t have enough of last season.
So Lindy Ruff is taking a page out of Pat Quinn’s book and whining that Alfredsson should be suspended. He’s even gone as far as to pretend that Tallinder is a game-time decision for Monday. Ruff, of course, is talking out of his ass. Tallinder is fine; he didn’t even miss a single shift after that “injury” from the Alfredsson hit. They could have given a minor penalty on the play, but that’s it. This is nothing but posturing from Buffalo, and it’s a pretty classless move on their part.
Ruff’s us-versus-the-world whining is just gamesmanship. It’s him taking the heat for his team; the Sabres have played badly and disappointed their fans and are taking heat from the media, so his job is to draw the attention away from the player.
