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NHL Playoffs: New Jersey Closes Out Philly

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The New Jersey Devils became the third team to punch their ticket to the conference finals in the NHL playoffs and the first one to move forward in the East. In Tuesday’s lone playoff game, the Devils beat Philadelphia on the road 3-1 to clinch the series in five games.

Philadelphia played without center Claude Giroux, suspended for a hit in Game 4 and whose passing ability keys their offense. If it were just about this one game the Flyers would have a valid excuse, because without Giroux that had no one to create flow and the Devils turned in a terrific team defensive effort, holding a normally potent attack to less than 30 shots and Martin Brodeur played an excellent game in goal, stopping 27 of 28 shots. The veteran Brodeur may not be the elite stopper of his prime, but we have to note that in the two games in these playoffs were New Jersey had played to advance (Game 7 against Florida in the first round and then last night), Brodeur has delivered 71 saves and allowed only two goals. New Jersey also played a clean defensive game, as the Flyers got just one power play—something their undermanned offense could surely have used more of.

And while we can give Philly an excuse for last night, we can’t explain away the entire dismantling New Jersey put over the past week. Forwards Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk were solid all series long, and last night was no different. Parise wasn’t able to get on the board, but he was active with five shots and keeping offensive flow moving. Kovalchuk delivered an early assist and then with a 2-1 lead in the third period, it was his slapshot with 15 minutes left that all but sealed the Devils’ advancement.

New Jersey now awaits the winner of the NY Rangers-Washington series and that goes to Game 6 tonight in D.C. The Capitals have pushed themselves to the brink all year and somehow pulled back safely and its do-or-die in the Verizon Center tonight. The media focus has been on how they gave away Game 5 with a foolish penalty at the end and the resulting power play enabled the Rangers to tie the game with seven seconds left and then win in overtime while the power play was still in effect. This is indeed a big story, but as noted in this space after the game, a bigger problem is that New York decisively outplayed Washington for the entire game, and only a great effort by 22-year-old Braden Holtby in goal made it a game. I want to see the Caps get Alex Ovechkin involved—he astonishingly made it through a pivotal Game 5 without taking a single shot. A big gun is worthless if it’s never fired. And I want to see the team defense win the battle with New York’s Ryan Callahan and Marian Gaborik and keep the two scorers off the puck. Because we don’t see those things, we will see a Rangers-Devils conference final, a rematch an epic battle the teams had at that level in 1994.

There’s still no date for the Phoenix-Los Angeles opener in the Western Conference Finals. I’m guessing Sunday, but nothing’s official. If Washington and New York need a seventh game that will be Saturday, otherwise my best guess is that the East Finals would open that same day. Whenever the schedule is announced, TheSportsNotebook will have previews of both series in anticipation of the first puck drop.

NHL Playoffs: Phoenix Joins Los Angeles In Western Finals

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The NHL’s Western Conference finals are set, as the Phoenix Coyotes finished off the Nashville Predators in five games to move forward to face the Los Angeles Kings. And while the Coyotes were reaching new heights for what’s been an embattled franchise, the Washington Capitals were reaching new heights in finding ways to torture their loyal fan base, as they dropped a heartbreaker in New York. TheSportsNotebook looks back on both games and ahead to Tuesday night’s lone game…

Phoenix 2 Nashville 1: The Predators did what they had to and hammered Phoenix goalie Mike Smith with 33 shots, while shutting down the Coyote attack and limiting them to 17 shots. But for the third time this series, the Preds got an unsatisfactory outing from goalie Pekka Rinne, who allowed two goals, while Smith turned back 32 of 33. It’s generally accepted in the NHL playoffs that not only does a goalie have to sustain his regular season level of play, he has to lift it. Rinne, one of the league’s best, went in the opposite direction this series, with subpar games all three times in Phoenix. Nashville is not a great offensive team—even with the 33 shots, the problems of depending too heavily on the defenseman showed, as Shea Weber’s seven shots were easily the most on the team last night. Phoenix is built around one singularly great goaltender who continued to carry his team. Nashville is built on a deeper team defensive concept, but that doesn’t work when it only takes 17 shots to score twice. Congratulations to the Phoenix Smiths—we may as well name the team after the guy—as they get set to host the first two games against Los Angeles.

NY Rangers 3 Washington 2 (OT):  Washington was seven seconds away from stealing a road win at Madison Square Garden and taking control of the series, when the Rangers tied the game and then won it a minute and a half into overtime. The Caps now trail this series 3-2 in games, and they’re a triple-overtime game plus seven seconds away from having closed it out in five. For a franchise desperate to win its first Stanley Cup and exorcise years of frustration, this one’s reaching new heights.  But we also have to acknowledge that as close as Washington came to winning this game, they were not the better team on the ice last night. The New York defense played its best game of the postseason, limiting Washington to 18 shots and astonishingly holding Alex Ovechkin without a shot. While Ovechkin did get an assist, it’s probably a bigger miracle they were seven seconds from winning than it is that New York finally tied it. Ovechkin’s non-activity contrasts sharply with Ranger stars Marian Gaborik and Ryan Callahan who combined for 12 shots and helped keep the pressure on Capital goalie Braden Holtby, whom they peppered with 38 shots. Cut the kid a break—to hold off that kind of sustained attack, most of it coming from the team’s best players all game long is almost impossible.

New Jersey can reach the conference finals tonight when they visit Philadelphia. The Flyers got word that center Claude Giroux is suspended one game for a hit in Game 4. Giroux is one of the NHL’s best passing centers and the key to a prolific offense. To take him away is like the NBA suspending Chris Paul from the LA Clippers. I don’t write this to say the NHL was wrong in handing out its sentence, but to illustrate how big an impact this will have on Philly. I would say that they’ll have to do it with defense and goaltending, but I don’t have a laugh track to insert here. Between a weakened Flyer team tonight and a home game in Game 6, if New Jersey can’t avoid a Game 7, they deserve to lose. As for Philly, you have to take all the problems and turn them into an opportunity—if they can win without Giroux, all the pressure goes on the Devils the rest of the way.

NHL Playoffs: Los Angeles Sweeps St. Louis

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The mind-boggling collapse of the St. Louis Blues ended yesterday afternoon in Los Angeles, as the Kings completed a four-game sweep and moved to the Western Conference Finals. In the East, New Jersey put Philadelphia on the brink with a Game 4 win. TheSportsNotebook recaps both games and looks ahead to another hockey twinbill on Monday night…

Los Angeles 3 St. Louis 1: Few teams looked less likely to see their frontline offensive talent step up in the postseason than Los Angeles, mainly because the key players hadn’t been all that great in the regular season. But no core group has impacted games more than Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown and Dustin Penner have for the Kings throughout their improbable run in beating the West’s top two teams, Vancouver and St. Louis, eight of nine times in these playoffs. Penner fed Jordan Nolan to start the scoring yesterday in the first period, and Kopitar was part of an assist to Brown later in the period, with both goals sandwiched around a St. Louis score. The Blues fired their best shots in the second period—or least the most raw volume of shots, as they got 13 of their 24 shots at Jonathan Quick in the middle period. Quick turned them all back and by the final minute of the third period Kopitar fed Brown for the empty net goal that clinched it. The Blues came to play defensively, limiting Los Angeles to 18 shots, but Brian Elliot played a bad series in goal at the worst possible time, while Quick is locked in. Sports in Los Angeles are riding high right now, with the Dodgers in first place and the Lakers and Clippers leading their NBA series. Even in the NFL, the possibility of the City of Angels getting a team again is back on the agenda. Improbably, the Kings have become a part of that good story.

 

New Jersey 4 Philadelphia 2: In yesterday’s preview the importance of Flyer center Claude Giroux getting re-engaged into this series was emphasized. I’ll immodestly claim credit then for motivating Giroux to come out of the gate firing, first feeding Scott Hartnell on a power play goal, then scoring a shorthanded goal himself. With an early lead and Hartnell also ready to play on the wing—he would end up with six shots—Philly had control. Then their defense kicked into gear.  Normally these meltdowns are at the expense of goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, but I can’t blame the goalie for the fact New Jersey got off 43 shots. It was a relative unknown in Mareck Zidlicky who had a goal and an assist to wipe out the lead before the first period was out. Then it was Dainius Zubrus who scored in the second period. Bryzgalov still hung in and the Devils didn’t score again until the final minute when Zubrus put one in the empty net. I often emphasize offensive activity in this space, so even though New Jersey’s meal tickets, Ilya Kovalchuk (can we have a limit on the number of guys named Ilya involved in the same series?) and Zach Parise both took four shots and even though they weren’t the ones that scored, I can’t separate their engagement in the action with New Jersey’s offensive success. The Devils now lead the series 3-1.

Tonight Phoenix looks to join Los Angeles in the Western Conference Finals. The Coyotes can close their series with Nashville in Game 5 in the desert. Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne looks to be back on his game after a bad first two times out, thus giving the Preds the answer to Phoenix goalie Mike Smith. What Nashville has not done in this series is decisively outplay Phoenix in the 5-on-5 game, getting high numbers of good shots, challenging Smith and limiting Phoenix offensively. The Coyotes are not a talented team, so this can be done—indeed, given how good Smith is it must be done if Nashville wants to play for the home fans again in Game 6.

And the most competitive of the second-round series, at least thus far, as Washington-New York, where hostilities resume for Game 5 in a series tied 2-2. Alex Ovechkin has taken some heat from the Ranger front office for leaving his skates on a hit in Game 4 and I would expect #8 to get a strong reception from the crowd at MSG. New York needs to be less concerned with Ovechkin’s hits, and more about the fact that he and Alexander Semin outplayed their forward counterparts, Marian Gaborik and Ryan Callahan, in Game 4. Gaborik is coming to life in this round. Callahan can’t disappear the way he did on Saturday.

NHL Playoffs: Ovechkin Answers The Critics

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Alex Ovechkin answered the critics who say his lessened ice time in these playoffs is the reason the Washington Capitals are still hanging around. In a Game 4 that was awfully close to must-win at home, Ovechkin scored in the first period to set the tone, laid a big hit in the second—and stayed involved in the offense throughout, as the Caps grabbed a 3-2 win over the New York Rangers and tied the series two games apiece in the lone NHL game of Saturday.

After falling behind 1-0, New York rallied behind Artem Anisov, who first scored and then fed Marian Gaborik for another goal, both sandwiched around a Caps score and the game was tied going into the third period. With five minutes to play and Washington on the power play, defenseman Mike Green scored what held up as the game-winner.

Washington won the battle of shots 26-20 and the fact four came from Ovechkin and four more from Alexander Semin tells you they were high-quality shots. Conversely, while Gaborik continues to start scoring, he was limited to two shots and fellow scoring forward Ryan Callahan was a complete non-factor. The Rangers failed to seriously test Braden Holtby, the kid goalie who looks more like one who had a magic two weeks against Boston and Tim Thomas, then a real Stanley Cup-quality goaltender. New York goalie Henrik Lundqvist continues to oscillate between championship-caliber and frustrating, a circumstance that makes me wonder how many heart attacks and nervous breakdowns the Rangers will be responsible for in the fan base if they keep this run going all the way through the playoffs. The human psyche is just not made to go and up and down that many times.

 

There’s two games today and the NBC game this afternoon at 3 PM ET is Los Angeles’ effort to close out a stunning sweep against St. Louis. Remember, Vancouver was able to win a Game 4 in the Staples Center with all the money on the table. Now St. Louis has to at least give their fans another home game with a win here. Then in prime-time it’s Philadelphia-New Jersey. As this series unfolds, the inconsistency of Flyer center Claude Giroux is becoming a storyline. He doesn’t need to score, but the offense has to run through him to be effective, so let’s see how active one of the league’s best passers will be against one of the league’s best team defenses.

NHL Playoffs: Los Angeles Keeps St. Louis Collapse Going

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There was more overtime in the East and more unlikely domination in the West, and Los Angeles and New Jersey won last in the NHL playoffs. TheSportsNotebook looks back on both games and ahead to Friday night…

Los Angeles 4 St. Louis 2: The Kings have a 3-0 lead in games, as the complete disappearance of the St. Louis team that won the Central Division remains the biggest mystery of these playoffs. If you base the size of a surprise on the seed (say that real fast—then try and imitate Danny Kaye’s performance here in the Court Jester), then 8th-seeded LA’s win over Vancouver in the first round would be bigger. But St. Louis was much better suited to avoid a playoff upset, with great goaltending and sound defense. As it turns out, the goaltending has been lacking for three games. For a series with two teams built on defense, it’s appropriate that it was Los Angeles defenseman Drew Doughty who stepped up the biggest last night. He and center Anze Kopitar combined on an assist for the game’s first goal. St. Louis tied it on a goal from Chris Stewart in the second period, but the Kings countered with two more, including a Doughty/Kopitar assist. After Stewart scored his second goal to make the game close, Doughty finished it off with a goal at the 12-minute mark. To me, the benchmark of a better team playing inexplicably poor in a playoff series—not just having bad luck, but seeming so completely out of it—is the Oakland A’s in the 1990 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. The Blues seemed determine to rival that, with Brian Elliot having forgotten how to stop a shot in the goal, with LA just needing 22 attempts to light the lamp four times.

New Jersey 4 Philadelphia 3 (OT): The Flyers scored first, with Danny Briere and Jaromir Jagr each briefly forgoing their scoring role to combine on an assist. But Ilya Kovalchuk first fed Patrik Elias to tie the game and then scored himself to give the Devils a 2-1 lead. Philadelphia tied it in the second period. Then Zach Parise scored on a feed from Elias, before Briere tied it up for the Flyers. The teams played over 17 minutes of overtime before Kovalchuk dished another assist, finding Alexi Ponikarovsky for the game-winner. I’m convinced the overriding theme of the series is that the New Jersey’s key offensive players are into the game. Between Parise, Kovalchuk and Elias you’re getting constant offensive activity, and if that continues to hold, the Devils can make up for the Flyers’ overall offensive talent edge. Elias has outplayed rival center Claude Giroux, who was not heard from last night and the Philly offense works best when Giroux, one of the best passers in the league is at the heart of it.

The sequence of Game 4s start tonight with Nashville hosting Phoenix and the home team looking to tie the series. Phoenix goalie Mike Smith had a poor game in Game 3 after what’s been an otherwise impeccable playoff run. Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne broke a string of two bad games to start this series with a big performance in Game 3. I sense a great Smith-Rinne battle in the works tonight.

Flyers Go OT For Game 1 Win

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Philly-New Jersey was the last of the NHL’s four conference semi-final series to swing into action on Sunday, but the Flyers and Devils made it worth the wait, going into overtime and requiring the puck to find the back of the net not once, but twice in the extra session. TheSportsNotebook recaps Sunday’s games and looks ahead to Monday…

Philadelphia 4 New Jersey 3 (OT): The Devils got off to a good start when two players that need to be involved teamed up on a goal, as Zach Parise took a pass from Patrick Elias. Incidentally, I have to know if I’m the only person, who, whenever I hear of an “Elias” in the Jersey/Big Apple area thinks of the fictional mob boss in Person Of Interest. There are more nuances in his story than there is in this series. Back on the hockey rink, Philly opened up in the second, including a goal by Danny Briere, and got out to a 2-1 lead. Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk then fed Travis Zajac to tie the game. Again, a positive for the New Jersey offense as more players that are critical to their attack are showing up ready to go.

What wasn’t a positive for the Devils, is that their team defense lost what’s going to be a great series-long battle with the Flyers’ offense. Philadelphia got 36 shots on goal, and including seven in less than five minutes of overtime play. Goalie Martin Brodeur will not stand up to that kind of heat, and eventually he broke here. Center Claude Giroux scored on a power play in the third period, although the Devils were able to tie it 3-3. The NJ offense wasn’t great, getting 26 shots, but that’s enough to get you three goals a game against mediocre Flyer goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. In the OT session, Briere scored what looked to be the game-winner, until replays showed he kicked it into the net. Undeterred, Briere calmly did it again minutes later and Philly had Game 1 in hand.

I picked New Jersey to win this series and if they continue to get this kind of offensive involvement from Parise, Kovalchuk, Elias and Zajac, I think they’ll figure their defense out. But the Flyer offense showed they won’t pull a Vancouver and slink quietly into the night.

Phoenix 5 Nashville 3: The Coyote coaches and players called this their best performance of the playoffs, and they are absolutely right. Playing against a very good defensive team and an even better goalie, Phoenix attacked the net, got 39 shots and was able to finish, overcoming an uncharacteristically mediocre showing from their own goalie Mike Smith. But at some point in these playoffs, the ‘Yotes were going to need a win that didn’t come on Smith’s back. Antoine Vermette scored an early goal, and then Phoenix broke open a 1-1 tie with three goals in the second period. Offensive key Radim Vrbata scored and had an assist, while veteran Shane Doan scored. Nashville got some offensive involvement from Ryan Suter, who scored in the second period to keep it close at 3-2 and scored again in the third to cut the lead to 4-3. But Doan—whose last name is pronounced “Don” and has been dubbed “Doan Of The Desert” by Grantland’s hockey writer Katie Baker, scored again and we had the 5-3 final. If this was. Nashville has played two lackluster hockey games to start the series. Perhaps a return home for Games 3 & 4 will alert them that their situation is getting dire in a hurry. This is the one series with two games in, and Phoenix is halfway home.

Tonight’s it’s Washington-NY Rangers and LA Kings-St. Louis. TheSportsNotebook has stressed offensive involvement from key players, even when they aren’t scoring and both the Caps, with Alex Ovechkin and the Rangers, with Marian Gaborik, have players who need to get active. The Kings-Blues is the more defensive-oriented series and I’m just looking for the favorite Blues to play more cohesive defense in a series where there is no margin for error.

NHL 2nd Round Preview: New Jersey-Philadelphia

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The I-295 Interstate that connects New Jersey and Philadelphia will anything but the road less traveled over the coming week-plus. The Devils and the Flyers are set to tangle in the NHL’s Eastern Conference semi-finals and TheSportsNotebook previews the coming Border War…

Philadelphia has home-ice advantage, holding the #5 seed, while New Jersey is #6. The Flyers are the more rested team, having closed their series win over Pittsburgh out last Sunday while New Jersey went to double overtime just last night to win Game 7 in Florida. But while the Flyers may have been the one Eastern Conference semifinalist not to go the distance to win its opener, they were anything but impressive.

Goaltending problems are not new in Philly, but now that they don’t have Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury to beat up on, the Flyers are left with the reality that their own netminder, Ilya Bryzgalov, was woeful in the first-round series, as Philly and Pittsburgh played what was easily the worst defense in the postseason. Furthermore, Philadelphia did not execute well in the five-on-five game, relying instead on hammering the Pens with power plays. The negative to this is that’s not going to work against New Jersey, a team whose penalty kill is among the league’s best. The positive is that the Flyers’ poor play in 5-on-5 is a departure from an area that was a team strength all year along. Perhaps it was just a one-series aberration.

One area the favorites have no problems in is scoring goals, an area that holds a substantial edge over their rivals. Philly’s offense was the second-best in the NHL during the season, while Jersey was in the middle of the pack. The Flyers do a proportionately excellent job at shot generation, while the Devils are terrible in this area. With center Claude Giroux being one of the game’s best passing centers, and Scott Hartnell and Jaromir Jagr on the wings, Philadelphia will challenge a New Jersey defense that is equally strong at stopping shots.

New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur was heroic in his team’s Game 7 win over Florida, but the Devils’ defense must return to more of its regular season form against Philadelphia. Stopping 40-plus shots against a weak Florida frontline is one thing. Doing it against a Giroux-led attack is quite another. The Devils were one of the league’s better defensive teams because they were precisely that—a team—and they will need to be again if they’re going to stop this offense.

I don’t pick bad defensive teams to win at this level of the playoffs in any sport, much less the NHL. So I’m picking New Jersey to win this series, but if they’re going to take advantage of Philly’s lousy goaltending situation they need to stay on the attack.

The Devils’ have capable scorers. Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise are the most noteworthy and the ones I mentioned most frequently through the first round, but we can also include David Clarkson, Adam Henrique and Petr Sykford as nice supporting pieces. The Flyer defense around the net is not bad—they are in the league’s upper third in preventing shots and certainly you can’t beat a goalie if you’re not attacking him. There were too many instances where New Jersey’s key people seemed to float in and out of the Florida series and they were fortunate to escape. I think they come out more consistent this time and win the series in six games, but if there’s any letup, the Flyers have the talent to exploit what the Panthers couldn’t.