Game Four Recap (Red Wings 2, Penguins 1)

No photo tonight, as none could adequately express the ridiculousness of giving up the goal that effectively ends your chance at the Stanley Cup while running around in your own end and failing to clear the puck out despite ample chance to do so, leading to Jiri Hudler's weak over-the-shoulder tally that broke the Penguins' back. And you can't even say the ensuing suffocation of Detroit's preventative trap made that second goal hold up; that 5-on-3 should have led to a goal, and when it expired, the carriage turned back into a pumpkin.

On a positive note-- the only single positive note-- the goal Hossa scored to put the home team on the board replaces Johan Franzen's goal in game three as the prettiest one in the series. He sold everyone in the building that he was going to go wraparound, but then at the last moment broke his wrist over and shoved the wrist shot past Osgood. I'll miss those great hands next year when he's playing for the Rangers or the Habs.

Game Three Recap (Penguins 3, Red Wings 2)

There was a seven minute or so stretch in the third period of Game Four that went end-to-end more than a dozen times without a whistle. The Penguins were leading 3-1 at the time and trying to add to their lead, while the Red Wings were pulling out all the stops to get back into the game. It was the most entertaining stretch of any sporting event I can remember seeing in some time. There were a couple of near-goals, several other shots and an endless stream of sleek skating and precise passing by two extremely talented teams. Of course, there were also four well-hyped checks...

It was the sort of thing you could never get from a football or baseball game, either of which can be fairly characterized as brief spasms of activity followed by a longer interval of talented people standing around waiting for the next spasm. Game Three remains on our DVR, and if the series goes the right way, I'll take the time to break it down more precisely.

Despite all that, only one of tonight's five total goals could be described as pretty to see. Johan Franzen's goal to make it 2-1 was a fantastic one-man effort to thread through the Penguins' penalty killers and surprise Fleury with a move to the net. The rest of the goals could be more fairly characterized as garbage goals, but they still count the same.

By the end of the night, we should know if we have a series.

Game Two Recap (Red Wings 3, Penguins 0)

Listen, I knew it was going to be a difficult series to win, but if you'd told me that through two games the Penguins wouldn't even have a goal...
The irony is that while several of the team's top players are very young, the number of underpaid free agents-to-be is so significant that the team has a very definite compulsion to win now because they can't keep everybody. I'm wondering whether this non-appearance by several guys in the Finals might keep the asking prices more manageable.

Game One Recap (Red Wings 4, Penguins 0)

So now we know how it feels. Here's a partial list of great offensive players who were nearly invisible during the first three rounds the Penguins played: Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Daniel Alfredsson, Scott Gomez, Brendan Shanahan, Chris Drury, Daniel Briere. About $50 million of goal-scoring on an annual basis, but completely inconsequential against the Penguins this year. But I can't remember anything of significance done by Marian Hossa, Petr Sykora or Evgeni Malkin in last night's game. Well, other than Malkin mishandling Fleury's clearing attempt and setting the table for Detroit's second goal which effectively ended the game. Two-goal leads held by that Red Wings team just aren't going to be overcome by anybody.

The game really didn't start out too bad. Although the Penguins failed to score on those four plower plays in the first period, the play was even. When Detroit came out for the second period, however, it looked every bit like they'd become convinced that they'd withstood the worst of the Penguins' offensive firepower, and they started in with playing their game. The Penguins obliged by making bad passes and failing to clear out the defensive zone. It was a little hard not to be disappointed with the softness of the Wings' first goal-- I'm guessing everyone at Joe Louis Arena other than Marc-Andre Fleury and everybody watching on television could see that Samuelsson was going for the wraparound-- but Fleury'd kept the Penguins in the game to that point, and it wasn't his fault that they'd been unable to do anything in the previous thirty minutes of play.

Therrien wasted no time in announcing new lines for Game Two. Getting Roberts into the lineup was a given, and if his impact is anywhere near his contribution in Game One of the Senators' series, then the Penguins will earn a split in Detroit. I like the other moves as well. Something needs to be done to jolt Malkin back to playing his game. At this point, he's avoiding contact whenever he can and largely staying out of the slot and around the perimeter. The Wings have something to do with that, but Malkin has to fight through it. It might look a little like Therrien's pushing the panic button a little too quickly, but if they drop the second game, he's still got time to make another move or two when the series heads back home.

The Stanley Cup Finals

The Penguins and the Red Wings fight it out in the Finals beginning tonight. The two teams match up well together, as both like to possess the puck and rely on skill more than grit to win games. I don't take issue with the majority view that the Penguins have an edge in the quality of their forwards that's probably not as significant as the edge Detroit has on the blueline. But like everybody else, I'm just anxious to see what the teams look like on the ice together, given that they haven't played a game of any consequence against each other for quite a while, and they have no playoff history whatsoever. But even if the two teams don't have a significant history with each other, I do have one with the two of them.

Back in January of 1989, for an early eighteenth birthday present, I received tickets to a Penguins-Red Wings game. It was my first opportunity to see Mario Lemieux play. ¹ And ever since I'd seen John Hughes stick a Gordie Howe jersey on Alan Ruck, I'd been an admirer of the winged wheel and was flirting with sports bigamy. We had an extra ticket, so I decided I'd ask to the game a beautiful and tall girl I'd been working up the courage to ask out for a few months. It would have been a bad idea to make that our first date, so the upcoming game put a deadline on me getting over my shyness and asking her out beforehand. We had dinner a few times and went to a movie or two, but the game was our first time spending hours and hours together.

Our seats were right on the glass in the corner next to the tunnel where the Red Wings came out and close to the goal where the Penguins shoot twice. With nothing but rounded plexiglass separating you from the players it's hard not to be dazzled by the size and speed of the players. The game was the sort of firewagon score-a-rama that would make anyone a fan and which stopped happening after the '92'93 season. I've been unsuccessful in tracking down a box score, but the Penguins won by something like 10-8. Lemieux was in the midst of his 199-point season and the Wings' captain, Steve Yzerman, was blossoming into a superstar around that time. But it's funny to think of the context of that first prolonged date. Hockey games are fairly raucous occasions, and not the easiest place to converse. We were at that early uncertain point in a potential relationship which, for two shy people, feels like a dance of carefully-chosen words and overscrutinized gestures. But we had a great time and saw a fantastic game. Next week, between games three and four of the series, that girl and I will celebrate our fifteenth anniversary.

Really, it seems pointless for me to make a prediction about the series, as I'm wholly unable to separate heart from head. But I'm also drawn to the potential to will this series to the conclusion I want to see, so I'll say the Penguins will win in six games, and then skate the Stanley Cup around the old barn on the hill.

The end.

1 I hadn't even seen #66 play on television. Around that time, there wasn't any significant television coverage of the NHL, even locally. Cable TV saw the light a year or two later, and all of the Penguin games have been broadcast on cable networks since the early nineties. Ironically, the local cable television situation regarding the Penguins is actually worse today than it was in the early nineties. I was able to watch every game of the Penguins' '91 and '92 Stanley Cup playoff runs on cable TV with local announcers, and couldn't have cared less that it wasn't being covered nationally. This year, every game from the middle of the second round on with the exception of two has been broadcast exclusively by the Outdoor Life Network, which isn't available everywhere in Western Pennsylvania.

Fantastique!

(Thanks, DL)

Just a reminder:

Here are the two goals which effectively-- though not literally-- won the Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992. The 1991 goal is still the best one I've ever seen.

Game Five Recap (Penguins 6, Flyers 0)

We have no way of knowing whether he'll lead the team to a Stanley Cup this year or any year, or whether Sidney Crosby will be able to ultimately make any significant dents in the NHL's scoring records. But here, today, at the age of twenty he's done something that neither Mario Lemieux nor Jaromir Jagr was ever able to do.

He's captained a team that beat the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs.

Sunday's game was about the best imaginable response to losing game 4 on the road. From top to bottom, the team went back to doing every last thing that had made them successful over the first thirteen playoff games. They played good defense, won the battles for the puck and made sure the Flyers didn't establish any presence around the goal crease. Three plays in particular really stood out to demonstrate the team's attention to detail.

First, with the Penguins holding a then-tenuous 1-0 lead, the puck was dumped into the Flyers end to the right of the net. Biron made an ill-advised decision to try to play it, and didn't actually get to the puck too much in advance of Ryan Malone. Malone and Biron were both against the boards for an instant fighting for the puck, and in the process Malone's body pinned Biron's goalie stick against the boards. Biron took a shot at Malone, then hustled to get back into the net while giving up on dislodging his stick. If it was a penalty on Malone's part, it was far too incidental and unintentional-looking to draw a call. A moment later Malone fed the puck to Malkin, who stuffed in a wraparound that the stickless Biron was unable to stop.

In the second period, with the Penguins still up 2-0, a Penguin d-man made a breakout pass off the boards to Sidney Crosby, and all of the Penguin forwards had begun heading up the ice and out of the defensive zone. The bank pass caromed badly, though, and the pass was behind Crosby and right on the stick of Mike Richards of the Flyers. Richards was left in the slot with a fantastic scoring chance, but Crosby hustled back and pickpocketed the puck and sent it the other way. We've seen that move dozens of times this postseason by the Penguins. Marian Hossa does it so often it's like he's shamed the rest of the team into sneaking up behind the other team's puckcarriers and stealing it from them. Crosby sends the puck the other way and it leads less than half a minute later to his backhanded feed to Hossa for the one-timer that made it 3-0.

Third, in the third period, with a six-goal lead, Fleury makes the spectacular above-pictured save on Jeff Carter of the Flyers. The game wasn't in doubt by that time, but Fleury was as sharp as could be.

It's the little things.

Game Four Recap (Flyers 4, Penguins 2)

"Daddy, what does Crosby sucks mean?" "Oh, it's just something they say." Who knows how many of the 19,972 Most Intimidating Fans Innaworld joined in the chant, but it was enough to hear it distinctly on the telecast. But add that to the above picture, where the Penguins had just scored a fluky goal to cut the deficit to 3-1 in the third period. You can see at least one guy flipping them off, though the TV footage caught a moment before or after this picture where there were at least four or five guys gesturing. I rewound it three or four times just for the sake of schadenfreude. Let me be clear-- I'm not bringing this up so much to claim regional high ground. At the first hockey game I ever saw, on January 30, 1982 between the Penguins and the Winnipeg Jets, somebody'd hung a banner from the E Balcony that announced JETS SUCK and formally introduced me to that pejorative. And I've been to a Steeler game with my oldest daughter in tow where the Iron City boys break out a "Cleveland Sucks" chant moments before passing out on their way back to the stadium lots. It shouldn't happen anywhere, though. There's a clear difference between jeering that isn't profane and the sort of anti-social behavior that some isolated elements of the Philly crowd goes in for. And they love it all the more when somebody points it out. I suppose it comes with the territory-- I guess I wouldn't be talking about this if I was writing about, you know, Cannes now or something. But still-- are we human beings trying to be hockey fans or hockey fans trying to be human beings?

On the game itself, there's not a lot to say. The Flyers came out and played a fantastic first period. They didn't give up an early goal, got the first goal themselves and their power play worked just as they'd wanted it to work all along, with shots on net leading to rebounds and net-crashing garbage goals. Their power play and their offense overall hadn't had that mojo working since the early part of Game One, or it would be a different series. Defensively, the Flyers did a perfect job of pushing Crosby and Malkin away from the slot and toward the endboards when they had the puck, and Malkin alone was forced into what seemed like at least a dozen bad passes. Jordan Staal came to play, though, and if there's anything the team can take from the game, it's the fact that the guy who had the most cause to be distracted last night was one of the few guys who brought his best game.

This YouTube....Completes Me

Game Three Recap (Penguins 4, Flyers 1)

After the Penguins beat the Flyers last night to take a 3-0 series lead, a Philly beat writer asked Flyers coach John Stevens if the Penguins were playing a neutral zone trap. Stevens spat out his reply as if responding to an expletive and said that was exactly what they were doing. So when they're not benefiting from incompetent officiating, the Penguins are employing a soul-destroying and game-deadening style of play. No wonder he hates them.

He's exactly wrong, of course. Sure, the Penguins were rocking the one-forechecker 1-2-2 for nearly the entire third period, but that's standard operating procedure in the Stanley Cup playoffs when you're protecting a late lead. But the system they played in the first two periods, before it was time to kill the clock, is not the neutral zone trap, and it's a bit of an affront to call it that. It's the same way they've been playing throughout the playoffs, it's the same way Michel Therrien was making the team's prospects play when he coached the farm team for two and a half years, and he brought the same style to the parent club in December of 2005. It's just that only now-- two and a half years after he was hired-- has the team bought into his system to the degree that they can consistently play within it. It hasn't come easily. He's had to come down hard in particular, at least in public, on the team's defensive corps, by first calling them out as a group in public ("I really think they're trying to be the worst group in the league," he lamented during his first partial season, the 05-06 debacle), and more recently by exiling Ryan Whitney and Brooks Orpik to separate gulags of playing wing instead of defense. So the team is playing extremely well now, but they're not playing the neutral zone trap.

We know a little bit about what it's like to play the trap. After being beaten by the trapping Devils in the '95 playoffs and the trapping Panthers in the '96 playoffs, the team figured if you couldn't beat 'em, then blah blah blah and hired Kevin Constantine to coach the team beginning in the '97-'98 season. Constantine's two years and change behind the bench weren't a total loss-- there was a playoff series against the Devils in '99 that ranks as Jaromir Jagr's best playoff performance-- but the defensive style the team played was bland given the skill of the (mostly European) roster, and when the team got off to a lousy start, it was easy to make the trap the scapegoat. The team brought in Herb Brooks to pick up the pieces, and his comments about what he hated about the way the team was playing were pretty telling. The interwebs are failing me here in finding the link, but Herbie specifically said that what he hated about how the Penguins were playing under Constantine were that (1) the team never wanted to have the puck, and how can you score when you don't have the puck? and (2) that the team wasn't skating, and the object of the game was to skate.

How do I know you're not a neutral zone trap? Well, because if a neutral zone trap is about puck dispossession and non-skating, those are the last two adjectives you'd use to describe the 2008 Pittsburgh Penguins. It's a shame no one keeps a stat on puck possession. I'd love to see what sort of time-of-possession numbers the Penguins are putting up this postseason. Sure, it'd be tough to do, but watching just a period or two makes clear that the Penguins are a team that wants to possess the puck just about everywhere on the ice. They want it, and they want to keep it for as long as possible. Maybe that sounds ridiculously obvious, but in the modern NHL, it isn't. There are lots of bad things that can happen when you have the puck-- you can make a bad pass or have it swiped away from your stick and give up a scoring chance to the other team. One well-trod path to success for several teams has been to play a style that de-emphasizes puck possession and concentrates on making the other team possess the puck under the worst of circumstances by clogging the neutral zone passing lanes, forcing turnovers and looking for odd-man breaks. When teams that play that style come into possession of the puck where there's no layup opportunity, they dump-and-chase or make some other low-percentage play, and if it results in the other team regaining possession in their own end, so much the better to try to force another turnover. That's not this team; they know they can win if they keep the puck all game long, and they have the confidence in their passing, puck-possession and protection skills to keep it up. It's a style of play that requires making safe plays, lots of skating and relentless backchecking and forechecking, and it's a lot of fun to watch. The highlight video you can assemble from the '07-'08 Penguins probably isn't as thrilling as the one you'd get from the '92-'93 squad who scored like a Sega team, but the attention to detail is really worth appreciating. It takes talent to execute it, of course, but it also takes coaching.

Like every hockey coach who has ever lived, Michel Therrien has lots of detractors. They're mostly quiet now in light of the team's success, but they'll be back when the team loses a few games or starts slow next year or can't win in Nashville in January. For lots of the young Penguins who played under Therrien in the minors, he's effectively been their only coach in the pros, and it's clear that they buy into what he's saying. He's saying it in a fairly endearing form of mangled Frenglish, but when the Penguins hire a coach, we expect there will be communication issues.

After falling behind 3-0 in the series, the Flyers may be in a trap, but they're not being trapped. And appropriate to the 3-game lead, there are three things that stand out from Game Three. First, Marian Hossa's first goal-- the one being celebrated above-- on a seeing-eye shot off the rush that showed just how flatfooted Martin Biron and the team playing in front of him have been. Second, when Philly's Mike Richards-- who is entering Ron Francis territory with his two-way play-- stole the puck from Ryan Whitney at the point and swooped in for a momentum-changing short-handed chance only to have Sergei Gonchar hustle to get back and dive to knock the puck off his stick at the precise moment when he could both avoid a penalty and disrupt the scoring chance. It was a fantastic play from a guy who has been maligned at times for his defensive work. And last, the egregious Steve Downie turnover that led to Ryan Malone's goal to ice the game. Downie's made some costly rookie mistakes, but Stevens put him in the lineup twice hoping he'd make a hit or two. Oh, he can do that. He put a nice hit on Petr Sykora right about the time Ryan Malone and Evgeni Malkin were raising their hands to celebrate the goal. Contrast Downie with the Penguins' Tyler Kennedy, an undersized third-line plugger who never stops skating. Both are rookies playing in their first playoffs, but Kennedy makes the smart plays, never hurts his team and gets the occasional rush or check or Upshall-beating. The writers who get paid will say the difference in the series has been the Penguins' stars or the Flyers' injuries or the inconsistent officiating, but it's really as simple as the difference between Steve Downie and Tyler Kennedy.

Game Two Recap (Penguins 4, Flyers 2)

I know it was a win, and there was some resilience shown in not letting the Flyers build on the momentum of scoring short-handed to knot the game at two with less than half a minute to go in the second, but who played well for the home team tonight?

On offense, that is. Defensively, the entire team continued to play the system well. Pucks were cleared out of the defensive zone efficiently all night long, and that's more than the Flyers can say. Some nights, like tonight, that's enough to win. And the biggest difference between games one and two was that the ice seemed to shrink to half its size before last night. All that room to maneuver was clogged up by the Flyers. Malkin, in particular, seemed to grow frustrated by having a shadow all night long and took it out on Daniel Briere's neurological well-being. The reaction shots of Briere sitting woozy on the bench were the first occasion for him to get any face time in the series. Malkin's ill-advised sideways pass and the resultant goal could have put the Flyers back into the series if anyone not named Carter or Richards was showing up to score goals for them.

Meanwhile, on a night when the top two lines were contained at even strength by a fantastic defensive effort by the Flyers, the Penguins were able to get contributions from the third and fourth lines to push them over the top. Tyler Kennedy plays every shift like he wants to make sure he's never a healthy scratch, and he skated harder than anyone on the ice last night. Max Talbot's game-winning goal was just one more example of the Penguins' transition game opportunism. They pounce on every neutral zone or offensive zone turnover, but this time the fourth line finished it off with a grinding/cycling blue collar edge rather than the one-timers and other flashy stuff we've seen all spring from the top lines.

Sid played one of his best games of the spring and scored two goals, even if only one counted on the board. We could only hope the mouth-breathers who whine incessantly about the league setting the table for Crosby to walk to the Finals had a moment of cognitive dissonance when the no-goal was affirmed.

It's a long series with game-by-game adjustments altering the complexion of each subsequent game. I don't expect the Flyers to cage up the Penguins' forwards this effectively for four of the next five games. Playing that style limits their own offensive chances during the 66% of the time the Penguins' top two lines are on the ice, and I just don't think their beaten-up defensive corps can sustain it. Plus, at least one of the Penguins' big guns is going to have a huge game in Philly. I'm pulling for Sid to fill the net in Game Three and Malkin in Game Four.

Whatsamatter, Marty?

Game One Recap (Penguins 4, Flyers 2)

I'm not sure I can adequately describe my disgust when, at 5:45 a.m. yesterday morning, I unrolled the morning newspaper, pulled out the sports section and read this column, which begins thus:

Is it too late to pick the Penguins in three games?

OK, enough with the wise-guy stuff, but, really, is there any reason to think the series with the Philadelphia Flyers will go more than four?

I don't see one.

I'm sure it's tough for the guys who follow the Steelers around for ten months out of the year to come up with column ideas during the Stanley Cup playoffs, but this is shortsighted and a little embarrassing. From the Flyers' side, they lost the first game of both series they won this year, so they've been in this place before. In their first game against Montreal they gave up their one-goal lead in the last minute of regulation and went on to lose in overtime. It's not uncommon to lose the first game, or even to get beaten pretty badly, as part of the process of getting accustomed to a new opponent. The Penguins lost the first game of all four series they won on the way to the Cup in '91.

It also shows a lack of knowledge of the history between these teams. In Game Five of the 1989 Patrick Division Mario Lemieux scores five goals and nine points and the Penguins take a 3-2 series lead over the Flyers. I was lucky enough to be there, and I'll be a fan forever. The Flyers won the last two and the series. In 2000, the Penguins won the first two games of the series in Philadelphia. Then the Flyers won the next four (or five, if the 5-OT game counts as two) and put the Penguins away. So when I repeat the "it's only one game" mantra after this win, I really mean it.

And it's not like this game was in hand at any time, and was fairly up for grabs until Malkin's shorthanded goal midway through the second. I'm impressed that the Penguins kept the Flyers off the board over the last forty-seven minutes of the game, but they'll have to play even better in front of the crease if they're going to win the series. Critics keep wondering when Fleury's going to have a bad game, like the one Biron had Friday night. He keeps responding that he's not with momentum-preserving saves like the one pictured above, a sweet poke check that left R.J. Umberger unable to get a shot off on a breakaway that might have been his team's best scoring opportunity in the third period.

I'm a man with straight priorities, so I only got to see the last ten minutes live. I had escorted our middle daughter to the annual McKnight Elementary Father-Daughter '50s sock hop. The mp3 jockey started the night by giving periodic updates, but stopped in response to the outcry of dads taping/DVRing the game who wanted to remain agnostic. During one interminable round of The Limbo, a dull roar could be heard at one point out in the hall. On the scent, I wandered over across the hall from the cafeteria. In the room where my oldest daughter takes music lessons, the classroom television had been tuned to the Outdoor Life Network, and Malkin had just scored the shorthanded goal that brought down the house. It was something of an anomaly that he was on the ice for a lengthy period of the Flyers' power play to begin with. Crosby and Malkin have seen occasional end-of-penalty-kill shifts, but not a lot of early- or middle-kill shifts.

It's been one bone to pick with Michel Therrien. Whether it's because he's just trying to protect their minutes, or trying to keep them out of the way of obvious shot-blocking situations, he's been unwilling to use his two young superstars to kill penalties, and on those occasions when the team's penalty kill has struggled, it's hard not to think that even if something is lost defensively by using Crosby or Malkin for the PK, it should be more than made up in the fact that teams would have to play cautiously with a man-advantage to keep from springing the Penguins on a breakaway or 2-on-1 the other way shorthanded. Following their trend in this year's playoffs, all four Penguins goals Friday night were scored off turnovers Friday night, so the team thrives on opportunities to make its opponents pay for mistakes, and to fear making them.

So, Malkin even being on the ice for that much of the kill was anomalous. And the way he scored-- on a close-range slapshot-- was even stranger. The Pensblog described the standard etiquette of the close-range slapper better than anybody:

On a play that will get you beat up if you do it in your friend's driveway, Malkin unleashes a slapshot from about 4 feet away from [Biron].

Besides that, it shows ridiculous amounts of confidence on Malkin's part. Even the best shooters have slapshots go offline fairly frequently. But not this guy.

2008 Stanley Cup Conference Finals Picks

Some improvement here numberswise. I picked three out of the four series winners, and while I thought the two Eastern Conference series would each go an additional game, the Stars did, as I guessed, put the Sharks out in six. They just had to blow a couple of elimination games to do it. But all of that is undone by just how far off the mark I was in the Detroit-Colorado prediction. I don't know what to say. I guess I was suckered in by nostalgia for those great Avalanche teams of the late nineties and early oughts and the expectation that the Red Wings were warming up for another playoff pratfall.

I neglected to consider that when the Avalanche were getting the band back together, they were only able to scrape up half of Peter Forsberg and none of Patrick Roy.

I won't make the same mistake again. It feels wrong to pick against Dallas given what they've done this postseason, but Detroit's not folding this round. Red Wings in five.

In that other series, Penguins over Flyers in six games.

Game Five Recap (Penguins 3, Rangers 2 [OT])

That picture of the Penguins celebrating, with the Rangers consoling Henrik Lundquist in the foreground, is brought to us by Marian Hossa. Every time the guy misses a net these playoffs, somebody brings up his past failures or points out how much the Penguins gave up to get him. I found myself thinking midway through yesterday's game that for all of the great things he does, I can't see paying him $7,000,000 per year. Then there was that power play more than halfway through the second that put the Penguins on the board. Yeah, the goal he scored was great, but I loved even more his effort when one of the Rangers had apparently cleared the puck out of the zone. Hossa lunged out and slid on his belly to knock the puck back toward a teammate and keep the power play alive. It was the dive that killed the Rangers. Snicker.

We saw a lot of things we'd seen before in the series. With the last-change advantage, Therrien kept the Staal line and Hal Gill out against the Jagr line, and despite leaving it all out on the ice, Jagr had no room to operate and was shut down. The Penguins played good positional defense. Ryan Whitney may have misplayed that 2-on-1 that led to the Rangers' first goal, but otherwise the Penguins' blueline was really solid all series long.

Other photos:

Great Local Film News

I drive through Mount Lebanon in the South Hills maybe five times a year. Since 2004, when the Denis Theatre shuttered, every time I drove past it I thought for five or ten minutes about the possibility of buying it and reopening it. The thought always wore off quickly. For one, I'm not a South Hills guy, and so the theater doesn't have the sort of nostalgic or community attraction that it might if we were more often on that side of town. Secondly and more significantly, I have no idea what the future holds for film exhibition, and I don't know the business well enough to imagine how to stay ahead of the curve.

Good news: the Denis Theatre is comng back. It'll be a while, but it will be an indie and international house again. This is a fantastic development for the Pittsburgh film scene. I particularly like the statement about attracting nontraditional arthouse audiences-- kids and senior citizens. In the theatre that existed in my mind, I was busing vans of senior citizens in for wistful screenings of Singin' in the Rain between other programing.

Game Four Recap (Rangers 3, Penguins 0)

I'm of two minds about Thursday night's loss. Actually, I'm not. I wish it wouldn't have happened, despite the fact that I'll be at Game Five, and will be hoping to see a handshake line firsthand.

I hate to see the team lose a potential elimination game. The '91 and '92 Cup teams never lost when they had a chance to put somebody out. But maybe I need to broaden my frame of reference. I mean, is there any more playoff-savvy team right now than the San Antonio Spurs? They lost an elimination game earlier this week. And there are good losses-- the kind of losses that can remind a team that they're not going to be able to win on sheer talent alone night in and night out, that you're not always going to get the favorable bounce and that you've got to make your own luck by force of effort. Truth is, these Rangers games have been really close by most measures, with the Penguins winning the first three games because their special teams were significantly better, their goaltending was discernibly better and their puck-possession style was wearing out the Rangers, who often looked too old and small up front and too passive on the blueline. I'm still not convinced that any Rangers line other than the Jagr line can hurt the Penguins offensively, but if they can continue to shut down the Penguins' lines, it won't take much more than Jagr for the Rangers to make it into a series.

On Thursday George Vecsey wrote glowingly of Crosby and Malkin in The New York Times:

This rave is not merely about hockey. This is about talent, the kind of chemical reaction that happens when two potent forces are mixed together. Martin and Lewis. Torvill and Dean. Nuclear fusion. Something that wasn’t there before.

...

Right now, the Penguins are a pleasure to watch, the way they control a power play, flitting the puck back and forth with their teammates, wearing down the Rangers, a child’s game of keep away being performed in public, in the Rangers’ building, as they say in hockey.

...

Crosby is the verbal Canadian and Malkin is the more silent Russian, still learning the languages of the N.H.L., but they are equals when they join forces on a power play.

They bring back memories of the great young dynasty in Edmonton in the early ’80s, when Wayne Gretzky would tantalize with his otherworldly touch and Mark Messier would intimidate with his power and intensity. And then Glen Sather would throw them together on a power play, ice and fire, the dawning of a new age.

...

When they play together with a man advantage, they are downright pretty to watch, with their hipper-dipper moves, the control of the puck with their sticks, the alert passes, the crisp reversals of direction, often slightly quicker than their opponents, with little bursts of skill and intelligence, superiority coming out, breaking down the home team in front of despairing fans.

And he's right about the power play Tao. I was with the crowd who wasn't sure whether a power play with both Crosby and Malkin would work. You can't have two primary puck-possessors; if there's two guys on the ice who want to be the quarterback, it's not going to work. The Penguins gave away Sergei Zubov in his prime back in 1995 in exchange for a bunch of beads shaped like a late-career Kevin Hatcher, allegedly because #66 couldn't truck with his hogging the puck on the power play. But Crosby and Malkin have made it work. Crosby doesn't seem to mind letting Malkin be the primary puckcarrier, which frees Crosby up to get open for shots or to be the best decoy going.

What's funny about hockey is that some nights it all works swimmingly, like on Tuesday night when the Penguins scored that fantastic power play goal at the close of the second period which broke the Rangers' back. They possessed the puck in the Rangers' zone for long enough to wear out the penalty killers through patient, repeated lateral passes and waited for the opportune moment to strike. Two nights later, the entire team was off the mark. Their power play was out of sync right off the bat, when two early opportunities could have sucked the life out of the corwd and the Rangers if converted. At even strength, the passing lanes were clogged and Crosby was baited into turning over the puck several times. I thought that the longer the game remained scoreless, the better the Penguins' chance would be to steal another game by withstanding the storm. Even when Jagr scored his Jerry Maguire goal, I thought there was a better than even chance it wouldn't hold up as the winner. But when, a few minutes later, Malkin was hauled down on a breakaway and had to settle for the consolation penalty shot, I knew the moment he missed on his inexplicable slow-mo shot that something was awry, and we'd have to wait for Game Five.

April, 2008 Film Viewings

4/1 Michael Clayton (Gilroy, 2007)
4/4 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Burton, 2005)
4/5 Horton Hears a Who (Hayward and Martino, 2008)
4/16 Housewife (Green, 1934)
4/19 Walk Hard (Kasdan, 2007)
4/20 The Yakuza (Pollack, 1974)
4/25 Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984)
4/26 Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)