FIVE of the league’s best six teams have already made it through to Round Two, with first-overall St. Louis still alive in its fight with San Jose. It’s the best news in years for the NHL, whose playoffs over the last half-decade have been riddled with too many early-round upsets of its most glamorous and best known teams.
We’ve never believed this more devoutly. While an occasional early-round upset can energize the tournament, the playoffs should serve to validate the regular season, not void its legitimacy. When big-time teams go out early, when the big-time names go out early, attention wanes everywhere but in the local precincts hosting the victorious underdogs. The playoffs become a national afterthought, if thought of at all, that is.
Beginning with 1995, the Devils and Flyers have clearly been the class of the East, dominating a succession of regular seasons, with one or the other winning the pennant in each of the last five years. Yet each has emerged just once from the conference, the Devils in 1995, the Flyers in 1997. In both 1998 and 1999 neither team could win so much as a single round, leaving us with deathly dull low seeds Washington and Buffalo, respectively, to provide Finals fodder for the West.
But now the Flyers and Devils have overcome the ghosts of springs past and seem on a course to collide again in the Easterns, five years after their memorable last dance. And with all of Detroit’s and Colorado’s and Dallas’ marquee names still skating, the stage does appear set for a tournament parade of stars.
The NHL needs this. The NHL needs a high-profile playoffs.
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BUFFALO: good riddance to the whiners, whose incessant crying over losing last year’s Finals on a debatable call would have been better received here if the team had been able to score more than one goal of its own in the last 174:51 of play against Dallas. So the Sabres were burned in the second period of the second game this year on a phantom goal? They should get over it, and so should the media people who seem to take great delight in ridiculing to an extreme the league they cover.
Mistakes happen. Officiating mistakes happen in every sport and in every league and in every post-season tournament. They’re accepted as a regrettable part of the game in other sports – home runs that don’t make it over the wall, critical first downs that aren’t correctly spotted, four-point plays that are phantoms – but in hockey, they are used condemn the NHL to ridicule.
The World Series is played in sub-freezing weather. The NBA is dragging its best-of-five first round out over 13 or 14 days for television-ratings reasons alone. Business as usual provoking only muted outcry from the media. But when the NHL runs into a scheduling problem, this is cited as evidence of the league’s inferiority.
So much bitterness from so many who write about the sport, unfortunately so much of it emanating from our friends in Canada, who wake up each morning with an agenda to hold the New York league office accountable for every blemish on the league’s landscape.
It doesn’t wear well on them.
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WASHINGTON: good riddance to the whiners, whose crying over the first-round schedule provided just the cover excuse necessary for the Caps to go out quickly to the Penguins. Three of the five games played in the series were played in Washington; perhaps someone can explain why it was the league’s fault the Caps could win only one of them.
Florida: good riddance to the whiners, who spent the series complaining endlessly to the officials when in fact the Panthers spent four games with players such as Len Barrie and Alex Hicks diving all over the ice and using their sticks with impunity after almost every whistle.
Without a playoff series win since advancing to the Finals in 1996, 1-8 with eight straight losses in the two years his team has made the tournament since that magical ride on the upset carpet, Panther GM Bryan Murray’s job is in jeopardy. With a long relationship in place with team president Bill Torrey, Neil Smith could well emerge as the leading candidate to assume the post if it indeed opens.
Question: if Smith were to become Panther GM, do you think he would trade Pavel Bure to the Rangers for Manny Malhotra and Pavel Brendl?
Question: if Smith were to become Panther GM, do you think he would trade Peter Worrell to the Rangers for Malhotra?
Would sure be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?
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GLEN Sather’s “No’s” aren’t quite convincing anybody, are they? But the Garden, which should know by now, had best beware of people who come to New York for the money, and for the money alone. Problem for Sather, who rules unchallenged over a fiefdom in Edmonton, is that his dream job, the one in San Jose, may not open up if the Sharks eliminate the Blues.
While the Rangers have not asked the Canadiens permission to speak with Jacques Lemaire concerning the GM job, the expansion Minnesota Wild have asked permission to speak with him about their coaching position. Seems that Lemaire, who has an excellent relationship with GM Doug Risebrough, his former teammate, is considering a return behind the bench. That explains what Lemaire meant when he said he was “scouting,” the first two Devils-Panthers matches at the Meadowlands.
Now that Pat Burns has somehow escaped the guillotine in Boston, would it surprise anyone if the Bruins inquired about the availability of Tim Taylor, a particular favorite of the coach? And with the Rangers needing to clear out space in the middle behind Petr Nedved and Mike York (not to mention Mark Messier II) to create ice time for which Malhotra and Jamie Lundmark can contend in training camp, would it surprise anyone if the Rangers were to accommodate the B’s?
NHL sources say it’s not true, but we keep hearing that the league is preparing to dismiss arbitrator Lawrence Holden, who ruled for the NHLPA in the first round of the Alexei Yashin grievance hearing. Even if he is dismissed, we’re told that Holden would still hear Round Two, the one that will decide whether Yashin owes the Senators another year on his contract or whether he becomes a Group II free agent this summer. The hearing on that issue is scheduled for late next month.
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FINALLY, we have no idea what to make of this, but we’ve been told that Jason Doig has already signed his one-year, $495,000 qualifying offer for next year. Perhaps the defenseman simply wanted to get a jump on his 2000-2001 AHL conditioning assignments.