Thursday, April 10, 2008

Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Your 2008 Stanley Cup Playoff Preview

By Todd Maternowski

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we discussed the strategic merits of why and when the Dallas Stars chose to tank it this March: I was planning on dedicating this week's column to ways the league could --finally!-- increase defense [(a)all forwards must check in with a linesman before crossing the blue line (b) the adoption of a baseball-like "strike zone" between the chin and the knees where absolutely anything is allowed (c) no pucks, just senseless beatings], but as I was about to putter past the path of perfectly pruned purple prose, I heard the sky-shattering trumpets, the cloud-busting rumbling, the familiar tip-tap-tac of teeth hitting the turf, and realized it was finally the greatest time of year for hockey fans!

Tax time!!

Also, however, it is Stanley Cup Playoff time. A time when grown men with unwashed beards weep like 11-year old girls watching Mystic Pizza. The time of year when first-born children are traded like GE stock between desperate mortals and the suspiciously-receptive Gods of Hockey. A time when every hockey fan becomes a pundit, and can make playoff predictions as easily as they make microwavable mac-and-cheese. In fact, playoff predictions have become as much a Rite of Spring as the Sky-God impregnating the Earth-Mother (speaking of which, did anyone else suffer the effects of the Sky-God's coitus interuptus this week, and wake up to a truck covered in pollen? My whole neighborhood looked like the ravaged victim of a heavenly game of ookie cookie. More on that later.)

So without further ado, I will, of course, throw my considerable hockey heft into the hellfires of happy hunches, if only to show up the Error Queens of TSN and Sports Illustrated, who inexplicably always pick the wrong teams to advance to the Cup.

This time of year is a little hard on the adrenaline glands

Eastern Conference

Montreal Canadiens #1 versus Boston Bruins #8: As a backwoods yokel scraping out a sharecropper's existence in the great unwashed Hinterland, I rarely get to witness the epic-level hockey greatness that is the Eastern Conference. Not that I mind, considering all the time I'm spending driving my dust-covered tractor through fields of cow chips, which I also enjoy hurling great distances before plunging into ice-cold lakes as a member of the sausage-eating Polar Bear Club. So the only times I'm lucky enough to watch Eastern Conference teams is when they're on Versus, and this year I saw four Boston Bruins games. Four games is probably not a statistically-significant sample, but I will say this: for those few nationally-televised games, the Boston Bruins were the absolute worst pile of dehydrated vulture vomit ever to grace the ice. Even the Lightning and Thrashers looked infinitely better than the Bruins did on Versus this season. So imagine my surprise every week when I saw that the Bruins were in fact not 0-67-0, but were actually squeezing into the playoffs! They say that when I'm not watching, the Bruins "win ugly"... from what I've seen, those wins must be about as attractive as a maggot-filled disemboweled human corpse left bloated in the scorching sun. The Canadiens, on the other hand, are coached by mensch Guy Carbonneau, and beat the Bruins soundly eight times this season.

My Prediction: Canadians in four. Three and a forfeit, if I'm watching the games on Versus.

What Will Actually Happen: Canadians in four. Sorry, Bruins fans. Your team just plain sucks, and the days when a talentless team of clutchers and grabbers could advance to the Cup like the 2003 Mighty Ducks are long gone.

Pittsburgh Penguins #2 versus Ottawa Senators #7: It seems hardly fair that Ottawa should be allowed anywhere near a hockey rink after the huge embarrassment of the 2007-08 season, but for some reason the Sens failed to miss the playoffs, despite their best efforts. For a team that, talent-wise, should be Red Wings East, this team has taken the term "Suck Ballz" to new, previously-uncharted regions. This is a team that got shut out 6 times since January, a team that made a craptacular trade with Carolina that may have doomed both teams. Not surprisingly, the NHL talking heads loved the trade, but to those of us who have always had Joe Corvo in our fantasy leagues (ack! I've broken the Tony Kornheiser Rule: thou shalt not ever mention your fantasy sports team, else thou shalt look like America's #1 Douche) we knew that trading a puck-moving defenseman and smart, fast forward for a couple of salted mummies was probably not a good idea for the Senators. Of course, having one of the worst coaches in the NHL doesn't help, either. The hockey gods should take pity on the fans, and make this series as short as humanly possible, as any series involving this Senators team has the potential to be more horrifying than a machete massacre in a nursery.

My Prediction: Penguins in five. After going up 3-0 and giving up just two goals, the Pens will lose Game Four when Sergei Gonchar, on a shorthanded clearing attempt from behind his own net, banks it off Conklin's back and into his own net for the game-winner. The Senators will be pissed that their summer vacations are delayed by two days, and lay down in Game Five. [what, you don't think I'm being serious? Just watch: it will happen exactly as I spell it out here. And when you see that puck trickle over that line, and Gonchconk beseeching the hockey gods with a glance to the rafters, you will look unto me as a Prediction God, and come to me with all manner of Questions, and I will tell ye to bet everything ye owns on a Cincinnati Bengals Three-Peat).

Nothing, not even this fine-tuned sucking machine, sucks harder than the Ottawa Senators

What Will Actually Happen: Pens in five, with The Divemaster Sidney Crosby even holding back his graceful flops in pity of the abject Sens. There'll be plenty of time for diving in Round Two.

Washington Capitals #3 versus Philadelphia Flyers #6: I toyed with the idea of being the only major, credible media outlet to not mention Ovechkin when talking about this series, but honestly, I really do like the kid. And he may just be tough enough to survive this duck-shootin' gallery of a series intact, although with a gooned-up team like the Flyers you can never tell which players are going to go down with injury and which Flyer will receive a miniscule slap on the wrist. Boudreau's got this team buzzing, and this should be the series to watch in the East --especially if you enjoy watching guys in orange jerseys crosscheck defenseless Caps forwards into the glass while they're in prone positions near the boards, followed by said Flyer getting pummeled immediately afterwards 'cause he's too chickenshit to defend himself. Am I being too harsh on the Flyers? Actually...no. No I am not.

My Prediction: Capitals in six. Alex the Great shows that snivelling little mama's boy in Pittsburgh how to score a game-winning goal or three.

What Will Actually Happen: Flyers in seven. The Caps just aren't there yet, tho the league may step in and order the refs to give every conceivable call to the Caps in order to set up an eventual Pittsburgh-Washington dream matchup. That stain on Bettman's pants just got a little bigger and yellower at the mere mention of that series.

New Jersey Devils #4 versus NY Rangers #5: This is not the first time these longtime rivals have met on the field of battle. As many of you may recall, in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Strider/Aragorn defeats the Nazgul-led armies of Mordor en route to being rightfully crowned King of Gondor. History tends to repeat itself, and the 2008 playoffs will be no different, as the Rangers will have their way with the Devils in the fetid swamplands of New Jersey. The only question is: will this metaphor play itself out, and will the Rangers eventually be crowned as Kings when all this is over?

My Prediction: Rangers in four. They're not significantly better than the Devils, but this year just has one of those "Devils get swept in the first round" type of feels to it.

What Will Actually Happen: Rangers in six, as Jagr and Avery take a few nights off, defensively, allowing the constipated-for-goals New Jersey offense to escape with a couple of "hard-working" game-winners.

Western Conference

Detroit Red Wings #1 versus Nashville Predators #8: It hardly seems fair that a team like Detroit should get a bye week in the first round while everyone else has to continue playing hockey, but when you've put up that kind of regular-season numbers, it's hard to argue that the Wings shouldn't get a much-needed period of rest and relaxation before the second round of the playoffs.

My Prediction: Detroit in four. Although, Nashville could make it interesting, as their team of one-note cheap shot artists takes aim on the backs of some of the most talented players in the league, making the Wings' second round opponent (i.e., Calgary) that much happier.

What Will Actually Happen Wings in four, and Nashville's celebrated stable of cheap-shotters, star-runners and high stickers completely disappears into the ether and lets Detroit roll over them like a Jason Arnott-led team should.

San Jose Sharks #2 versus Calgary Flames #7: One of the advantages, or disadvantages, of writing this column on Thursday mornings is that, when the playoffs start on Wednesday night, I get to watch the games and adjust my picks accordingly. So you must believe me when I tell you that none of the four games last night affected my picks in any way whatsoever, and that I truly think the San Jose Sharks will, once again, bow out too early in the playoffs. As much as I like a team built and managed by former Stars executives, this is not a Cup-bound team: they have one guy that provides all their scoring, and if there is any one constant in hockey, one thing that you can time your watch to, it's this: Joe Thornton will completely disappear in the playoffs. He might score a goal, or he might not, since he averages about one goal every two playoff series. He'll probably get some garbage assists to pad his amazing playoff stats, and will probably be on the ice for all two minutes of every San Jose powerplay. And this is why the Sharks will break the hearts of television hockey pundits and Central Californians once again. It's getting to the point where Sharks fans would be better off with Scott than with Joe leading their offense. And having ridden Nabokov that long and that hard during the regular season --a season in which the Sharks padded their record by beating the stuffing out of the league's inferior teams-- is a recipe for playoff disaster. Last night's pathetic showing was no one-game fluke.

Most people look forward to their vacations: Nashville should be no different

My Prediction: Flames in five. This is a hard-charging bunch of puck battlers who will shove the fancy-pants Sharks off the puck at every opportunity.

What Will Actually Happen: Flames in six. Talent and size-wise, the Flames should go down faster than a Thai prostitute on a schoolnight, and the Sharks have a couple of guys on their roster who don't suck in the playoffs like Thornton, and who can steal a few games here and there to make it interesting. But in the playoffs, talent and size and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee, and the Flames know this far, far better than their tanned and rested California counterparts.

Minnesota Wild #3 versus Colorado Avalanche #6: This playoff series has actually been ongoing since about mid-January, when the four top Northwestern teams all decided to play an entertaining and educational game of King of the Mountain. The Wild --barely-- won that battle, and these two teams seem primed for the first round's only seven-game series, which in reality will seem more like a 37-game series. I'm not as impressed by Colorado as some pundits are --this is suddenly an old team playing a young man's game-- but they surely have enough in the tank to overcome and "upset" the Wild, who are traditionally playoff creampuffs. Against any other non-Nashville Western Conference teams, these two would be about as competitive as Sharing Day in third grade -- but against each other, they should provide plenty of OT excitement and a long series.

My Prediction: Avs in seven. Forberg's legendary diving ability leads to some early victories, but by Game Four his act is as old and busted as his surgically-reconstructed knees.

What Will Actually Happen: Avs in five. They're not really all that evenly matched as I like to think: any team with The Terrifically Talentless Todd Fedoruk on the Top Line is going to get creamed when the games actually matter. Plus, the Wild are one Ruslan Salei slew-foot away from losing Gaborik to injury in Game Three. And as it occurs on the Avs' home ice, Salei will of course not be called for the two-minute minor. The refs play by the Avs' rules when they come to Denver.

Anaheim Ducks #4 versus Dallas Stars #5: Finally, we get to the best series in the first round. It's a little disappointing that two of the top three teams in the NHL will be forced to meet in the first round, rather than in the Conference Finals, but that's what the Stars get for tanking the month of March. These are two far-more-evenly matched teams than most realize, and both are, on paper, primed for long playoff runs. Of course, only one will get the opportunity to play Colorado in the second round. It will all boil down to one thing: the Stars will win every game in which their powerplay scores, and lose every game in which their powerplay does not. Period. Anaheim has lost a huge chunk of it's top-notch forward crew from last year, and have replaced the skill lost with even more goonery and idiotic penalties. Fortunately for them, their defense and jet-puffed marshmallow of a goalie are up to the task of making up for their forward's moronic thuggery. If the Stars can cash in on the inevitable man advantages, the Ducks will be thrown off their game and lose. If Ribeiro and Richards crawl into a hole along the perimeter and disappear, the Stars will have another first-round exit, and probably a new head coach to boot. At even strength, the Stars outscored the Ducks 14-5 in the season series, but with these two teams and the NHL's love of NBA-style slow-motion, halfcourt games, you can't expect a lot of 5-on-5 in the playoffs anymore. The Stars will have to make the most of the extra man to squeak into the next round.

My Prediction: Stars in six. They seemed to own the Ducks this season when it really mattered, with one exception in the middle of January. Even with Pronger, Neidermayer and Selanne on the ice, the Stars still managed to completely embarrass the Ducks in their next meeting after that. And that was before Brad Richards joined the potentially-lethal offensive juggernaut.

What Will Actually Happen: Stars in seven. Actually, it will probably be Ducks in seven, but it's my column and I can warp reality as I see fit.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck. Tune in next week when I break down the best golf courses in Nashville, Minnesota, San Jose, and Anaheim! With an additional sneak peek at the Top Ten Best Suicide Booths in Ottawa!

Related stories

• Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Checking in on the First Round (April 17, 2008)
• Pegasus News Week in View: Runoff Election and Cancelled Flight Edition (April 10, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Hockey > NHL > Stars

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