Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Second Round Bad Blood

by Todd Maternowski

Howdy, hockey hombres: here's hoping you didn't put the kids' college funds on a shaky Caps defense to dominate in Game 7 last night. Last week we revealed how the league is conspiring against the most luckless franchise in team sports -- the Detroit Red Wings; this week, I was hoping to write a nice, sensible and considerate column extolling the simple pleasures of hockey life, when a mysterious ethereal elbow materialized out of thin air and slammed into me with the force of an angry Norse god.

After collecting my brain goo off the sidewalk, it dawned on me: this is perhaps the Most Contentious Second Round of the Playoffs, Ever. And by ever, of course I'm leaving out all those series in the 80s and early 90s which were marked by inflated goal scores and bench-clearing brawls. But try and find a second round (in both the NBA and NHL) since that hippie George Bush took office that's had this level of violence, controversy and ill will.

What causes all this bad blood? There's basically three ways a game or series can get out of hand: terrible officiating, lopsided score and/or 'finesse' teams being forced to play out of their element. The officiating argument has been hashed and rehashed in this column ad nauseum: when the refs are doing such a pathetic job --either by calling ticky-tack non-penalties or giving one team a ridiculous advantage in fouls-- the play will invariably get nastier, as the players lose all respect for the zebras and start to take out their ref-induced frustrations out on the other team.

Lopsided scores at the end of hockey games can lead to "message sending" final-buzzer team scrums and cheap shots and is fairly common. But what we're seeing across the NBA and NHL this season is a preponderance of the third element of bad blood: skill-dependent teams trying to take out their goal-less frustrations out with swinging sticks and elbows.

Let's break down the second round, shall we? Of course, when speaking of zany shenanigans and after-the-whistle hijinks, one must start with the Anaheim Slightly Ducks and the Detroit Red Wings, two teams historically known for cheap shots and obvious intent-to-injure penalties that are never called. In fact, my first experience watching a cheap shot on Sportscenter back in the day was a prone Sergei Federov, legally checked to the ice, taking a one-handed stick chop to the opposing player while Federov's butt was still on the ice: and thusly my first impression of All Red Wings was hewn into stone.

Little has changed about Detroit's on-ice antics, because as a team known for "skill" they frequently get away with third-degree capital murder on the ice; then whine uncontrollably when it happens to them. And this is why this is easily my favorite non-Stars playoff series in years: the Ducks don't even care about getting away with stuff behind the ref. They'll just punch you in the face, glare at you and tell you and the ref to do something about it. For four games in this series, that strategy has worked beautifully, three of which were Anaheim wins. The ending of Game 6 was just classic: Getzlaf pounding Hossa, baiting him into a "fight" before whupping the Goal-den Boy, while his teammates mauled whichever skill-first Wings they could reach without exerting themselves too much. And this was the actions of the team that won. Awesome, awesome, Ducks: just don't pull that crap on my Blackhawks next round or I'll curse ye with the fleas of a thousand camels infesting your armpits. That is, if they're not infested already: Pavel Datsyuk would know about that better than I.

And then there's Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes: by Western Conference standards, this series is not actually "contentious" --not with pathetic excuses for cheap shots like this. Or totally awesome shows of one-punch bad-assery like this. But the whining has been top-notch, not to mention the Italian-league-level injury-faking from Bruins big man Zdeno Chara. Not that I would accuse him of that to his face; unless he was wearing skates and I was in a car, yelling as I drove away onto a highway on-ramp. And even then, I'd switch cars a mile down the road, legally change my name and move to the highest, most inaccessible mountain in the world so he'd never find me. Wait, what's that? Really? Scratch that about the to-Zdeno's-face-thing, then.

I was going to mention the knee-to-knee hits, the ridiculous levels of frustration experienced by skilled players Crosby and Malkin in that Caps-Pens series, but that abysmal Game 7 pretty much invalidated anything cool about that entire series.

And it's best not to mention the Blackhawks-Canucks: not because my beloved Hox finally won something other than a draft lottery, but because the only bad blood in this series was the stuff flowing to your optic nerves as you were forced to watch the Canucks "try" to win every game 0 to -1. Oh wait, they don't give out negative scores when you're not playing the Wild? Might want to take a gander at adjusting that playoff "plan" there, Vigneault. The whole six-goalie thing doesn't work against teams that can, like, pass and shoot and skate and stuff. Added bonus: when the Ca-sucks were forced out of their six-goalie gameplan, it was fun to watch them get totally outclassed by a team that does things like "try". Playing not to lose = ever the plan of the loser. Just ask 2007 Dave Tippett.

As far as the NBA, I'm not a basketball expert, but even I have been entertained by the physicality of Lakers-Rockets and Mavs-Nuggets: having anyone, ever, call Mavs fans "hostile" is perhaps the most shocking thing since sliced bread. As a regular attendee of Mavericks games --and DFW sports in general-- I would call that an undeserved compliment to Dallas fans. Too bad the Mavs' series was cut short by extreme suckitude so early: a Game 6 in Dallas might've been just what this city needed to prove it's not the most milquetoast fanbase this side of Switzerland.

Allegedly there are other second-round matchups going in in the NBA's godawful Eastern Conference -- or maybe they just hand out first- and second-round byes to the teams with the most TV commercials. (The Lakers probably wish that they did)

That's it for this week's espousal of unfettered violence: tune in next week when I rail from my parents' basement against the on-ice injustices being done to the Blackhawks by the no-talent cheating thugs of Anaheim.