Sunday, April 26, 2009

Sun Stops in Sky, Cats and Dogs Live Together, Rangers Offended by Words

A lot of outlets have reported on the letter sent by Rangers General Manager Glen Sather to NHL Commissioner on the "egregious" conduct on the part of Capitals fans in Game Five at Verizon Center last Friday. The alleged behavior led, ultimately, to the suspension of Ranger Coach John Tortorella for this afternoon's game at Madison Square Garden after he tossed a water bottle into the stands, hitting a Caps fan.

Having read the language of the letter, we were struck by this...

"Throughout the game, several people seated immediately behind the visitors' bench took advantage of the looseness of the glass panels and the unusually wide gaps between the panels to assault the Rangers with some of the most obscene language imaginable. Because of the way the glass is installed, the patron sitting behind Coach Tortorella (the gray-haired, bearded man in the white T-Shirt) could literally scream into the coach's ear. According to Rangers trainer Jim Ramsay, one patron was screaming at the team, in graphic language, about whether Dan Girardi and Marc Staal have a sexual relationship. This was within earshot of several children seated nearby. Several other fans also made repeated homophobic remarks. Moreover, Mr. Ramsay reported that he and other bench personnel were spit on by one or more "fans" as they yelled through the gaps in the glass."

It reminded us of a line offered by the comedian Lewis Black, who knows something of New York linguistic traditions...
“In New York City, f*ck isn’t a word—it’s a comma.”
Maybe Glen is looking to have the league spot the Rangers two goals for Game 7 on Tuesday.

We've heard it all.

Morrisonn Bites Dubinsky -- The Visual Evidence Is In


There you have it...Shaone Morrisonn done bit Brandon Dubinsky's arm clean off at the elbow, but trooper he is, Dubinsky soldiered on (as depicted here with Brooks Laich about to lose his pre game meal at the sight of the wound).

Eastern Conference Quarterfinals Game 6: Caps 5 - Rangers 3


.735

If you’re a hitter in major league baseball, that’s a helluva slugging percentage. If you’re an NBA basketball player, it’s a passable free throw shooting percentage. If you’re an NFL quarterback, it’s a fantastic completion percentage.

If you’re an NHL goalie, and that’s your save percentage, you suck.

And yet, that is Henrik Lundqvist’s save percentage (nine goals allowed on 34 shots) in the last two games, the latter being a 5-3 win by the Caps to force a Game 7 on Tuesday night at Verizon Center. He was pulled in both contests, the first time in his career he was pulled in consecutive games.

One could say that the Caps have found that hole they’ve been looking for on Lundqvist – high glove (gee, as if there isn’t a goaltender who can’t be beaten there), but that would be simplistic. What the Caps have done is create space for shooters to get shots off before Lundqvist can get square to the shot. And, the Caps have crowded Lundqvist’s crease to manage getting opportunities from in tight.

Of the former, nothing illustrated that more than the first two Capitals goals of the game. Milan Jurcina scored the first of them when he collected a pass and without a Ranger impeding the path launched a shot past Lundqvist on the glove side. But that was merely the end of a process. It started with Brooks Laich harassing Nikolai Zherdev along the far wall, enough that Zherdev coughed up the puck, whereupon Matt Bradley took control of it, sidestepping Zherdev and nudging the biscuit down the wall to David Steckel. With his back to the play, Steckel flicked the puck to Laich, who had circled back into the play. Laich slid it across to Jurcina, and before defenseman Paul Mara could recover to get into the shooting lane, Jurcina let fly for the goal. It started with pressure in the Ranger zone and kept the defense from establishing their shot blocking stance that has been so important to the Rangers in nullifying the Caps offense for much of the series.

The second goal – off the stick of Mike Green – involved the sort of random chance that occurs on power plays. Tom Poti backpedalled with the puck from the left wing point to the top of the Ranger zone, then fed Alexander Semin in the left win g faceoff circle. Semin hitched, then fired, the puck deflecting out to Green on the other side of the play. No Ranger was in a position to challenge Green, and without that sort of challenge, Green launched a shot that beat Lundqvist…on the glove side.

After that, it was the Capitals’ transition game that was on display. First, Marc Staal was pinned along the left wing boards with nowhere to go and no puck in his possession. It left Dan Girardi alone to defend a 3-on-1 breaking the other way, Tom Poti leading David Steckel and Boyd Gordon the other way. Poti fed Gordon in the middle, who pushed the puck off to Steckel, who threaded a pass to Poti at the near post, and it was all over before Lundqvist could step back across to keep the puck out of the net.

The second instance was much more basic. Tom Poti collected the puck in the far corner of the defensive zone and pushed it ahead to Viktor Kozlov at the Capitals’ line. Kozlov skated out of the zone, pushing Marc Staal off as he sped (or at least as much as Kozlov “speeds”) toward the Ranger end. At the Ranger line, Kozlov pulled the puck inside, and Staal got his feet scrambled, allowing Kozlov to cut for the net. Just before crashing into Lundqvist, Kozlov lifted the puck over the sprawled goalie, and the rout was on.

All that was left was a pretty deflection by Alex Ovechkin of a Tom Poti drive, and some window dressing stat padding for the Rangers. And all of a sudden, from a 3-1 hole, the Caps have a chance – a chance, mind you – to win a game 7 for only the second time in franchise history after being down 3-1.

Other stuff…

- Nikolai Zherdev was, to be charitable, awful. Between his shying away from a Brooks Laich hit that led directly to the Jurcina goal to missing an open net on a backhand when the score was still only 3-1 nine minutes into the second period, Zherdev had a difficult time. For the series he has no points and is a minus-3.

- Scott Gomez had a nice deflection off a Wade Redden shot from the point for a Ranger goal and assisted on a goal by Ryan Callahan, but he continued his own difficulties, finishing the afternoon having been on the ice for two goals – going minus-2 – and losing 11 of 19 draws.

- Much was made at the start of this series about Marc Staal and Dan Girardi getting the assignment of defending the Caps’ big guns. That defensive pair was on the ice for goals three, four, and five for the Caps.

- Let’s face it though…eight power plays allowed (including two 5-on-3 situations) is a recipe for disaster against most teams, even the Rangers in a Game 7. The Caps took a whopping 11 minor penalties and spent a total of 12:29 shorthanded.

- OK, so… a Shaone Morrisonn hat trick is what… a hit, a penalty, and a chomp?

- Simeon Varlamov has been very good. He hasn’t been called upon to be great, at least not very often, and today was another case in point. In the five games in which Varlamov has played, he has faced only 130 shots. Today he faced 32, but only allowed one goal on the first 24 shots he faced, when the game was still in doubt, and only 23 shots came at even strength. The Caps have been playing pretty well in front of him. But his stop on Brandon Dubinsky on a 2-on-1 after Dubinsky screwed John Erskine into the ice at the blue line with a move was huge. The Caps scored the first goal of the game immediately after the ensuing TV time out.

- The Rangers have a total of six goals on those 130 shots, half of them coming in this game, and two of those long after the competitive portion of the afternoon had been completed.

- In the past two games Alex Ovechkin has played “only” 20:21 and 20:50 of ice time. As if he needs more energy.

- At the other end, John Erskine passed the 20 minute ice time mark for the first time in the series. It was the most ice time he’s had since getting 21:21 against Pittsburgh on January 14th and is the second highest ice time mark he’s had this year.

- The Rangers were 5-for-18 on defensive zone draws. Wrong way to stop a team that has found its offensive stroke.

- This was the first four-point game for Tom Poti since February 19, 2004, when he registered four assists as his Rangers beat the Islanders, 6-2. Surprisingly, Poti was not one of the three stars of that game (Jaromir Jagr, Matthew Barnaby, Mike Dunham).

- Picking up on a theme we noted in the pregame, Henrik Lundqvist is now 1-5, 3.99, .870 in playoff games past Game Four of a series for his career.

- We’ll be very surprised if Donald Brashear dresses for Game 7. The hit on Blair Betts was suspension-worthy. There just isn’t any way to sugar coat it or explain it away. Betts was vulnerable in open ice, did not have the puck, and got blindsided by Brashear. It was an ugly footnote to an otherwise excellent Capitals performance on the road.

- It’s worth noting that Brashear’s day ended, not on the Betts hit, but upon his taking a hooking penalty 3:53 into the second period. He served his time, skated back across to the Caps bench upon its expiration, and did not see the ice again.

Before the series started, Rangers coach John Tortorella said that “home ice only comes into effect in Game 7." Well, here we are. One game – in Washington’s arena – for the right to play in May. But this is, as we harped on early, first to four, not first to three. And that fourth one – as the Caps so painfully learned last year – is the hardest of all to win. We’re going to find out if that was a lesson learned well, because if the Caps play as well and with as much focus as they have shown in Games Five and Six, the ending should be much more to the liking of the boys and their fans than was the case last year.

Flyers Lose, At Least One Person Drowns Sorrows

You want to read that caption of the picture below (click on it for a larger view) and tell The Peerless it wasn't written by a bitter fan who had a long night?

The Caps are playing the Hickory Huskers this afternoon


We get it!

What a coaching genius John Tortorella is. The whole thing – the water bottle, the stick, the confrontation, even the dealing with the unruly player the game before…we get it!

Oh, how could we have missed this? Torts knows his team is an offense-challenged group of rag-tags up against the goal-scoring behemoth from South Bend Centr…uh, Washington.

It’s “Hoosiers,” all over again.

Torts is Coach Norman Dale, banished to the hinterland from his last coaching job, brought in to light a fire under a team in what might be his last chance as a headmaster. He had already brought in Jim Schoenfeld as an “interim” assistant coach before this series, Schoenfeld himself being a former coach who hadn’t been behind an NHL bench in ten years.

So now Tortorella goes off during a game, gets suspended, and has to turn the whole thing over to Shooter...uh, Schoeny, for this afternoon’s game.

The only thing that’s left for Schoeny is to bring the kids over in the last minute and tell them to “run the picket fence at ‘em.”

Just don't get caught watchin' the paint dry!

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!! -- Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game 6 -- Caps vs. Rangers

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!

It’s Game Six in this first round series between the New York Rangers and the Capitals, and with all the twists and turns it has taken, it seems as if this series began in November.

But today, we are thinking…”paper.”


That’s right, paper. In our never ending search for the horse that escaped the barn before the door was closed, we came across this site, and their award-winning design for a paper water bottle.

That’s right, a paper water bottle. If the Rangers had stumbled upon this idea, John Tortorella would have had a better chance of being behind the Ranger bench this afternoon. As it is, he will be sitting this one out, the victim, if you will, of a suspension from the league for heaving a water bottle into the stands at a fan who was suggesting that perhaps the Rangers needed to actually score a goal to win a hockey game. Tortorella, like just about everyone else on the Ranger bench, missed his target and conked a female season ticket holder in the noggin.

And here we thought “Propel” was a brand of water, not a how-to-use direction for the consumer.

“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough."

Cheerless?

"Hey cuz…"

Is that something you made up?

"Nope…Bruce Lee...'Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.'”

Ben Franklin?

"Nope...Chuck Norris...'The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.'”

And who said that?

“Horace.”

Horace?

“Yeah, he didn’t give me his last name.”

OK, we’ll forgive our cousin for not knowing of the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (even the Romans knew the value of teamwork – all their names seem to end in “us”). But there is a game to play here, and for all the side show pyrotechnics – Avery, Tortorella, yada yada, yada – it all comes down to one thing, and at this point one thing only.

Henrik Lundqvist.

If Lundqvist is not on this afternoon, the Rangers will not win. And now we’re getting into some pretty interesting territory for Lundqvist. And that territory is out in the deep blue, as it were, water of playoff series that go beyond four games. Including Friday’s meltdown against the Caps, Lundqvist has played in five such games in his career, and in them, he has been less “King Henrik,” and more “Hank”…

1-4, 3.51, .886.

And here is the ominous part for the Rangers. In a combined eight man games going past the Game Four mark, the Alexes – Ovechkin and Semin – have combined for six goals. In none of the games were both held without a goal. A small universe of games, to be sure, and Martin Biron -- against whom much of that record was compiled -- isn’t Henrik Lundqvist (although Lundqvist’s efforts in Games Five and Six look somewhat Bironesque), but the matchups will be in clear focus in this game.

For the Rangers at the other end of the ice, you have to hope – if you’re a Caps fan – that Scott Gomez does not revert to form for Game Six. In each of his four playoff years preceding this, Gomez was at least a point-per-game performer. He was on track for that after Game One, in which he went 1-2-3, but he hasn’t had a point since.

Chris Drury is a different problem. He came into this series with the reputation of being a clutch performer. But that is a reputation earned more for what he did before becoming a Ranger. In 114 playoff games before signing with New York, Drury scored 43 goals, 15 of them game-winners. In 14 games with the Rangers, he has four goals, two of them of the game-winning variety (including one in this series). If the Alexes are on at all, then Gomez and Drury have to answer if the Rangers are to stay in it.

Perhaps the wild card in all of this isn’t even a player. Jim Schoenfeld, who will assume the coaching duties for the Rangers on Sunday afternoon, has coached in nine playoff series in his own coaching career with three different teams, including the Capitals. Another ominous note for the Rangers – Schoenfeld has lost his last five series in the playoffs behind an NHL bench.

What comes to mind at this point is wrestling – a sport of strength and endurance, but also one of leverage. And the Caps have put themselves in position to exert and to take advantage of a certain amount of psychic leverage here. A franchise that has been victim, in the eyes of its fans, of misfortune over three decades, has seen the stars align to perhaps give them the advantage heading into Game Six. A player succumbs to the stupidity of selfish play… his coach chides him, sits him, then the coach goes off on his own adventure in temper… the impenetrable goaltender is found – and made – to be human after all…

If the Caps can get a lead in New York, it could be the last bit of leverage they need to wrestle control of the series away from the Rangers. It says here that they will…

Caps 4 – Rangers 2