toby91_ca

I'm watching, it deflected off the glass, not an Ottawa stick.....at least that was the call. On the replays, the top of the glass where the puck went out was out of the picture, so you can't tell.

I agree, the whole intet to blow the whistle is crap, but the only issue I have is this: What if the goalie covers the puck, but before the whistle blows, someone pokes at his glove and the puck ends up in the net? I think a better rule on this is needed, but I still think there will be some challenges.

Not sure if everyone saw the play, but pretty amazing that they called that back. The call on the ice was a goal, so in order to call it back, you needed conclusive evidence. If you look at the video, I find it impossible to call that back, but someone did. I would even suggest that if the call on the ice was no goal, you'd change it to a goal because it was pretty clear that there was no kicking motion.

No fans are more paranoid than Wings fans. Nucks fans appear to be trying to mount a challenge, but they have a way to go yet.

Anyone see this? Unbelievable. Essentially the same thing Ovechkin did last playoffs...except he didn't go down. He went a step further than Ovechkin though by checking for blood several times, I couldn't help but chuckle at that part a little bit, he put the extra effort in.

Brutal by Boyle, but just as bad by Nabokov as well.

Different jersey as well

I would tend to agree with you if this was an embellishment, but it wasn't. Pretty much everyone embellishes, it's part of the game and happens multiple times a game, but there's a difference between embellishment and faking. If he got nicked ever so slightly in the face and he makes it looks worse than it actually is, that's fine, but when he isn't touched (not even within a couple feet) and he "pretends" that he was and proceeds to even check for blood, well, not sure I could say I don't have a problem with that. Coming from someone like Carcillo makes it even more annoying.

Really? I'm not even sure his mother loves him. 3rd meeting in the playoffs for these 2 teams, pretty good forumla for building hate....although, I believe Crosby commented after game 1 that the Pens didn't seem to hate them enough, doesn't look like a problem now.

Heard some talk regarding possible fine.

Cross checks like that happen 100+ times a game and rarely get called. The only reason it looked like a bad one was because of hte dive by Ruutu.

He didn't even play in the 1937 playoffs. My personal opinion...based only on what I can tell from stats and other stories as I've obviously never seen him play, he never should have had his number retired in the first place. HOWEVER, he did have his number retired and becuase of that, it should still be honoured as such, regardless of what new owner may think. Think about it this way: If the team gets sold and a new owner comes in and decides he doesn't want to have Howe's and Yzerman's numbers retired anymore......what would you think?

A ref trying to impact a game is more believable, the league itself trying to fix games....not so much. If you really think about it, the league as a whole makes more money if the Wings move on rather than Phoenix, so I'm not sure why the league would try to fix it such that Phoenix advances. There's more to it than that and there are likely reasons the league would want Phoenix to move on, but to think that the league itself would actually try to pull strings to make that happen is beyond rationale.

To be honest, on that play, Helm really looked to be trying to buy a call there. Had it been Crosby, everyone would be calling him a diver. There is always interference type plays on face offs and sometimes there are calls and sometimes there are not. The key is positioning. If you have position on a guy, they generally give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to "defend" that position - to me, it's still interference, but I can understand the logic. They'll call the intereference, which I've seen several times off draws, when a guy is about to get a step on you and you impede his progress ever so slightly.

Not sure, NHL.com has stats going back as far as 1997/98, since then, the closest has been Dallas at #1 PP, #2 PK. Detroit was #1 PP, #3 PK in 2006.

My personal opinion....it was a brutal shot by NHL standards, which is good because I think that was part of the reason it went in. If it was a bullet shot, I think it gets stopped without much problem, but I think Bryzgalov was a little mixed up by it.

You can either complain by looking at stats, or complain because you watched the games, you can't have it both ways. If you watched the Pens vs. Caps series last year, you would have seen domination by the Pens, the only reason it went 7 was because of Ovechkin and Varlamov (or however you spell his name). Washington took more penalties, but they were deserved, not sure what else you can say. If you simply want to look at the stats, then you'd look at last night's game and see that Phoenix had 7 penalities called against them and Detroit only had 5. Take whatever view you want, but you look silly looking at things different ways to suite the beef you are going with. The missed high stick was a bad call, no doubt, but bad calls happen. The interference on Kronwall was legit, not sure what the compaint is there. Fact of the matter is, sometimes a guy gets hit in the face with his teammates stick and it's called, some high sticks just aren't seen and others are legitimate penalties but the refs think it was a teammate.....calls get blown. I'm not going to go as far as to say the refs are bad, because I know hockey is the most difficult sport to officiate. Everything is happening so fast and the puck is moving so fast. We all get the benefit of slow motion replays that we can point to and judge the refs, but they are calling in full speed and usually out of the corner of their eyes, not staring at the full play on screen just looking for something they missed. I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but it's year after year, after year complaining about the refs and it is getting downright sickening. I've seen other fans of other teams start to complain only to have someone say that they are starting to sound like Wings fans. It's incredibly annoying to hear, but if you think about it for a minute, they kinda have a point.

Hull would be an even worse choice. When I first saw this I was like...huh? I totally forgot he even played for them, which shows how important he was to the organization. This is really similar (not the same), but almost like retiring a guys jersey and Lemieux and Phoenix, this is so wrong. I'm with others in thinking this is just going to have the opposite impact they are looking for. Then again, I think that's more from a fan perspective, from the players perspective, I don't think it's really going to matter at all.

Would appear to be the case if he has only been awarded 4 playoff games over almost 10 years. I don't know him though.

So, I stumbled upon this by accident as I never, never check Scott Cullen's ranking as I find them very meaningless, but I was looking at a list that showed his top goalies for the playoffs where he had Howard at #1, Theodore at #2, etc. Miller was way down at #7 or #8. Washington is a very strong team, but they have weaknesses, which are clearly defense and goaltending, so having Theodore at #2 caught my eye, so I wanted to see how he came up with this. Anyway, I haven't found the source yet, but link I followed brought me to this (which has nothing to do with the goalies from what I can tell: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=317808 If you scroll down to where he starts showing team by team and impacts of guys in and out of the line up, I found it extremely strange why one of his parameters was that a guy had to miss at least 11 games....11, really? Not something like 10, 15, etc., but 11? The reason I bring up the Ovechkin bias is that if he had a of used 10 games for example (a nice round number), you would have seen Ovechkin on the list and it would have shown him on the minus side (i.e. team had better record without him in the line up). Did he purposely go with 11 games to make sure Ovechkin and his 10 missed games woudln't be included? I'm not sure, but I have absolutely no freakin idea why a cut-off of 11 games makes any logical sense.

A little far fetched that Ovechkin would have 28pts while the next leading scorer on the team has 15pts or fewer.

Bad missed call, yes, but Pens fans would point out the 2 times Zetterberg covered the puck in the crease....technically should have been penalty shots. I very, very rarely spend anytime on other team's boards (I read the Leafs board quite a bit when Donald MacLean was in their system), but I do occassionally check in during the playoffs. I can tell you that the Pens fans were not happy at all about the officiating last year. During the atual games, in the heat of the moment, I get pissed when bad calls are made or missed, but at the end of the day, I generally sit bak and understand that these things happen, you don't have robots out there that see everything and automatically make calls. Here's something to think about.......as a fan, if you finish watching a series and you the officiating was pretty good, there is probably something seriously wrong. That's just the way it goes, as a fan, you are unable to be anything but biased for your team.

Technically, Detroit (19-14-8) = 19 wins, 22 losses and Colorado (19-6-6) = 19 wins, 22 losses, have losing records on the road as well.

He meant only 4 made the playoffs back when there were only 6 teams in the league, so making it to the Finals 3 years in a row was a heck of a lot more likely. He didn't mean that only 4 of the Original 6 teams made the playoffs this year....although, that's true. Edit: at least I think that's what he meant.

Is there really a difference between a guess and a prediction in this regard?