Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Somebody pay the baby sitter ( thanks Sweden) Canada reclaims stop spot
Icing their youngest team ever and with a couple of shaky starts at the beginning, Team Canada jelled – to say the least – and picked up another gold medal at this years edition of the World Hockey Championships played in Russia. Granted its not a tournament that the whole hockey world stops and watches but the hockey is still very spirited and high quality and recently it’s been a breeding ground for medals for Canada and that’s never a bad thing.
The recent trend has seen Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton, Sydney Crosby and now Rick Nash lead Canada. Crosby is the only one of that group that did not win gold but he did lead the tournament in scoring and he was voted the top forward. That’s a nice feather in the cap for Nash, the former Rocket Richard Trophy winner who has seen his goal total drop in each of his past two NHL seasons since he copped that award in 2004 along with Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk. Nash’s second goal of the gold medal game against the plucky Finn’s was a classic. It was very reminiscent of the Peter Mahovlich short handed marker against the Soviet National team in game two of the Summit series in 1972. Both were huge goals at the time and what it shows is that thirty-five years later, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Team Canada GM Steve Yzerman should be feeling awesome after that victory, his first win in his first try as GM of any hockey entity. And with somewhere in the vicinity of 18 or 19 players saying no that they did not want to go to Russia that makes it all the sweeter. Great job to a guy who will do down as one of the top captains in hockey history and now he begins his formal foray into executive life with a Gold medal.
Actually I guess technically Yzerman’s first job as a hockey executive began this season with the Red Wings. As of this writing Detroit is down three games to two with game six to be played in less than six hours in Anaheim. Buckle up the chin straps folks. It should be a beauty. This series has been impossible to predict so who knows what will happen tonight. You would think that the nature of how game five ended might be enough to drive a stake in to the hearts of any Red Wing player and their supporters. In fact speaking of goals that were eerily similar, Scott Niedermayer’s game tying marker in game five against Dominik Hasek looked very much like Trevor Linden’s goal to help Team Canada tie the Czech’s at 1-1 in their semi-final game at the 1998 Olympics. In that instance Linden fired a shot that also hit a stick and beat a surprised Dominik Hasek. Fortunately in the case of the Ducks there is no shoot out in the NHL. Bad bit of luck by Andreas Lilja to lose the puck right in front of Hasek but give credit where it’s due to Selanne and Co., for hanging around in a game that by rights they should not have won. As for the Chris Pronger one game suspension I think he deserved it. It was a gutsy call but the right one to make even though the call on the ice was incorrect with the five minute major and game misconduct going to Rob Niedermayer. Tomas Holmstrom could play on my team any day. To take the abuse he does, let alone coming back from that head shot to play after taking thirteen stitches was pretty impressive. Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datysuk better get their acts in gear and play a bit like Holmstrom or its golf season tonight for the Wings.
The Eastern side is all set thanks to the Ottawa Senators who for the third consecutive time cleaned out an opponent in five games. Accolades are wide spread for the Senators. In each of their past two series wins they closed out their opposition in game five both times in games where they were down 1-0 and in both instances these were the first games in those series where the team not scoring first went on to win. Very impressive. The reaction here in Ottawa has been phenomenal. Thousands greeted the players when they arrived by plane from Buffalo and the crowd was reported to be around 8000 that headed out onto Elgin Street now dubbed ‘Sens mile’ amid a sea of red garments and red faces. Possibly a few pints were had but there were no reports of any bare chested ladies however Ottawa has not played their first game of the finals yet either. Stand by on that one.
Bottom line - this is an Ottawa team that deserves credit. Ironically they are sporting their most Canadian lineup in the past ten years that they’ve made the post season. I hate to always put on the big collar and crow from the pulpit but the facts are that this lineup is vastly grittier with the likes of Chris Kelly and Dean McAmmond than Marion Hossa and Martin Havlat. Take a guy like Dany Heatley who is leading the playoffs in scoring; Heatley chops guys back who cheap shot him. He’s not shy of using his body in front of the net to create the room he needs to cradle the puck for the .01 of a second that he needs to release his shot. It’s just an infinitely different attitude and I think it starts with the coach. Bryan Murray was a very tough senior hockey player in and around the Ottawa area years ago and he takes no crap from anybody. Players reflect the coach they play for. In the case of Ottawa – for eight very long seasons- this was Jacques Martin and God love him because he is a great coach but to go to this next level Mr. Martin did not have the capability. Ottawa sported fifteen players on their roster in game five that were born in Canada. Second only to Anaheim’s seventeen. Like I said earlier, the more things change……
Notes
-The last all-Canadian team to win the Cup was the 1975 Philadelphia Flyers.
-local Ottawa area reporter Ian Mendes came up with a beauty regarding Cup winners and the years ending in ‘7’ check this out – this is since the NHL began in 1918.
1927- Ottawa
1937- Detroit
1947 – Toronto
1957- Montreal
1967 – Toronto
1977 – Montreal
1987 – Edmonton
1997 – Detroit
In other words either Detroit or a Canadian team has won the Cup every year ending in ‘7’ since the NHL began.
Liam Maguire
The recent trend has seen Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton, Sydney Crosby and now Rick Nash lead Canada. Crosby is the only one of that group that did not win gold but he did lead the tournament in scoring and he was voted the top forward. That’s a nice feather in the cap for Nash, the former Rocket Richard Trophy winner who has seen his goal total drop in each of his past two NHL seasons since he copped that award in 2004 along with Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk. Nash’s second goal of the gold medal game against the plucky Finn’s was a classic. It was very reminiscent of the Peter Mahovlich short handed marker against the Soviet National team in game two of the Summit series in 1972. Both were huge goals at the time and what it shows is that thirty-five years later, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Team Canada GM Steve Yzerman should be feeling awesome after that victory, his first win in his first try as GM of any hockey entity. And with somewhere in the vicinity of 18 or 19 players saying no that they did not want to go to Russia that makes it all the sweeter. Great job to a guy who will do down as one of the top captains in hockey history and now he begins his formal foray into executive life with a Gold medal.
Actually I guess technically Yzerman’s first job as a hockey executive began this season with the Red Wings. As of this writing Detroit is down three games to two with game six to be played in less than six hours in Anaheim. Buckle up the chin straps folks. It should be a beauty. This series has been impossible to predict so who knows what will happen tonight. You would think that the nature of how game five ended might be enough to drive a stake in to the hearts of any Red Wing player and their supporters. In fact speaking of goals that were eerily similar, Scott Niedermayer’s game tying marker in game five against Dominik Hasek looked very much like Trevor Linden’s goal to help Team Canada tie the Czech’s at 1-1 in their semi-final game at the 1998 Olympics. In that instance Linden fired a shot that also hit a stick and beat a surprised Dominik Hasek. Fortunately in the case of the Ducks there is no shoot out in the NHL. Bad bit of luck by Andreas Lilja to lose the puck right in front of Hasek but give credit where it’s due to Selanne and Co., for hanging around in a game that by rights they should not have won. As for the Chris Pronger one game suspension I think he deserved it. It was a gutsy call but the right one to make even though the call on the ice was incorrect with the five minute major and game misconduct going to Rob Niedermayer. Tomas Holmstrom could play on my team any day. To take the abuse he does, let alone coming back from that head shot to play after taking thirteen stitches was pretty impressive. Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datysuk better get their acts in gear and play a bit like Holmstrom or its golf season tonight for the Wings.
The Eastern side is all set thanks to the Ottawa Senators who for the third consecutive time cleaned out an opponent in five games. Accolades are wide spread for the Senators. In each of their past two series wins they closed out their opposition in game five both times in games where they were down 1-0 and in both instances these were the first games in those series where the team not scoring first went on to win. Very impressive. The reaction here in Ottawa has been phenomenal. Thousands greeted the players when they arrived by plane from Buffalo and the crowd was reported to be around 8000 that headed out onto Elgin Street now dubbed ‘Sens mile’ amid a sea of red garments and red faces. Possibly a few pints were had but there were no reports of any bare chested ladies however Ottawa has not played their first game of the finals yet either. Stand by on that one.
Bottom line - this is an Ottawa team that deserves credit. Ironically they are sporting their most Canadian lineup in the past ten years that they’ve made the post season. I hate to always put on the big collar and crow from the pulpit but the facts are that this lineup is vastly grittier with the likes of Chris Kelly and Dean McAmmond than Marion Hossa and Martin Havlat. Take a guy like Dany Heatley who is leading the playoffs in scoring; Heatley chops guys back who cheap shot him. He’s not shy of using his body in front of the net to create the room he needs to cradle the puck for the .01 of a second that he needs to release his shot. It’s just an infinitely different attitude and I think it starts with the coach. Bryan Murray was a very tough senior hockey player in and around the Ottawa area years ago and he takes no crap from anybody. Players reflect the coach they play for. In the case of Ottawa – for eight very long seasons- this was Jacques Martin and God love him because he is a great coach but to go to this next level Mr. Martin did not have the capability. Ottawa sported fifteen players on their roster in game five that were born in Canada. Second only to Anaheim’s seventeen. Like I said earlier, the more things change……
Notes
-The last all-Canadian team to win the Cup was the 1975 Philadelphia Flyers.
-local Ottawa area reporter Ian Mendes came up with a beauty regarding Cup winners and the years ending in ‘7’ check this out – this is since the NHL began in 1918.
1927- Ottawa
1937- Detroit
1947 – Toronto
1957- Montreal
1967 – Toronto
1977 – Montreal
1987 – Edmonton
1997 – Detroit
In other words either Detroit or a Canadian team has won the Cup every year ending in ‘7’ since the NHL began.
Liam Maguire
# posted by Liam Maguire @ 1:51 PM 
