Stanley Cup Playoffs Random Thoughts

[dave]

Took a rare day owing to watch Game 7 Bruins-Habs Wednesday night. Thank God or whomever you choose to worship, my backup editor was ok with the short notice.

[ryne candy]

Bring on the Ducks/Kings...

[Price]

What a game by Crawford.

[ryne candy]

What a game by Crawford.

esp. considering his game 4 performance.

[dave]

Would you say Malkin is the best player on the Penguins? Crosby is great, no doubt, but I would rather go up against Crosby than Malkin any day. He's big, strong, and fast. I think he is without a doubt a more complete player than Crosby. Thoughts? Or am I way off base here?

Crosby just had a rough playoff run. Writing him off because of one bad playoff run is insane.

[Senser81]

Getting tired of listening to the sports media spew cliches about how the Wild "gummed up the works" or "slowed the game down" when talking about the Wild. To me, it just looked like the Wild outplayed the Blackhawks for much of the series. They seemed to be quicker and more aggressive, while the media made it seem like the Wild was just laying back and mucking things up. I didn't think the Wild were really all that physical (with the exception of Stoner), and they usually outshot the Blackhawks.

My question is: what strategically did the Wild do that was so effective? I haven't heard any real explanation. It seemed to me that the Wild would tie people up off the puck...a lot of clutching and grabbing on Blackhawk offensive players so that when an up-ice rush happened or there was a rebound, the Blackhawks wouldn't have open players or get 2-3 shots in quick succession. I did see on one Wild goal that a Wild player skated into the back of Duncan Keith, which allowed the puck-possessing Wild player to have a 1-on-1 with the goalie. Is this a blueprint that the Kings/Ducks can duplicate against the Hawks in the next series?

[kmanharris]

Crosby just had a rough playoff run. Writing him off because of one bad playoff run is insane.

Where did I write him off? I asked if he thought Malkin was the better player, which I think an argument can be made (and one I would agree with).

[Woy]

Where did I write him off? I asked if he thought Malkin was the better player, which I think an argument can be made (and one I would agree with).

Seems like this opinion has made its rounds lately with Crosby's playoff struggles this year. Malkin isn't the playmaker that Sid is, nor do I think he is as good defensively, and he takes more stupid penalties than Crosby. I do, however, think Geno has demonstrated more "flashes of brilliance" lately, like on his goal in Game 5.

So no, I don't think Malkin is better than Crosby, but I won't argue too much against that opinion. But when the debate is close like this, it also makes the recent playoff failures even more unacceptable, which is why Bylsma and Shero (who I think leaffan is going to place blame on, and it wouldn't be wrong) should be under fire.

[leaffan]

What would you say is?

Forward depth is horrible and drafting over the last 6 or 7 years has been pretty bad in the forward department. Dmen not so bad but they keep trading away those prospects.

[kmanharris]

Seems like this opinion has made its rounds lately with Crosby's playoff struggles this year. Malkin isn't the playmaker that Sid is, nor do I think he is as good defensively, and he takes more stupid penalties than Crosby. I do, however, think Geno has demonstrated more "flashes of brilliance" lately, like on his goal in Game 5.

So no, I don't think Malkin is better than Crosby, but I won't argue too much against that opinion. But when the debate is close like this, it also makes the recent playoff failures even more unacceptable, which is why Bylsma and Shero (who I think leaffan is going to place blame on, and it wouldn't be wrong) should be under fire.

That's fair. I'm not writing Crosby off by any means, like Dave suggested. It probably is more of a "what have you done for me lately" type of scenario. It could also be because Crosby is all NBC talked about during the series. The fact that he gets infinite more attention than Malkin makes each disappearance that much more noticeable.

I personally think Crosby gets flustered too easily for a superstar player and it affects his play way more than it should. Just my opinion though.

[leaffan]

Interesting fact. The Rangers now send their first round pick to Tampa because they made it to the conference final.

[kmanharris]

Interesting fact. The Rangers now send their first round pick to Tampa because they made it to the conference final.

Worth it.

[leaffan]

Things I found about the Pens series:

The penguins essentially were smashing the rangers stat wise for 5/6 of the 7 games.

Rangers were rolling McDonagh/Girardi against Crosby and Stralman/Stall Against Malkin. Might be why kman was worried about Malkin more then Crosby. They weren't doing this early on in the series and when they played the matchup game it really looked like they were outdoing the penguins on that front. Comes back to my point though that the penguins really couldn't do anything outside of the top 2 lines.

The only guy worth a dam secondary scoring wise was Jokinen and then they had one random goal from Stempniak and that's it. The other goals were Malkin or Kunitz/Neal. Oh and Sutter showed up once in a while.

Crosby was definatly playing hurt.

[Woy]

Yeah, I think it was pretty obvious that Crosby was playing hurt.

Jokinen was the Pens' best player over the entire postseason, IMO. Was always in the right spot at the right time and had a knack for the clutch goal. The rest of the wingers were shit, particularly Neal when you discount the bottom 6 forwards. I agree that the bottom 6 has been a big problem over this Cup "drought" - example being Pascal Dupuis serving as a fourth-liner in '09 and now being one of the teams' top scoring options.

[kmanharris]

Montreal