The scene is beginning to reveal itself here in the final few weeks. We know the players, though their characters are not quite crystal clear just yet. The West, of course, holds the most intrigue. As believers in the adage that playoff hockey is a better place with Canadian franchises, we are, however, a bit concerned that as of this writing three are in danger of teeing off instead of facing off in April.
True, the Red Wings landed in the Buffalo area only two hours before faceoff, but does this explain why Dominic Hasek dove away from his crease to avoid a Chris Gratton shot on Sunday? Are goaltenders supposed to do this? Scotty Bowman didn't think so, and he yanked Hasek before the third period of 5-1 loss. That's about the only thing that went wrong last week.
While they aren't in danger of squandering their lead in the Eastern Conference just yet, they did let an important point slip away from them Tuesday night in Toronto. Brian Boucher did much of the work in the 1-1 tie, but found out later that Roman Cechmanek would start the playoffs.
When you lose Peter Forsberg and his scoring punch and realize that Joe Sakic can only occasionally carry the team, what do you do? Play more disciplined defense and hope the goaltending is remarkable. Well, if the season ended today, David Aebischer and Patrick Roy would win the Jennings Trophy.
Leaving Jarome Iginla -- who at last check had achieved a modest level of proficiency with the puck -- alone in the slot with 25 seconds remaining was unconscionable. The unconscionable, however, was undone by the unconscious save of Byron Dafoe, who allowed a goal a game in Boston's three-game winning streak.
Without Evgeni Nabokov shooting the lights out, and without the grit of Todd Harvey, Mike Ricci or Scott Thornton, the Blues shut San Jose out Wednesday night. We're chalking it up to a fluke and keeping San Jose put for now.
Maybe Corey Schwab is settling into this No. 1 gig. In his first four games since March 1, he allowed 12 goals on 96 shots (.875 save percentage). In the games since he has going at a goal-a-game clip with a save percentage in the neighborhood of .950.
Tough dilemma here in the office for a poolie who's jockeying for a playoff spot with a week left in his regular season ... Take the goaltending of New Jersey or Chicago this week? We decided on the Devils', based almost entirely on the fact that Chicago is on the road again. Two rhetorical questions: Is it true that some playoff games are on the road, and might this become bad news for the Hawks?
Coming off its first four-game winless streak since October, Ottawa straightened things out with two wins to cap off a 2-2-1-1 road trip. They're at home for the next three of four, six of eight, nine of 12 and 16 of their remaining 20. Get the point?
Their nine-game undefeated-in-regulation streak will be put to the test during a five-game road trip that winds them from Nashville to Minnesota to Boston, Pittsburgh and Dallas. During their last extended road trip, they went 5-2-0-0 but still stand at 9-14-5-3 as the away team this season.
We knew the general locale of the Fountain of Youth was in the Southeast, but for some reason it didn't occur to us that it was in the Southeast Division, where Adam Oates and Ron Francis are two of the best players in the division. The latter, since the Olympic break, has 12 points in seven games, and five goals in his last three.
Impartiality is a luxury for those who don't quite care enough, and there are times when it helps not to watch a train wreck so closely. Even as impartial observers, though, it was nice to see a month (granted, it was a short month) of losing come to an end.
Mike Modano has achieved a level of MVP status perhaps not seen since his youth. Close your eyes for a moment and think back to those youth-hockey days, when the best kid on the team played everywhere. Left wing, right wing, center, defense. In the past few weeks, Modano has taken up a ton of ice time, but hasn't found a regular shift. One man's misfortune is another's fortune, however, which Pierre Turgeon seems to have earned lately.
You know what has to be hard on a team? Not knowing if or when its goaltender might allow one of those goals about which Darren Pang likes to say, sympathetically, "He'd like to have that one back."
We doubt the commissioner's office would go for it, but we'd like to adopt baseball's in-the-neighborhood rule (where a shortstop or second baseman only has to be within a zip code or two of the bag in order to turn a double play) for the Oilers. If they're in the neighborhood of the playoffs, let's give the gift of their up-tempo style and that sheet of ice to the rest of the hockey-watching world, eh?
Look out, Theo Fleury, there is another small man in your back yard. Listed very generously as 5-foot-7 and 175 pounds, Brian Gionta has scored a goal in consecutive games, both Devils wins.
Only in a dark alley would hockey fans or players confuse 6-foot-3, 225-pound Sandy McCarthy with 6-foot-4, 230-pound Eric Lindros. But over the past week, McCarthy filled in admirably, making unbelievable strides (literally unbelievable, as in, That cannot be Sandy McCarthy with the toe drag) and generally being among the best players on the ice. Good timing, too, since there are about three healthy forwards on that team.
In a little less than a month they went from four games above .500 to two games below (their last three losses were by a combined score of 15-5). Speaking of his concussion, though he could have been talking about the team, Andrew Cassels said he was, "kind of spacy and a little out of it ... like an all-day hangover."
While there were a number of positive efforts six games into a nine-game road trip, those may have been overshadowed by the two games in which they allowed a game-losing goal within the final two minutes.
In a Tuesday evening battle between two teams that seem to be shying away from their playoff hopes, the Habs dropped a 2-1 decision to fall behind the Rangers. Perhaps symbolic of their playoff chances.
The playoff pulse you heard is growing more faint by the day, seeing as they'll soon set sail on a what's-a-guy-gotta-do-to-get-some-love-around-here eight-game road trip. And that should pretty much take them to the figurative end of their season.
If there is anything redeeming about the OTL, it is that players still feel as if they lost a game. They might say, "Hey, at least we got a point," but you can feel that the loss still stings. (This will change as a generation of players gets used to such rewards.) But it especially stings when a franchise-high four-game winning streak would have been the result. Still, they picked up 10 points in seven games.
In five recent games the Sabres were either shut out 3-0 (twice) or they blew an opponent out (thrice). In the midst of that quintet, Buffalo won three straight for only the second time this season, and Martin Biron rang up 144 minutes of shutout hockey.
Since March 2, the good news is two wins and a tie. The bad news is that those points have been earned at the expense of teams that have an average of fewer than 20 wins.
Outscored 10-1 in losses Nos. 29 and 30. On top of this, they traded the only captain they've ever known, Tom Fitzgerald, to Chicago almost a year after he singed for less to stay in Nashville.
Their Monday evening, 4-2 home loss to Columbus pretty much explains where this season is headed. Their Wednesday evening, 4-2 road loss seconded that motion.
Modest success at home of late, with wins over New Jersey and Pittsburgh, but Chicago and St. Louis come calling this week, followed by a rough road trip that goes through Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Dallas.
In these parts two wins in a week qualifies as success, but Florida is undefeated in its past four, a span over which the Panthers have scored 19 goals. Columbus has scored nine in its past four and has lost one more game.
Far be it for us to kick a team while it's down -- besides, we'd absolutely pay top dollar to see the rookies in action -- so we'll let someone else do it for us. In Thursday's Avalanche-Thrashers preview in the Denver Post, a writer referred to the tilt as "tonight's game against the lowly Atlanta Thrashers." Please do not shoot the messenger. In related advice, Ilya, please do likewise and listen to your doctors.
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