A Look At Lord Stanley’s Final Four
By Dan Angell
So we’re at the conference finals, with the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins now just three wins away from playing for hockey’s ultimate prize. But really, it seems like there are only two contenders for the Stanley Cup: the aforementioned Red Wings and Penguins. You might remember these teams from such matchups as last year’s Stanley Cup Finals.
Yes, same teams as last year. Amazingly, that hasn’t happened since 1984, when the Edmonton Oilers stopped the New York Islanders from winning a fifth consecutive Cup after the Isles swept them the year before. In fact, the Isles lost more games in that one Cup Finals than in the four they won, in which they lost three total. Just shows you don’t win four of these things by accident, folks.
To go back even further, the last time a team won consecutive Cups by beating the same team twice was in 1978, when the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins. Yes, two teams that are now in the same division met for the Cup two straight years. The NHL also thought it was a good idea to have Los Angeles and Pittsburgh in the same division for eight years. And people say Gary Bettman has caused the league problems.
But anyway, we’ve got some kind of history happening here, and things are set up perfectly for it. The San Jose Sharks aren’t here, and the Wings have already flown by the Anaheim Ducks. The Chicago Blackhawks are very inexperienced, don’t have a stud goaltender like Vancouver, don’t hit as much as Anaheim and aren’t as skilled with the puck as San Jose.
In the East, the Penguins don’t have to face the Boston Bruins or the New Jersey Devils, and they’ve already defeated the Washington Capitals and Alex Ovechkin. Instead, Crosby, Malkin and Friends get the Carolina Hurricanes, the East’s sixth-best team.
So let’s plan the parade in Detroit or Pittsburgh, right? Not exactly.
The Blackhawks might be young, but youth didn’t stop the Penguins from reaching the Stanley Cup Finals last year. They’ve got some experience in Martin Havlat, Brian Campbell and Nikolai Khabibulin, so they aren’t completely a group of wide-eyed kids. But the wide-eyed kids will have to be the difference. Put simply, the Blackhawks aren’t beating the Red Wings without Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane playing great. No goals and few shots aren’t going to cut it.
As for the Hurricanes, they’ve got a great weapon in their arsenal: Cam Ward. Nobody has beaten him in a playoff series so far, and the guy is a perfect 4-for-4 in Game 7s. Ward might be the best clutch performer there is today, and I’m not limiting that to just hockey.
But as good as Ward is, the Canes can’t win if they can’t outscore the Penguins. Crosby and Malkin have carried Pittsburgh all year long, and Carolina has no scorer to match them, even counting Eric Staal. They’ve got to win this series on the blue line, or Ward’s streak will be over.
So after all of that analysis, what’s my prediction for these conference finals?
Let’s plan the parade in either the Motor City or the Steel City. Nothing’s stopping history.
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