Posted by admin on 3rd, 2008
The return of Sidney Crosby. The skills of Evgeni Malkin. The wall that is marc-andre Fleury. If you ask the Pittsburgh Penguins what the secret to success has been this year, they will probably tell you that hard work, determination and a never say die attitude has been the recipe for success.
Todays win, a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers, a possible first round opponent gives the Penguins home ice in the Playoffs.
“It’s huge. To win at home and win the division against a rival, I’ll bet everyone in here will say it’s our best win of the season, and Sunday could even top that,” defenseman Ryan Whitney said. “It’s exciting in here right now.”
- Yahoo! Sports
From team captain Sidney Crosby…
“We knew going in it was going to be an emotional game, an intense game with them needing to play desperate hockey and us wanting to play well here down the stretch, with the division in mind,” Crosby said. “For me personally, that’s probably the most intense game we’ve played since I got back here the second time.”
- Yahoo! Sports
That success blossomed today as the Pittsburgh Penguins clinched the Atlantic Division. It’s been 10 years since the Penguins last won their Division, and the team today is vastly different from that in 1998.
In 1998 the Penguins lost in the first round to the Montreal Canadiens 2 games to 4.
Posted by admin on 21st, 2008
It’s that time of year again. The NHL Playoffs are just around the corner, and teams are already starting to prepare for the post-season. In the West it’s highly possible that the 8 Playoff teams will be made up of 4 from the Northwest Division, 3 from the Pacific and 1 from the Central. In the East it’s possible that there will be 4 from the Atlantic, 3 from the Northeast and just 1 from the Southeast.
One could argue that the Southeast and Central Divisions are the weakest in their respective divisions, and the current NHL schedule could be seen as biased towards strong teams from those divisions. That is a topic for another day.
Today I want to touch on something that can make or break a game in the NHL, or in fact in any hockey league; Refereeing.
Bad calls are something we learn to live with in professional sports. We must remember of course that the people in the black and white stripes don’t always see things the way we do. There are times however when bad calls have influenced the result of a game. Just this week referees made a bad call and caused a 2 minute minor on a team, then just 30 seconds later failed to pull up a goalie interference call on the opposition team, which resulted in a Powerplay Goal.
The Playoffs however are the be all and end all of NHL hockey. Teams battle it out all season to make the Playoffs and the last thing they want or need are referees not doing their jobs properly.
We can only hope then that we will have a relatively clean Playoff Series, not just from the teams, but also the Referees.
