We’ve watched a week of NHL playoff hockey, and there’s been plenty to talk (and tweet) about. At times, it’s been glorious, and at others, totally shameful. But that’s basically what you get at this time of the year, depending on the game. After all, this is when all the goals, plays, penalties, saves – and not to mention the emotions and reactions – pushed to the extreme. We expect nothing less.
So let’s review some of the highlights and lowlights we’ve seen so far.
Highlights
1. Nathan MacKinnon is a goal machine
Rewind just about a year and to remind ourselves where the 2012-13 season saw the Colorado Avalanche finish: 29th in the league, with only 39 points in 48 games. They were then handed the first overall draft choice. The Avs chose Nathan MacKinnon, the Halifax Mooseheads alum, and a guy that was “believed to be a sure-fire star”. The expectations for him were high, but if anyone could have predicted just how good he might be, I’m not sure I saw it.
Through the first two games of Colorado’s series against the Minnesota Wild, MacKinnon put on a playoff hockey clinic. And it has been a joy to watch.
Take, for example, his first ever NHL playoff goal:
Or, if that’s not enough, how about this feed to captain Gabriel Landeskog?
The MacKinnon, Landeskog, Paul Stastny line combined for 17 points and 35 shots through the first two games of the series. Is it possible that Nathan MacKinnon is the best first overall pick since Steven Stamkos?
2. Rene Bourque. He’s back. In hockey form!
Between March 12 and March 20, Rene Bourque
was a healthy scratch from the Montreal Canadiens’ lineup. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. He’d been a healthy scratch back in January, too, and was again on April 4. Going into the Habs’ series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, it looked as though he might be scratched again. He managed to make it back into the rotation, perhaps due to the Habs needing some size up front for the more physical weeks ahead, and his return to the ice has already been one of the feel-good stories of the post-season.
In the first three games in the Habs-Lightning series, Bourque has 3 goals, including the first one Sunday night in Montreal, 11 seconds into the game:
Aside from scoring, Bourque has been playing some of the best hockey of his career, finding a jump in his stride and using that size in all the right ways – forechecking well, digging in the corners, etc. He’s added a new dimension to the Canadiens offense that, judging by the 3-0 lead they have on the Bolts so far, might make them more of a threat than most would have figured.
3. Columbus wins
The Columbus Blue Jackets franchise finally has a win in the playoffs. The team has only played five post-season games since it entered the league in 2001, but not one has been a victory. And it took just over one extra frame to finally manage it against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday. Here it is:
The win was likely all the more sweet considering that after the first period, the Penguins had a 3-1 lead. Columbus didn’t give up, out-working the Penguins and shutting down the Pittsburgh power play, which was 1-8 on the night. As Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy noted before Game 3 back home in Columbus, the Blue Jackets aren’t merely happy to win one playoff game – they have a wooden plaque set up in their locker room that will, should everything go well, track the team’s progress all the way to the Cup. (The loss – and dropping a 3-1 lead of their own – Monday night doesn’t help that.)
Lowlights
1. Brent Seabrook
Everything about Brent Seabrook’s hit on David Backes is gross.
The hit itself is ridiculous, senseless and Seabrook entirely deserved the three-game suspension the NHL handed him on Sunday. Worse, perhaps, is the way Seabrook and his line-mate Duncan Keith acted immediately after the hit. Seabrook was led to the box with this stupid grin on his face, and Keith is (allegedly, but probably), the voice that can be heard taunting Backes as he tries to stand up from the ice: “Wakey, wakey Backes!” As Alexander Steen can be seen saying as he steadies his teammate at about the 53-second mark of that video: “You’ve got no fucking class.”
In the long run, for Chicago fans, Seabrook’s hit isn’t just one of those cringing moments where you realize you are now cheering for *that* kind of team – it’s worse. His departure for three games hampers the Blackhawks’ back end. The Blackhawks managed a 2-0 win Monday night back home in Chicago, but without Seabrook for the next two critical match-ups, can that winning continue?
2. Refereeing
Surely every year there’s some controversy about the quality of the refereeing in the NHL playoffs, and every year it seems little or nothing has changed or been fixed. Case in point this time around is Montreal, where the officiating, and the confusion it created on Sunday effectively ruined what was otherwise a fantastic game. There were a number of questionable calls and non-calls, but the one that had everyone most confused was the disallowed goal call against the Lightning. The reason? Goaltender interference. See if you can spot it.
Did you see it? Neither did just about everyone else. The goal, had it stood, would have put Tampa up 2-1 at a point when the Lightning had grabbed momentum from the Habs. Instead of being a game-changer for the Bolts, it provided Montreal with a bit more time to get its game back on track.
But there is an explanation, care of Kerry “The Hair” Fraser over at TSN, where he argues that referee Francis Charron “correctly applied rule 69.3”. Fraser writes: “The overriding rational of rule 69 (Interference on the Goalkeeper) is that a goalkeeper should have the ability to move freely within his goal crease without being hindered by the actions of an attacking player.” There were, he says, two points of legitimate goaltender interference prior to the goal.
First, when Tampa Bay’s Alex Killorn drove to the net and collided with Carey Price “not as a result of any back door pressure exerted by David Desharnais”. Then, Fraser says, Killorn impeded Price again a moment later as he tried to get out from behind the Habs goalie – contact initiated by Price, but still within the realm of rule 69.3, which establishes that if a goaltender is trying to reestablish his placement in the crease and comes into contact with another player which then results in him not being able to save a goal, that goal will be disallowed.
“Even though the contact initiated by Price took him deep into ‘left field’, it occurred inside the blue paint as Price was ‘attempting to establish position inside his goal crease’ and could only be judged as such by the referee,” Fraser writes. So, it’s a good call. Technically. As Fraser points out, though, it can easily be abused. “Price knows this rule better than most goalies in the NHL and that is why he threw himself into Alex Killorn inside the blue paint.”
Still.
3. Matt Cooke
There was a time when Matt Cooke had a reputation for being known as one of the more hated men in the NHL. And he’d earned it. The league suspended him five times, and there is plenty of video evidence for all those other times where it might have done but decided not to, and just left it up to Don Cherry to yell about (rationally, for once).
Then, Matt Cooke was supposedly a changed man. In 2011, Cooke reportedly showed signs of wanting to “clean up his act”. In 2013, when he moved to Minnesota to join the Wild, he told reporters that the fans there probably remembered him from his unpopular days in Vancouver, but that “hopefully I can change their opinions.” How? “My actions will prove it,” he said at the time.
This was Monday night against Colorado’s Tyson Barrie:
Has Cooke changed? Did he change and then change back again? Knee-on-knee is vintage Cooke, so I’d wager on the former.
