Henrik Zetterberg (Dan Nicholas, Wikimedia Commons)
One of the most exciting times in the world of sports is simply game seven. That’s what we’ll have Sunday night in southern California as the Anaheim Ducks host the Detroit Red Wings.
Last night, Red Wings’ captain Henrik Zetterberg scored at 1:04 of overtime to give the Red Wings a 4-3 win over the Ducks to tie their Western Conference quarterfinal series at three games apiece.
The Red Wings might have a strong core of veterans, but after all these years are still getting it done. Goaltender Jimmy Howard is playing at an elite level as Detroit will look to move on during their last year in the Western Conference. How dangerous will Detrot be next year in the East? The answer is very. The game will be seen Sunday night on TSN at 8:00 p.m.
Here are the other events I’ll be watching this weekend:
Saturday & Sunday– PGA–Players Championship–NBC–12 p.m.– Spain’s Sergio Garcia, probably one of the best golfers in the world to have never won a major, currently leads Tiger Woods by a stroke after shooting a -11 at Sawgrass over the first two days of competition. Garcia and Woods have won the Players Championship once before– Woods in 2001 and Garcia in 2008. As for the first round leader, American Roberto Castro, he went from -9 to -3 and 1st to 30th after shooting a 78 on Friday.
In a bizarre hockey game Sunday night at the Scotiabank Saddledome, the Calgary Flames defeated the Vancouver Canucks 4-2.
The Flames received their game winning goal from Jarome Iginla just moments after Canucks’ head coach Alain Vigneault was given a two minute bench penalty for his abuse on the officials. Vigneault did not like the fact that Matt Stajan was not called for an elbow penalty.
The ability for the Flames to respond after Vigneault’s tirade and not take a penalty themselves in the third period showed great deal of maturity.
For the first time this season the Calgary Flames won twice in a row. On Thursday night in Columbus, Alex Tanguay scored at 1:07 in overtime, as the Flames defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-3 to improve to 3-3-2 on the season, and only three points back of the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference with two games in hand.
Tanguay leads the Flames with four goals, five assists and nine points in eight games.
Jiri Hudler and T.J. Brodie had multi-point games for the Flames as they each had two assists.
The Calgary Flames have lost their leader in assists from last season.
On Monday it was confirmed that the Winnipeg Jets had signed Olli Jokinen to a two year deal worth nine million.
Jokinen had 38 assists for the Flames last season to lead the team and was also second in points (61) and third in goals (23).
The Flames on Monday simply decided to spend their money on Jiri Hudler rather than Olli Jokinen.
Jokinen maybe six years older than Hudler, but Jokinen has proven he is a more complete player. I know Jokinen had only 11 more points, but he also had a whopping 96 more shots on goal.
The Jets love Finnish talent and Jokinen will give Winnipeg hockey fans a glimpse of the past when they had the great Teemu Selanne.
The Calgary Flames were expected to sign a Czech free agent in the offseason, just most expected them to acquire future hall of famer Jaromir Jagr from Philadelphia, to help out with the transition of rookie Czech centre Roman Cervenka coming to Calgary.
Flames General Manager Jay Feaster seemed to have different ideas and plucked unrestricted free agent Jiri Hudler away from Detroit today and signed him to a four year deal worth $16 million.
Last season Hudler had 25 goals and 25 assists in 81 games.
Hudler put up decent numbers, but most people do in Detroit with all of their star talent. In fact, other than 2009, Hudler’s numbers have actually been very unimpressive. He only scored ten goals the year before.
The knock on Hudler is he takes too many nights off. At times Hudler has struggled with his overall consistency, especially two seasons ago after he spent an entire year playing for Dynamo Moscow in the Kontinental Hockey League.
Over the next two months the Calgary Flames will need to cheer for an unlikely source at times. It won’t happen all that often, but Tuesday night was one of those nights where an Oilers win actually helped the Flames.
With Calgary battling Colorado, Minnesota, Phoenix, and Dallas for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West, the Flames got significant help from their provincial rival.
Taylor Hall scored at 6:01 of the third period to give the Oilers a 3-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was expected to play but didn’t because of the flu.
The Flames, who are two points back of Colorado and three points back of Minnesota for a playoff spot, didn’t help themselves however with a 3-1 loss to Detroit. Jiri Hudler scored the game winning goal midway through the third period.
Prior to the game the Flames paid tribute to former captain and assistant coach Brad McCrimmon who died in the Lokomotiv plane crash in September.
The Oilers next play the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday, while the Flames play Chicago Friday.
It seems like Christmas keeps coming early when we’re talking about beauty goals from around the NHL, and this past week was no different!
In this edition of the GOTW, we’ve got some solid hand-eye coordination, a nifty overtime winner, a couple of pretty passing plays and a pretty awesome individual effort to round things out.
Let’s go!
5. Joe Pavelski
This guy is all kinds of clutch in the playoffs, but he’s not bad during the regular season either! Watch as Joe Pavelski tracks down this Josh Harding rebound with a spinning swing of the stick. Also: listen to the ridiculous comment made by the commentator before the goal about the number of shots the Sharks have in the game.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Check out the rest of the GOTW!) (more…)
The NHL is finally back, and what an opening week it was!
Sure, it’s too early in the season to get a good read on how your team is going to do and who is going to run away with all of the individual awards, but at least we can now sit back and watch the multitude of early season dangles!
Throughout the year, I’ll be counting down the top five goals each week ending each Sunday. I’ll also be trying to track down the “What the Puck” moment of each and every week of the NHL season, which you’ll find after the number one gino.
Here we go!
5. Jiri Hudler
Detroit Red Wings forward Jiri Hudler gets us started this week, taking a nice feed from Pavel Datsyuk before making a deposit into the bank of shelf with a sick backhander! If I had to caption Craig Anderson’s post-goal response, it would probably read: C’mon Man! VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP! (more…)
The Anaheim Ducks and Detroit Red Wings are in an excellent position to breeze through the Western Conference Quarterfinals.
I’m projecting both teams to win in five games.
Over the last twenty games, the Ducks were sizzling. Since February 27, the Ducks went 15-4-1. Three major reasons were because of the play of Corey Perry, Teemu Selanne and Ray Emery. Perry won the Rocket Richard Trophy this season as he was the only player in the National Hockey League to record 50 goals. Selanne, at age 40, found youth in his legs and notched 80 points. Emery, meanwhile, came in for Jonas Hiller late in the season and posted a 7-2 record. A lower body injury Emery suffered late in the year however against San Jose means that Dan Ellis is likely to start against Nashville in Game One.
The Predators have the edge over the Ducks in goaltending with Pekka Rinne, but I just can’t see Rinne stealing many games for Nashville over the next ten days.
It seems like Christmas keeps coming early when we’re talking about beauty goals from around the NHL, and this past week was no different!
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