Brodeur....yikes.


Well, here we go again. Canada is attempting to take the hard route to the medal round at the Olympics. It didn't work out so well in Torino. I'd like to say they ran into another hot goalie that stole the game (as was the case with Jonas Hiller of Switzerland), but honestly I wasn't all that impressed with Ryan Miller's play. He really didn't make an exceptional save (maybe once while spread eagle on his back in the third period). Miller simply seemed to have terrific postition making the Canadians seemingly hit him in the crest with most shots. The true difference was Martin Brodeur, he was definitely not up to par.

Brodeur's puck-handling, usually one of his strong suits, was atrocious. On the second goal, he seemed to forget everything he has learned about the butterfly style of goaltending and opted for a 1979 style Mike Palmateer "two-pad stack". His baseball-style bat of the puck directly to Rafalski was highly uncharacteristic, and highly ill-advised. As well, in the third period he decided to dive headlong for a puck on a poorly controlled rebound. I would not be averse to playing Roberto Luongo against the Germans in the Qualification game and hopefully again against the Russians in the Quarterfinals and on.

Canada's powerplay was inadequate once again, and their two best players on the night Crosby and Nash actually ended up minus three each on the evening. Nash played some nice physical hockey and Crosby seemed to long for a consistent third on their line. On the plus side, Drew Doughty was impressive once again and seems to have moved up to the first powerplay unit. He actually played ten minutes more than Dan Boyle on the night after playing six minutes less than him against the Swiss.

Having attended the Germany/ Finland game on Friday (pictured above), I'm fairly confident that Canada will beat the Germans on Tuesday. Germany will lean heavily on defensemen Christian Ehrhoff and Dennis Seidenberg who are leading them in ice-time by a wide margin. Our old friend, Sven Felski is actually topping Germany with a plus one rating through three games. For Canada, playing Russia with no rest on Wednesday will obviously be extremely difficult.

One of the cool things about being at the Germany vs Finland game was getting to witness Teemu Selanne besting the All-Time Olympic point scoring mark. Selanne notched his 37th point, one more than Russian Valeri Kharlamov, Czech Vlastimil Bubnik and Canadian Harry Watson. However, I have seen from a few sources differing numbers for Harry Watson's 1924 totals. Hockey-reference.com has Watson scoring 37 goals as well as 9 assists, and another site I've found him with 37 goals and no assists. I'm not sure if assists were an official olympic stat in 1924, but it looks like Selanne would at the very most be merely tied with Watsons 37 goals. I will however on this matter defer to the IIHF and IOC.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHA Ottawa Civics, The Two Week Franchise

Image
Tom Earl, Daryl Maggs, Mark Lomenda, Gary MacGregor, Garry Swain "Please let the fans make up their own minds," Henry Feller told a press gathering. "Let them decide if they want pro hockey here. We have to average 7,000 or 8,000 in the remaining 19 home games for a break-even point." Feller was a director of the Founders Club who had interest in buying the WHA's Denver Spurs club. Ivan Mullinex, owner of the Spurs had brought his team to Ottawa in an attempt to drum up interest and save his investment. The date was January 2, 1976 and Mullinex was in debt to a Denver bank to the tune of $1 million dollars. This same day, the newly christened Civics lost their first game under the new moniker by a score of 2-1 at Cincinnati. Star of the team, Ralph Backstrom said after the game, "Our first official notice of the move hit us when we entered the Cincinnati rink and the names on the big scoreboard read: Stingers and Civics. Until that moment we were un
Read more

Team Canada 1972, What Might have Been

Image
Guy Lafleur, if he had played in the 72 Summit Series "No way. Can you imagine what our fans would say if we allowed Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito to play for Canada in that series and either...suffered an injury that might prevent them from playing with us for a year or more?" This was the concern of Weston Adams Jr, president of the Boston Bruins as quoted on April 20, 1972. After being speculated and discussed since February 1972 at the Olympics in Sapporo Japan, the series was set to go. Early on however, controversy stirred as to who exactly would be representing Canada. Bruins GM, Milt Schmidt agreed with his boss saying, "My only interest would be to see the Russians play the Bruins for the world championship...or whatever team wins the Stanley Cup." In the Vancouver Sun a few days later, the legendary Jim Coleman responds to the American naysayers suggesting that Team Canada should be made up strictly of players from Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal
Read more

Ron Hextall and the stolen Conn Smythe Trophy

Image
Ron Hextall did not deserve the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1987....there, I said it. I recently caught game seven of the '87 finals on ESPN Classic, where the Oilers beat the Flyers 3-1. Hextall was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy to the disdain and boos of the Northlands Coliseum. Hextall was (and remains) the fourth player to win the trophy in a losing cause. Even as a teenager following these playoffs as they happened, I thought this was an injustice. Upon further inspection, I believe he only won because he was a rookie, and was the "sexy" pick as opposed to the proper pick. When looking at his numbers, it's hard to figure why he won. Hextall finished with 15 wins, 11 losses and a GAA of 2.77. Oilers, Grant Fuhr went 14 and 5 with an average of 2.46. I realize that stats cannot tell the whole story, but even if we dig further the award doesn't seem justified. His .908 Save Pct was the same as Fuhr's and tied for third behind Ken Wregget and Kelly Hrudey. Also,
Read more