Morning Player Notes in the Playoffs (Apr 24)

For those of us who were counting on the Rangers to do anything in this year's playoffs, I'm sure that we're all really happy that they even showed up on Saturday afternoon, because it was great how they took a 2-1 lead midway through the 1st period and decided to rest on the laurels.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were ready to move on to the next round of the playoffs and they were not afraid to demonstrate what it would take to get there, even if it took embarrassing their opponents, 6-3, to get there.  A 4-goal 3rd period was the big difference in this one, as they chased Henrik Lundqvist for a second straight game and they earned their way to a match-up against the winner of the Capitals/Flyers series.

Matt Cullen was tops for the Penguins in the pool in the series deciding game, as he scored the winner and added an assist for a 3-point game, while Phil Kessel and Sidney Crosby each tallied a couple of points each to round it all out.  It was a fairly balanced attack in the end and another great game from rookie goalie Matt Murray, who continues to roll.

The Rangers were not favoured to win this series, according to the selection sheet, but they were another one of those teams that you weren't quite sure about, so there was lots of insurance taken on them with 64 selections, compared to the Penguins' 108.

No one on the Rangers reached double-digits in selections this year, but Chris Kreider and Eric Staal each had nine picks and Kreider only had 2 goals in the series, so those selections were not paying off very well at all.

The loss of the Rangers dwindled down our perfect teams through the opening round, as we're now down to only two teams that have 24 players left on their active rosters and we still have a lot of hockey to be played and some more eliminations to happen.  This hasn't been a good year for the pool... at all.

No matter what, Game 5 in Anaheim was going to mean that either the Predators or the Ducks were going to fall behind the 8-ball, before these two teams headed back to Nashville for Game 6.  It just so happened to be that the home team actually picked up their socks and won a game for the first time in this series.

The Predators struck first, later on in the 2nd period, but the Anaheim Ducks seemingly flipped a switch and their momentum finally carried over from Game 4 in Nashville, as they really put their foot down on the pedal and went.  Two greasy goals before the end of the middle frame, led to a breakaway goal midway through the 33rd period and the Ducks were off and running, cruising to a 5-2 victory and a 3-2 series lead.

Defenseman Sami Vatanen was the lucky recipient of the breakaway pass in the 3rd period, which ended up being the winning goal in the end, as he also added an assist for a 3-point night in the win.  Ryan Getzlaf, Jakob Silfverberg and David Perron were also good in this one, each picking up 2 points each.

It does look like the Ducks are ready to finish this series off, since the Predators had very little response to their 3rd period in the end.  What do Shea Weber and Pekka Rinne have left?

If you looked very carefully at the flow of play in the 1st period between the Blues and the Blackhawks in Chicago last night, you may have noticed a kitchen sink in there somewhere.  Maybe it was in the 2nd period, but it was in there, somewhere.  It had to be.

The Blackhawks are officially in heartbreak mode and they are throwing just about everything at the Blues to do it.  If you had thought that going down 3-1 before the end of the 1st period was going to be a problem for the Blackhawks, you've probably not watched a lot of their games in the playoffs in recent years.  It is very rare that they don't go out without a fight and boy, were they swinging in the 2nd period.  Three straight goals was the perfect answer to the three straight that St. Louis put up on them after Andrew Ladd's goal in the 1st and the roof collapsed on the the Blues, as a couple more goals in the 3rd, including Marian Hossa's empty-netter to ice it, made sure we were going to see a Game 7 on Monday night.

Ladd, Hossa, Jonathan Toews, Artemi Panarin and Corey Crawford were all 2-point players in the game for Chicago, all giving the poolies what they paid for, a little extra scoring when they needed it most.

This series has lived up to its billing and maybe even a little bit more.  What could a seventh game possibly offer up that we haven't seen?  Other than the tears, that is.