The Omnigeek

Raleigh NC — The Carolina Hurricanes have knocked off two teams in their pursuit of the Stanley Cup and they have two to go. In two series they have not had home-ice advantage. In two series they have had to knock off division champions. In two series, the number 6 seeded team has finished off the number 3 and number 1 seeded team. It took dramatic game 7 wins in both series in front of hostile crowds, but they did it.

Now they head to the Conference Finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins and the “experts” are almost unanimously picking Pittsburgh to win the series. In the first round matchup against the New Jersey Devils, the same experts were split as to who would win. Sure the Devils would have home ice and had the all time winningest goalie between the pipes with Martin Brodeur, but Carolina had beaten them several times down the stretch heading into the playoffs.

A sensible person would have noticed at as the regular season waned, the Hurricanes were getting stronger while the Devils were slipping a bit. The Devils struggled after Brodeur passed Patrick Roy as the all time winningest goalie, finishing their last 10 games with a 4-5-1 record. The Canes on the other hand after bringing Erik Cole back at the trade deadline had turned into a machine and finished their last 10 games 8-2-0.

The first round was close. It was intense and it took some heroics that can only be describe as “Magic” to win, including a goal scored with 0.2 seconds left and a game tying and game winning goal in the final two minutes of another game. So with these unbelievable, story-book, magical miracles its easy to get into the mind set that its a “Fluke” that Carolina advanced.

Next up was the number one seeded Boston Bruins. They had the second best record in the NHL with 116 points, a full 10 points ahead of the Devils and 19 points ahead of Carolina. They pitched the best goalie in the league, an incredibly good and physical defense and had a host of forwards that put up a conference best 274 goals over 82 games. They lost 6 games at home all season. Needless to say betting the Bruins in Boston was a hard task.

Most of the media experts gave this one to Boston. Only a couple of ESPN analysts called this one for Carolina. The Hurricanes had not won against the Bruins all year and the Bruins had a fairly easy first round against Montreal with a four game sweep.

On paper, there is no way Carolina should have won this series, but they did, charging out to a commanding 3-1 series lead before the Bruins clawed back to force a game 7 which Carolina again won with another fantasy like over time winner.

So we not sit on the cusp of the Conference finals. Again, Carolina would not have home ice, but what is surprising is that almost everyone is giving this series to Pittsburgh before it even starts.

Lets look at this.

1. Sidney Crosby — clearly one of the two best players in the league. He is the star the league needs to show off and shine. He is the face of the NHL and in the series with Washington where he was going mano-a-mano against the other super-star, Alexander Ovechkin, the league and the TV channels got what they want, including a game where both stars had hat-tricks against each other.
2. The Penguins have another super-star in Evgeni Malkin. He’s dangerous and gives the Pens a great 1-2 punch.
3. On the backside, they have a strong goalie in Marc-André Fleury and a solid defense. They’ve proved they are formidable knocking off the Flyers and Capitals.

So again looking at that, how can a team beat the Penguins?

Before we answer that, lets look at a few facts.

Final Point totals: Penguins 99, Canes 97. Both teams won the same number of games, the difference was two more overtime loses for Pittsburgh.

Head to Head: Penguins 2, Canes 2. Pittsburgh took the first two games, winning 4-1 and 5-2. Carolina took the last two 2-1 and 3-2 in overtime. The Hurricanes, for historical perspective struggled early in the year and changed coaches, turning the team around. The Penguins second win was on Paul Maurice’s debut as the new coach. It wasn’t long after that when Carolina turned its season around.

So based on those facts, one should expect this series to be very close, probably going a full 7 games. But Carolina has a few good things going for it.

1. Cam Ward. While the Penguin’s Marc-André Fleury is a good goaltender, Cam Ward continues to show he knows how to netmind the big games. He has kept Carolina in many of these games allowing magic to work for them. Maybe its not so much magic as quality goaltending. Three years ago, Ward won the Conn Smythe as the playoff MVP when Carolina bested Edmonton in route to their first Stanley Cup. While its early, if he continues this play, he would have to be in contention to win it again. The goalie edge had to go to Carolina and your team is built out from there.
2. Solid Defense. For the most part, even after two grueling seven game series, the Carolina defensive core is healthy and they contribute offensively. The Penguin’s defense is a little banged up with Sergei Gonchar’s sore knee. With Maurice’s defensive mentality, Carolina should have a slight edge defensively.
3. Lack of star’s up front. Huh? You serious? This is an advantage? Yes it is. Teams have no idea which Carolina forward is going to burn you. You can’t cheat away from any given player because they can all create problems for a teams defense. Yes, you have Eric Staal and many people will be watching the matchup between him and his brother, Jordan on the Penguins, who is playing his best right now, and Sergei Samsonov and Jussi Jokinen have provided most of the offense in the playoffs so far, all four lines can score and have scored. Instead of the goals being clustered around a couple of key players, a well balanced team will create defensive problems that are hard to counter.

So with this, how can all seven ESPN analysts (and this link), two experts from the Sporting News, and many others unanimously give this to Pittsburgh? Sure I’m a Canes fan, but this is too close to call. Surely one of the above experts would have sided with Carolina.

Now I fully understand that Versus and NBC clearly do not want Carolina to advance. The Raleigh-Durham’s tens of thousands of fans means economic disaster for TV. While Pittsburgh’s market is a little larger, they do have Crosby and Malkin which are huge stars. Clearly a Boston / Red Wings or even Boston / Chicago final would have made the TV folks happy. Its been obvious all year given that NBC pretty much only shows Ranger games. And conspiracy theorists will point out the large number of wrong/bad calls going against Carolina as evidence that TV is putting pressure on the NHL to keep the small market teams out of the late rounds of the playoffs.

Well Carolina is probably faster than Pittsburgh and is healthy and playing some of the best hockey as witnessed by their dispatching of Boston.

Why can’t at least one of these goon’s picked Carolina? Well it will be fun to watch them when they are all wrong.

I should be writing a blog post on http://www.robmiracle.com about today’s Kentucky Derby Festival activities. But I can’t. Go see my photos from Dawn at the Downs here!

No I can’t blog now, I’m in major jubilation mode. The Carolina Hurricanes just slapped the New Jersey Devils right out of the play offs in a stunning fashion, 4-3 in game 7 in Jeresy’s own Prudential Center.

Not only did the Hurricanes pull off a stunner in game 4 putting the game winner in the net with only 0.2 seconds left to play, but the Devils held a 3-2 lead with 1:20 to play in the game when Brodeur’s armor came undone and the Canes put two past him within 0:48 of each other to stun the Devils with Eric Staal picking up the game winner with 31.7 seconds left.

The Canes have to deal with the Boston Bruins in the next round, but for now, Canes fans can rejoice in playing some of the best playoff hockey.

GO CANES!!!!!!!!!

It was a foggy Sunday morning in Charleston, South Carolina. Four white 15 passenger vans rolled into a nearly empty parking lot of an unassuming shopping center. Tucked into one end of the strip mall is a pair of ice rinks and on this particular Sunday morning, two hockey games would be played. This is the story of one of the games and one of the teams.

But lets back up 48 hours earlier. Two of the vans pulled into the parking lot of the Chilled Ponds Ice Facility in Chesapeake, Virginia to load a hockey team for a trip to Charleston to play in the South East Junior Hockey League’s end of season tournament. The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Green team had a seven hour drive in front of them.

Their bother team, The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Blue team had to leave the night before as they had a 5pm game Friday night. The Green team got a morning skate in before they packed up and left a couple of hours later.

Their destination was the Carolina Ice Palace. The top two teams from the tournament would join regular season champions, the Atlanta Knights in Marlborough, Massachusetts in two weeks to participate in the USA Hockey Tier III National Championships. “Three Wins and your In” was the motto of the Green team as they headed down I-95.

At the same time parents, family and friends were packing up their cars to make their journey to watch this end of season tournament. It would be one of the best parental showings of the year for these men between 14 and 21 years of age. Some traveled from as far away as Louisville, Kentucky and West Palm Beach, Florida to cheer their players on.

Text messages from the parents already at the rink were sent to the players on the road to keep the players updated on the progress of the Blue Team’s game. The two teams had not officially played each other during the regular season, but their league records were nearly identical and their scrimmages were split. Either of these two teams could come out of this with a bid to nationals and there was a chance they both could.

After the Green team checked into the hotel and got dinner, most of them migrated to the rink to watch the last game of the day. The Tampa Bay Bolts were playing the Space Coast Hurricanes, both teams had come up from central Florida. At the end of regulation, it was tied. After a 5 minute overtime, it was still tied. The Green team had an early 9am game on Saturday and the lateness of this game was becoming a concern. Surely the ensuing shoot out would be over quickly and they could get back to the hotel. A long shootout took place, going 15 shooters per team deep. Finally a team had an advantage giving the underdog Tampa team the win, effectively eliminating the Hurricanes. The Green team headed to their hotel to get some sleep before their 6:30am wake-up call the next morning.

“Three Wins”

The Whalers would need to win their two round-robin games and win their semi-final game to qualify for nationals. They would not need to win the championship game. Just three wins.

First up was the Tampa Bay Bolts. The Whalers Green team quickly dispatched them 10-2.

With many thanks to the Davies family, the boys were treated to a cookout for a post game lunch. The Davies were staying at a Residence Inn next to the rink, which had a large gas grill in the pool area and some 40 hamburgers, 40 hot dogs and 2 boxes of chicken later, the boys were fed and playing pickup basketball on the adjacent court.

But for one player, Billy Varley, basketball wasn’t his post meal entertainment. It was Billy’s birthday. His mother surprised him with a belly dancer who performed for him. It was pretty clear the boys were having a good time.

A post meal nap was scheduled before the boys had to be back for their 8pm match-up against Space Coast. Two junior hockey games in a given day is taxing to the body. Space Coast had nearly 20 hours to rest between games, the Whalers less than 8.

Everyone was nervous going into this game. Though the Green team was 2 and 0 against Space Coast for the year, the games were reasonably close and in their last meeting a major brawl broke out after the game. Would there be any bad blood?

“Two Wins”

The game started out hard hitting. It was clear these teams did not like each other and that Space Coast was here to extend their season. The teams went to the locker room with the Whalers up 1-0 at the end of the first period. The second period started up with more hitting. But starting 5 minutes into the period and over a period of the next 7 minutes, it was “Good Night Sally, See ya” as the Whalers effectively ended the game. The Whalers found the net 3 more times to end the game 8-0 putting the Green Team into top seed in their bracket going into Sunday.

Earlier the Blue team gave the East Coast Eagles Majors a tight game, but the Eagles prevailed to take the number one seed in their bracket. This setup a match-up between the Whalers Green and the Whalers Blue team in their first official meeting of the year.

With the top two teams getting bids to the nationals, the winner of the Blue-Green game would get a bid, the other’s season would be over. The other semi-match-up pitted Tampa Bay against the Eagles Majors which the Eagles would easily win. The championship game only mattered for seeding in the nationals.

“One Game”

The season was on the line. This had the billing to be a very good hockey game.

Five minutes in, Nate Atangan put the green team ahead. Ten minutes later, Chris Armand, for the Blue team tied the game. It was a hard hitting fast paced game. The Blue team climbed to a 3-1 lead on goals from Barron Sluder and Michael DePatto in back to back goals within 35 seconds half way through the 2nd period. The Green team would not go easily. Atangan picked up a short handed goal to narrow the deficit to one at the 7:32 mark. Four minutes later, Brandon Rumble scored an unassisted goal to knot the game at 3-3. Just before the period expired, Alex Byrne scored to give the Green team a 1 goal lead going into the 3rd period.

Two minutes into the 3rd Period Brandon Rumble gave the Green team the most dangerous lead in hockey . . . a 2 goal lead. The game moved back and forth until a 5 minute major penalty put the Green team on a power play that would consume most of the remaining 3rd period. The Blue team killed it off and with about 2:00 left, the Green team took a penalty that gave the Blue team some life. With the goalie pulled giving the blue team a 6-4 man advantage brought the game to a 5-4 score just after the penalty expired with 11 seconds left on the clock. The Green team killed the last 11 seconds. Joy was on one end of the rink, sorrow and sadness on the other.

In a great show of sportsmanship, instead of shaking hands, the players were all hugging each other. This was extra special since the referees were not allowing post game handshakes in many of the games. To see these guys being so emotional to each other after such a hard fought game was amazing.

The sun was out. The fog has been burned away. It was a glorious day for the Green team.

From the beginning of the year, the Green team was focused on making it to the Nationals. Instead of “We’re going to Disney World” the chant was “We’re going to Natties”.

The team headed to Hooters to celebrate achieving their season goal. More birthday embarrassment for Varley and the captains were forced into doing the hula-hoop.

There was another game to be played and congratulations to the East Coast Eagles Majors on their bid. It was an amazing weekend for the boys. They happily piled into their van’s for their seven hour drive home knowing their season was extended as they were:

Going to Nationals!