Battle Of Hudson

Back in 1984, a movie that is now considered a staple in 1980’s culture ‘The Karate Kid’ was released. The basic plot was about a kid named Daniel LaRusso, who he and his Mom moved from New Jersey to California as they had to start a new life. LaRusso was kicked around by bullies in the beginning and it was feared for him he would never adjust to his new West Coast home.

John Kreese, the leader of the Cobra Kai, was very clear on what he wanted his men to show against the likes of Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi. And he made his point using two simple words.

No Mercy.

These simple words can be used to focus the 2011-2012 Los Angeles Kings on their current task at hand, who have taken the NHL by storm since April as they travel back to the Staples Center in Los Angeles up 2-0 on the suddendly reeling Phoenix Coyotes in the Western Conference Finals.

The strange part about the Kings is this: Is coming home to Southern California the BEST thing? After all, Los Angeles is an astounding 7-0 on the road in the 2012 NHL Playoffs. Los Angeles is getting it done in a number of ways. Shorthanded goals (5 so far). Timely goals. Stellar goaltending, and responsible defensive play. Goaltender Johnathan Quick’s numbers speak for themselves (10-1 1.45GAA .951 SV%), numbers that resemble playing goalie on NHL ’12 on the X-Box or PS3 in rookie mode.

In addition, the Kings are getting great play from their money players, most notably from the captain Dustin Brown (7 goals, 7 assist +11, and a physical presence), who is looking like one of the Conn Smythe front runner as of this moment. Heck, even a guy NAMED King (Dwight King) has 4 goals in the playoffs, including two goals in Game 1 in this series against the Coyotes.

Can the Kings be stopped? Absolutely. Some thought the long 7 day layoff after quickly dispatching the St. Louis Blues in 4 games might be an issue. But the Kings played even better in Games 1 of the Western Conference Finals series opener in Glendale AZ, outshooting the Yotes 48-27 (and keep in mind Phoenix blocked 26 shots!). If it was not for the sometimes stellar play of Coyotes goalie Mike Smith, the Game 1 score could have resembled 7-2 Kings instead of 3-2.

Many NHL teams over the years have made big runs as a lower seed, as the 1991 Minnesota North Stars, 1996 Florida Panthers, 1999 Buffalo Sabres and the 2006 Edmonton Oilers immediately come to mind. But consider this: Los Angeles does not fit the mold of a typical 8th seed by any stretch of the imagination. With three more points, the Kings would have been the 3rd seed instead of Phoenix: Would a lot of the doubters say a word about the Kings run then?

Hard to tell.

The names on the roster don’t fit the typical ‘cinderella’ story either: Doughtry. Kopitar. Richards. Carter. Brown. Quick. Talent wise, they are and have been as good as anyone this year.

One thing is certain: A lot can change in the playoffs, faster then you can ever imagine. Ask Nashville and Philadelphia fans, two teams that I yours truly picked to go to the Finals. and were both blazing hot going into the 2nd round, are feeling now. They were out of this dance in a flash.

For Los Angeles, look to the Cobra Kai and show ‘No Mercy’ and ensure the ending to their story does not finish like the All Valley Tournament.

I have to admit I didn’t even really see this Martin Brodeur beauty at the viewing party tonight, but man…this might be not only the best save of the playoffs, but the best save ever in a legendary HOF career.

I will have more thoughts tomorrow on the game, but being at the Rock tonight for the viewing party was terrific.

Throughout the playoffs and especially after Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final yesterday, the talk of the league is the Rangers’ incredible shot-blocking system. Last night, the Devils took 47 shots on net but only 21 reached Henrik Lundqvist with Ranger forwards and defensemen blocking the other 26. During their first fifteen games of the playoffs, the Rangers averaged nearly twenty blocked shots a game. Sore loser Devil fans and other people who worry about the effect this system will have on the league in the next few years are feverishly wondering if there is some way to curtail what many (including me) dub as the ‘six-goalie system’. There’s already a rumor going around that the NHL wants to outlaw leaving your skates to block a shot.

I can’t begin to count the number of ways how ludicrous this nonsense is.

First of all, blocking a shot is a good, solid hockey play that’s been around a hundred years. Few have turned into an artform like the Rangers have this year though, not only do they block shots with abandon but they somehow manage to avoid putting themselves in harm’s way doing it. Legislating against shot-blocking just because it hurts offense is just as silly as implementing the trapezoid to help offense by preventing goalies like Martin Brodeur from playing the puck. Besides, it’s not as if blocking a shot is a foolproof play. If done incorrectly, pucks can deflect off you and past your goalie, pucks can hit you in the wrong spot and injure you, and you can take yourself out of position if the shooter makes a patient play and fakes a shot.

Already after Game 1, the Devils seemed preoccupied and frustrated with the Rangers’ system, with captain Zach Parise saying succinctly, “I feel like everyone is obsessed with this shot blocking because that’s what they’re doing…a lot of teams block shots. We’ve just got to get it around.” Well yeah, people are obsessed about it because the Rangers are winning games with it, with a team that wasn’t expected to do anything before the season. To a degree, they’re a Cinderella masquerading as a top seed.

Brodeur was even more direct afterward:

“We’re playing a different team defensively than maybe the Flyers,” Brodeur said. “I think they’re a lot more in our shooting lanes for our (defensemen), so we’ve just got to find ways to try to expose them a little more. We’ve done it in the regular season. We’ve got to try to get it done. Right now, they’re hot. They’re blocking pucks. Hopefully we’ll be able to hurt a few guys hitting one-timers off their foot and their head or something. Right now, they’re paying the price to win and that’s what playoff hockey is all about.”

I got into a bunch of arguments with Devil fans last night over on the HF message board, apparently it’s okay to wish injury because that’s the way they did it in the olden days, with Bobby Hull aiming at goalies’ heads in the days where they didn’t wear masks. Well not everything about the good old days was good, it’s one thing to not care if someone gets hurt because they’re blocking a shot but actively hoping to take out a few players isn’t too far off from what the NFL’s Saints did with Bountygate. If you can’t win with talent and wearing down the opposition by skill, legal hockey hitting and attrition, then what’s the point? I wouldn’t have even cared if Marty had left the head out of it, but you can’t go bringing up head injuries in this climate, you just can’t.

In the interest of full disclosure, I find it amusing on the one hand (and an annoying double-standard on the other) that the Devils got killed for years having a counterattacking defensive system where they were able to play in all three zones of the ice as being boring and killing the game when they were one of the highest scoring teams in the league, but now when the Rangers put together a system that basically involves being in their own zone 75% of the time and employing a Ali-like rope-a-dope, somehow that isn’t boring. Honest to god, a couple of these Ranger games this year have been among the most boring beyond belief games I’ve ever seen. While the Devils forced mistakes with the neutral zone trap, the Rangers just sit back and wait for mistakes to happen. I’m not saying they shouldn’t get credit for what they do, I’ve been giving them more credit than most this year – but god, let’s call a spade a spade. What the Rangers do is akin to a team in one of the big foreign soccer leagues playing for 0-0 draws, only it’s easier in hockey to take advantage of mistakes and counterattack, so a 0-0 game turns into 1-0, and that changes everything like last night.

So what, if anything should be done about an extreme shot-blocking system? I say let the coaches have a crack at working it out…leagues go through ebbs and flows all the time of being more offensive, then more defensive. The worst thing the NHL can do is enact nine million changes that really aren’t needed. Coaches will figure out a way to adjust and beat the system over time. Either that, or they’ll imitate it en masse and then you can talk to me about changing the game when fifteen or twenty teams are playing 2-1 games in their own end. For now though, it seems unfair to legislate against a team just because they do something extremely well – but it’s not exactly unprecedented. Once upon a time, if you took a penalty for two minutes you stayed in the box for two minutes even if the other team scored, like a five-minute major these days. However, the offensive prowess of the Canadiens and early ’80’s Oilers prompted the change to the current rule where a penalty ends once a goal is scored.

For now, all the Devils can do is quit whining and figure out a way to beat the system. You want to stop the system from spreading? Score goals and make good hockey plays.

I feel like pulling a John Tortorella and writing five lines before shutting down this blog for the night. There isn’t really much to say other than it was a typical Ranger-Devil game in the Henrik Lundqvist era. Play tight defense until you get a seeing-eye shot in on the first goal early in the third period, have Martin Brodeur give up a softy on the second and then shut it down the rest of the game. People have been talking about 1994 for weeks but honest to god, this feels like 1997 all over again, or 2008. This could be over quicker than people think if the Devils don’t figure out a way to get pucks through to the net and ATTEMPT to score a goal.

Of course that task would be easier if the ice surface at MSG resembled an NHL rink. I’d say the Rangers should be embarassed over the quality of ice…except I honestly think it was by design. The league really needs to look at this before Game 2, this is easily the worst ice surface I’ve ever seen. Considering there are literally no other events at MSG right now, it seems fishy to say the least. It certainly helped what ‘should’ have been a tired Ranger team, not to mention completely neutralized Brodeur’s puck-handling, which was a disaster. Not that he was alone in stinking, Zach Parise somehow getting caught from behind by a supposedly tired Ryan McDonaugh in the first period on a breakaway was the sign right there that things weren’t going well tonight. At this point, I’m not even in the mood to complain about the refs who certainly gave the Rangers the benefit of the doubt on a couple of ticky-tack calls (and didn’t call a penalty on Michael Del Zotto when he clearly interfered with Travis Zajac canceling out an icing). Not in the mood.

All I’m going to say is I’ve been hearing and reading from Devils fans all year how ‘lucky’ the Rangers are and they’re overrated, not that good, whatever. I’ve feared this team from the opening weeks of the season when they somehow went .500 on a crazy trip around the world to a playoff run where they somehow found a way to win two series that literally came down to a bounce of the puck. Not to mention our hideous playoff history against them. If we lose this series against them, and easily as I fear we might…let’s just say I’m going on a rampage.

After a season where the Atlantic Division dominated the East with four 100+ point teams including the top-seeded Rangers and pre-playoff favorite Penguins, perhaps it’s fitting that the Eastern Conference will in the end, come down to not only a classic division showdown – but yes, a Battle of the Hudson on the highest stage possible. Although the two teams have met in the playoffs three times since 1994, this season will be the first time since that memorable series that the two teams will meet with the Prince of Wales trophy at stake. With all that’s on the line and given how much the world’s changed in these last eighteen years, there has never been a more hyped Ranger-Devil series among their previous five playoff showdowns.

Unlike in 1994, when the Devils were an upstart and the Rangers were a prohibitive favorite with an entire city counting on them to end a 54-year drought, this year there’s pressure on both sides to win. Although the Rangers aren’t anywhere near the favorite this year they were in the spring of ’94, they are still the #1 seed, and expectations have been ratcheted up warp-speed after a 109-point season and grinding out two seven-game wars in the first two rounds. And to a degree, there’s still pressure on Henrik Lundqvist to deliver and not get outplayed in the prime of his career by a 40-year old Martin Brodeur, who has what Lundqvist wants – Cup rings.

Our pressure comes entirely from who the opponent is. Every Devil fan knows about our lack of playoff success against the Rangers – one win in five previous series. Brodeur knows this as well as any fan sitting in the corner sections of the Prudential Center, since he’s been a part of all five series. After a short relief appearance in ’92 when the Devils lost a seven-game series in the first round to the Rangers, Brodeur’s been center-stage ever since. If 1994 was epic from a Ranger standpoint, it was a missed opportunity for the Devils, as they held a 3-2 lead in the series and a 2-0 lead at home in Game 6 and couldn’t close it out thanks to legendary heroics from Ranger captain Mark Messier in Game 6 and Stephane Matteau‘s double-OT wraparound winner in Game 7. Even after the Devils won the Cup in 1995, the stigma of never beating the Rangers would haunt the franchise in 1997, as a top-seeded Devil team got bounced in five games (losing the last four in a row) at the hands of their bitter rivals, with Adam Graves providing the coup de grace with yet another OT wraparound goal in Game 5.

For several years after that, the Rangers fell on hard times while the Devils won two more Cups, cementing their status as the best team in the area – if not the most well-publicized. Our winning (especially a ridiculously long unbeaten streak against them in the regular season) grated on Ranger fans, and the attention the Rangers got despite being an overpaid and mediocre team made Devil fans envious. Finally in 2006, the two teams met again in the playoffs with the Devils on an eleven-game winning streak that gave them an unlikely division title and the Rangers having a surprisingly good season get spoiled with a five-game losing streak to end the regualr season and cost them the division. Both teams carried their momentum into the playoffs, as a four-game Devils sweep in the first round where we outscored them 17-4 and eliminated the Rangers on Garden ice finally got rid of the stigma of never having beaten Big Brother.

Just two years later, the teams met again in the first round with a drastically different result, as the Rangers would beat us eleven times out of thirteen that year between the regular season and playoffs, culminating in a 4-1 first round win. That series still remains a bitter memory for Devil fans, as they eliminated us on home ice with the Ranger fans making up approximately half the crowd and cheering Lundqvist as he took a victory lap around our rink. Not to mention ex-Devil Scott Gomez coming back to gain the best of us a year after leaving as a free agent. Perhaps the most memorable part of that series was when Brodeur refused to shake the hand of Ranger pest Sean Avery in the post-series handshake line.

While Avery’s long gone, Brodeur still remains for the teams’ sixth playoff showdown in two decades. Unlike in the last few seasons where Lundqvist has gotten the better of Brodeur, this year’s been played on more even terms with each team winning three (though Martin Biron was in net for them in one of our wins). Two things have characterized this year’s Ranger-Devil games – every one of them’s been close, and three of the six games saw staged fights at the drop of the puck. In fact, they increased in number…from December 20 when Mike Rupp fought Cam Janssen three seconds into the game at the Rock, to February 7 when Eric Boulton and Brandon Prust dropped the gloves at the opening faceoff, along with a Janssen-Rupp rematch at the Garden, to March 19 when Boulton fought Rupp, Prust fought Janssen and Stu Bickel fought Ryan Carter in a three-fight start to the teams’ last showdown at the Garden. That one proved memorable after the game too, when Ranger coach John Tortorella and Devil coach Pete DeBoer engaged in a verbal sparring match of their own during and after the game.

Fortunately, there probably won’t be too many sideshow theatrics at this point, with what’s at stake. Especially since talentless goons Boulton and Janssen won’t play (thank goodness). What does concern me is how each game has been close. One of the few games that was decisive either way was the teams’ first showdown at the Rock, where the Rangers dominated in terms of shots and used three third-period goals to break a 1-1 tie and win 4-1. Our next meeting also came in the Prudential Center on the last day of January, just after the All-Star break. Since he went to Ottawa, Lundqvist sat out for a rare Devils-Rangers game, but the Rangers still led 3-2 until a fluke goal off the boards by David Clarkson with less than a minute left in regulation got the Devils to OT, and eventually a shootout where they gained two points and evened the season series.

A week later, the teams played at the Garden with Brodeur getting a memorable 31-save shutout in a 1-0 win that saw contreversy towards the end when an apparent Artem Anisimov tying goal with seconds remaining was waved off due to goaltender interference. Three weeks later, they met at the Garden again and the result this time was a thoroughly dull game, with the teams combining for just twenty-eight total shots (15 for the Rangers, 13 for us) in a 2-0 Ranger win where they got an early goal by Carl Hagelin and then shut it down the rest of the way. On March 6, the Devils registered their most decisive win of the season series when they got three third-period goals to come up with a 4-1 win at home. Finally, the Rangers won the teams’ last matchup 4-2 three weeks later after the six-person goonfest at the start of the game only served to fire them up more.

I’m not going to bother to preview the series proper, I’ll let Derek do that since I’m sure he’s got a lot to say about this showdown as well. All I’ll say is this: Eighteen-on-eighteen I believe us to be the better team, and the Rangers you would think have to show the wear and tear at some point of playing ninety-six high-pressure games with the cautious, low-scoring, shot-blocking style they do. What worries me is twofold – Lundqvist-Brodeur and the fact the Caps matched the Rangers’ intensity and shot-blocking in the last series, threw their game back at them really, and with better skill players…and the Rangers still found a way to win. While there’s no real way to measure intangibles, the fact is Brodeur has to match Lundqvist for us to win. Whether that’s by him stepping up or Lundqvist proving fallible. Despite Marty’s struggles at times in the first two rounds (particularly against Florida), goaltending wasn’t an issue against the Florida tandem of Jose Theodore and Scott Clemmensen, or against the streaky Ilya Bryzgalov. It could be in this series though. It’s a strange thing to say, but among the four goalies left in the playoffs Marty’s been the least effective of the four, and that’s with numbers of around a 2.1 GAA and .920 save percentage.

What’s clear is this…the stakes have just gotten amped up. No longer is it good enough that the Devils finally got out of the first round of the playoffs and had a great run, finally giving us mid-May hockey again. Now it’s all chips to the middle of the table time. Either the Devils win and have a really epic playoff run beating the Flyers and Rangers back-to-back, or they lose and get their great run spoiled (especially if the Rangers go on to win the Cup). Armageddon starts Monday, with the full schedule below:

Game 1: Devils at Rangers, Monday, 8 p.m., NBCSN
Game 2: Devils at Rangers, Wednesday, 8 p.m., NBCSN
Game 3: Rangers at Devils, Saturday, May 19, 1 p.m., NBC (Ch. 4)
Game 4: Rangers at Devils, Monday, May 21, 8 p.m., NBCSN
*Game 5: Devils at Rangers, Wednesday, May 23, 8 p.m., NBCSN
*Game 6: Rangers at Devils, Friday, May 25, 8 p.m., NBCSN
*Game 7: Devils at Rangers, Sunday, May 27, 8 p.m., NBCSN
*If necessary