TruffleShuffle

no, fleury is very good. cam ward is good too. not really. those guys reputations seem to be living on their draft status and stanley cup runs. especially fluery marc andre fluery has had only one good season. the rest of his career he's been mediocre to bad. cam ward is a pretty solid goalie now (not great), but he was atrocious during the regular season before his cup run. if we're talking about goalie matchups heading into a final, he was a worse bet than niemi. so i don't get it, are you saying that osgood sucks and niemi is good? because they're pretty similar, both put up very good numbers behind great defenses. your assessment of fleury is laughable.

they probably bitched about fleury because he wasn't good when he came up at 19 years old. he's had good numbers the past few years and made the canadian olympic team, most of whose players are pretty good. his biggest problem is that the pens defense isn't that good and lacks top flight talent.

no, fleury is very good. cam ward is good too.

No, NJ's trap style would have been disastrous. the problem is, they didn't play it as well as they had in the past, kovalchuk has no commitment to defense whatsoever, and brodeur just isn't as good as he was in his prime. he was outplayed by boucher and looked very average in the playoffs (actually in the whole second half of the season). the devils weren't really that good.

no. michael leighton sucks and niemi doesn't. ok so what goalie matchups in the nhl finals have been worse?

this has to be one of the worst goalie matchups in stanley cup final history, right? michael leighton is a journeyman and niemi is an unproven 26 year old rookie who was the backup for much of the season.

i won't post in the blackhawks thread, regardless of outcome, during the finals. the blackhawks and their fans are finally rid of wretched ownership and now get to enjoy a very talented team built in a short period of time. i don't want to come off as trolling and will keep my comments to this thread... perhaps a few of our other hockey enthusiasts who are not hawks fans will join me, or perhaps i will be talking to myself.

it wasn't a weak division. the devils were 2nd in the conference and the pens were 4th, the rangers were basically tied with the flyers. the southeast was the truly weak division. if you meant weak conference then i won't argue with you. the flyers aren't really a true #7 seed or an 88 point team. they spent the first third of the season playing undisciplined, let-the-other-team-dictate-the-play style of hockey under an awful coach, then several games after that trying to get rid of the John Stevens Stench. they also had brian boucher playing terribly because he was hurt during preseason, played only a couple of games while backing up ray emery, then became the full-time starter for a long string of games. he didn't start playing better until late in the season. the third reason is that we had a lot of problems with injuries and ineffectiveness among our third defense pairing. we're basically not playing those guys at all, so that's not a problem any more. the flyers are not as good as the blackhawks but i think they are as good as the team people were picking to win the conference or the division before the season. their play in the playoffs has been far better than it was for much of the season and more in line with the talent on the roster. it hasn't been a case of hot goalie or fluky bounces; the flyers have legitimately outplayed the three teams they've faced. frankly it has been really fun to root for this team without any expectations - much more fun than the lindros years when we were expected to go far and often disappointed. all of that being said, i think the hawks are an excellent team and will win the series in 5 or 6 games.

pat kane leads the league in STDs

lol portugal's game with the cape verde islands ended in a scoreless draw. also, south korea beat japan 2-0, australia had a 2-1 win over new zealand that was apparently undeserved, south africa drew with bulgaria and england won 3-1 over mexico.

neither niemi nor the blackhawks dominated vancouver.

a few little notes from bp last week:

i'm believe he's their top prospect by a pretty good margin. their system is terrible.

tough friendly for portugal today, playing the cape verde islands

well they own the flyers so they definitely have a rooting interest there.

if the flyers do finish off montreal, what the blackhawks should do is hit and pressure our defensemen throughout the series. our third pairing played eight minutes on saturday - combined - which means that pronger, carle, timonen and coburn are basically playing half the game. with carter and laperriere back we're deep and forward and those guys have tended to do a lot of the hitting. pronger has a reputation as a big hitter but really, he doesn't hit that much. he has to conserve his energy. boston probably gave us the toughest test because their forwards played more physical. montreal's forwards are pansies. leighton is not as awful as i thought he was, but he's not good either. the strong defense has allowed him to see all the pucks coming at him and quickly cleared any rebounds.

the comparison you're searching for desperately is the bad boy pistons, after getting wiped by one of the league's all-time great teams. ok, well regardless of what comparison you want to use, it's really not that bad watching your team lose when you just won. i can tell you that people around here were disappointed that the phillies lost to the yankees last year, but it would have been 100 times worse if they hadn't beaten the rays in 2008.

probably not. i mean, was it that hard for bulls fans to watch another team win after winning 35 championships during the 90s?

wait i don't get it, they're idiots because they didn't burn down the montreal team hotel? or because they're just idiots. plus that was after we had already won two straight cups, people weren't as angry and desperate back then.

if philly fans are willing to burn their hotel down then they probably should be concerned.

well then i guess your whole team would be dead and we would win the cup, so that is okay with me. i'm not counting out montreal though; they've been too tough with their backs to the wall in the playoffs.

lol no mike richards. great list.

the hawks obviously spent more on their roster (and probably marketing too) than the dollar bill years, but they had sellouts pretty much every game, at least 10 home playoff games, lots more in merchandise sales, and local tv revenue. there's no way the hawks aren't making more than they did under bill. what a dolt.

can't believe nobody has given any credit to bill wirtz yet. his dying made all of this possible.