What an exciting first week of playoff hockey. The amount of surprises that have come in the first 8 days of games have been both exciting and entertaining. There have been countless suspensions, tons of road team victories and some contenders pushed to the brink. Even tonight Pittsburgh surprised everyone with a huge victory over Philadelphia to avoid being swept. In this post I'm going to discuss the craziness that has been the Stanley Cup playoffs so far.
Many hockey media members wrote articles before the playoffs insisting there are no fighting in the playoffs. The first week has proven they could not be more wrong. It started last Wednesday when Shea Weber smashed Henrik Zetterbergs face into the glass. When Weber only was fined $2500 (about what he makes every shift) a shift in violence was felt around the league in almost every matchup. By Sunday's games, Pittsburgh and Philly played a game where there were 135 penalty minutes and 3 players ended up with suspensions. In total there have been 8 player suspensions with one awaiting a rulingat the time of this writing. And it has not just been goons getting suspended and into the violence: the stars have been equally guilty. Sid Crosby and Claude Giroux were both big parts of the Penslyvania blood bath on Sunday and James Neal and Nick Backstrom (league top scorers) have both been given 1 game suspensions already. The chaos the playoffs have brought have been very controversial and have put Brendan Shanahan under a lot of fire. His inconsistent rulings for suspensions have caused many people to question his ability to handle the supplemental discipline. As the playoffs continue and the intensity increases, how Shanahan performs could decide if he keeps his job next season.
Another interesting surprise from the first week of the playoffs has been the lack of home ice advantage. As of this writing the road team has a record of 17-9 including Pittsburgh beating Philly 10-3 in Philledalphia and Detorit (who had 31 home wins in the regular season) have lost twice at home already. I think a big part of the lack of home ice advantage has been the large amount of pressure facing the players who have home ice, especially goalies. Corry Crawford, Jimmy Howard, Marc- Andre Fleury and Ilya Bryzgalov have all cracked in home games this season costing their teams to lose games they dominated in. I have never been a big believer in home ice advantage but this has been the first year in a long time where the road team has been so dominate. But if this continues there could be a surprising champion at the end of the playoffs.
Two of the teams many picked to win the Stanley Cup, Pittsburgh and Vancouver, both surprised everyone by going down 3 games to 0 in their series. Pittsburgh won game 4 to stay alive in their series but as of now Vancouver is losing again in their 4th game. Both teams have suffered from an inability to get saves from their goalies and to score goals. Roberto Luongo has lost his starting position to Corry Schenider because of his inability to get them wins against the 8th place LA Kings. In Pittsburgh's case, Marc Andre Fleury has given up 18 goals in 3 loses. Only 3 times in NHL history has a team come back from being down 3-0 in a series but the Penguins and Canucks have the skills and depth to do it. And if they don't, there could be some major restructuring happening in their front office positions. Which is further proof that there is a big difference from regular season success and playoff success.
Playoff hockey is always the most exciting hockey of the year. And this first week alone has kept that tradition going. I cannot wait to see the rest of these matchups playout. As the hockey playoffs continue they will continue to prove why hockey is the most exciting sport around.
As always feel free to comment on this post below or offer me feedback at josh@jbenny.com. And please follow me on twitter at @jbenny15 and visit my website www.jbenny.com. Thanks for reading.
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