The NHL season is over with a bit of a collective sigh, since for the third straight season an American team from a traditionally non-hockey market has hoisted the Cup over a Canadian opponent. Given that I cheered for the Lightning and the Hurricanes over the Flames and Oilers respectively, I hardly maintain the hard line stance of wanting the Stanley Cup to go “where it belongs,” but this year some of my more strident reasons for choosing teams swung away from the American city, even if they didn’t necessarily swing toward the Canadian city. First, like Calgary and Edmonton before them, Anaheim defeated my Detroit Red Wings on the strength of spectacular goaltending and timely scoring. I’ve rarely been able to cheer for the team that downs the Wings, but this year in particular was rough. I genuinely believe that if the Wings had Schneider and Kronwall manning the blue line, they would have won the series. The Ducks had only one injury to speak of—Chris Kunitz’s bum hand—and received an astonishing amount of lucky bounces during the series (game four had two key trickle-in goals for the Ducks). Sour grapes? Sure, but the Ducks were dominated in several of their wins.

Second, if I don’t have any particular affinity for the teams involved, I usually go to which players I like the most. In 2004, the Lightning were led by Martin St.-Louis, one of my favorite players since back in his days at Vermont. In 2006, I enjoyed Erik Cole’s comeback from his frightening back injury. It also didn’t hurt that each of the opposing teams had one of my least favorite players: the Flames had spear-happy pest Ville Nieminen and the Oilers had mammoth cheater/crybaby Chris Pronger. Lo and behold, Pronger leaves Edmonton under a cloud of suspicion during the off-season to end up with the Ducks. While I don’t have much against many of the other Ducks players (except for goaltender-magnet Corey Perry, who got away with interference infractions that would have sent Tomas Holmstrom to a secret prison for a decade), the thought of Pronger pumping the Stanley Cup over his head was enough to make me vaguely side with the Ottawa Senators. My Canadian friends either followed Ottawa or banded together in national pride, which is usually something I’d enjoy cheering against, but pugilistic netminder Ray Emery is a more palatable evil than Pronger. Yet I could never find myself cheering for the Sens, only hoping they’d prevent a Ducks victory.

My overall malaise about the finals—hoping for a tight, entertaining series rather than cheering for one particular team—was certainly mirrored in how I watched the games. I caught parts of the first two games and game four on muted bar televisions, missing some key moments as they happened live but getting the overall tenor of the games. I saw all of game three and all but the final few minutes of game five, though. It shocked me how lifeless Ottawa could be in the first period of game five. Heatley and Spezza were completely absent and Emery proved that he’s not on the same level as most of the other playoff goalies, but the team as a whole seemed unfocused. If they had won the Cup with this level of effort, it would have been a damn shame.

I hand it to the Ducks—there’s no debate about who deserved to win the series—but it’s a bummer that the series is over with such consensus. Whereas the Flames could have easily won if the goal judge had been a bit more lenient and the Oilers could have won if Roloson hadn’t been hurt, the Senators were simply outclassed. I have to hope that next year provides my Sabres–Wings final.

The Red Wings season is now over, having fallen to the Anaheim Ducks in six games. Yes, they were the top seed in the west, but most experts picked the Wings to lose to the Flames, then the Sharks, and then the Ducks, so perhaps the conference finals exit is more of an achievement than most prognosticators will admit. The Ducks certainly had the best goaltender remaining in the playoffs in pending free agent (more on that in a bit) Jean-Sebastien Giguere and a fearsome tandem on defense, but their lack of offensive depth gave the Wings a definite opening, one that they couldn’t quite grasp. When the Wings stuck to their 2007 game plan by causing havoc in front of the net, cycling the puck, and rotating their positions in the offensive zone, they put the puck in the back of the net. When they retreated to the perimeter offense that caused many of their early exits, they couldn’t buy a break. I was amazed by how many times Wings players had the puck on their sticks with a glorious opportunity, only to have it bounce over the blade or glance off the heel. I can hardly blame the players for the quality of the ice or the bounce of the puck, but tantalizing moments like those kept coming up.

As I look toward the 2007 off-season, here’s my evaluation of the Wings’ positions:

Forwards: The team’s forward lines had a bit of an overhaul late in the season with the addition of Todd Bertuzzi and Kyle Calder, but those players were frustrating at best. Bertuzzi is a shell of his former self, occasionally mustering the spirit which drove his finest moments as a Canuck, but more often dumping the puck back to the defense when he had a chance to drive hard to the net. He showed a few flashes of life, but not enough to merit as much ice time as he received late in the Ducks series. Kyle Calder was a waste of space as a healthy scratch. Maybe he’ll revive his career in another city, but he did absolutely nothing in Detroit. Both of these players are unrestricted free agents, so I look forward to waving a cheery goodbye to their respective five and three million dollar salaries. Another UFA, Robert Lang, had some better moments during the playoffs, but not enough to merit four million against the cap. He had an up-and-down season (I’m well aware of this, since he was on my fantasy team for part of it), but disappeared for months at a time.

The Wings’ top line of Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, and Tomas Holmstrom was split up in game three of the Ducks series, but all three played well throughout the playoffs. Datsyuk answered questions about his spotty playoff record, Zetterberg often dominated the puck, and Holmstrom was a warrior. While they authored the game six comeback, I thought there were moments, especially in road games, when the trio could have done more to dominate the flow of the game like Anaheim’s Getzlaf / Perry line would. Mikael Samuelsson typically played with Zetterberg and Holmstrom after Datsyuk left the line and held his own with his excellent shot and passing abilities.

Dan Cleary was the Wings’ best forward throughout the playoffs and set the tone for their re-emergence as a physical team. He’s not even getting a million a year, but he’s precisely what the Wings need on their third line to fill in for the hitting of Darren McCarty and Martin Lapointe. Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby are the remaining members of the Grind Line, and while they didn’t quite hold their own in the scoring department, Draper’s plastering hit in game five was a highlight of the series. Maltby just resigned, so these guys will be around for a while.

While I’d hoped that the Wings would make the finals, the biggest bright spot from this season was the emergence of a variety of young guys in key roles, much like the Ducks’ rookies last season. While Johan Franzen, Tomas Kopecky, Jiri Hudler, and Valtteri Filppula may not have the upside of Getzlaf, they each showed the potential to fill key roster spots in the future. Franzen, “the Mule,” is a big body who could learn a few things from Holmstrom about scoring touch in front of the net, but managed to score some clutch goals at critical times, like the marker that finished off Calgary. Kopecky replaced Calder in the Anaheim series and traded big hits and speed with a frustrating propensity to take minor penalties, but should be better once he’s accustomed to the team. Hudler showed a good amount of speed in his typically brief appearances, but may need scoring line time to emerge as a regular threat. Filppula is the biggest bright spot from this group, as his fantastic speed and hockey sense just needs a bit more a finishing touch in order to cement his place alongside Datsyuk in the future.

If Lang, Bertuzzi, and Calder all leave, the Wings will need a physical winger, a playmaking center for the second line, and another “project” like Cleary, Draper, or Maltby for the fourth line. Let’s hope these things happen.

Defense: I’d argue that the Wings would have won the Anaheim series if not for the injuries to Mathieu Schneider and Niklas Kronwall, since having to play Andreas Lilja and Kyle Quincey on a regular shift allowed the Ducks to dominate the offensive zone. Lilja single-handedly gave away game five—yes, with a bouncing puck, but one that should have been dumped off to the far boards, not through Andy McDonald. He’s still under contract for 2007–2008 if TSN is correct, so hopefully he’ll be pushed to the seventh defenseman. Quincey showed his youth a bit too much, but played quite well in game six, making some nice plays in the offensive zone. He’ll make a solid bottom-pair defenseman after another year of seasoning. Schneider’s loss was enormous. Not only is he a key component of the power play, he makes the smart play almost every time is excellent at the first pass out of the zone. He may not be getting younger, but re-signing him is crucial. I would have liked to see Kronwall play more this season, since he reminds me of a baby Lidstrom, but his injury problems have prevented that from happening. Five years and fifteen million may seem like a bit much for a guy with such a propensity for breaking bones, but if he can stay on the ice for a full season he should emerge as a solid top-four blueliner.

The other four defensemen—Niklas Lidstrom, Chris Chelios, Brett Lebda and Denny Markov—all played well. Lidstrom is a model of consistency who shows no signs of aging, even at 37. Chelios may be a grizzled old man at forty-five years of age, but there’s no justifiable reason to call for his retirement. He still outsmarts opponents, plays with a physical edge, and makes the right pass. Lebda has emerged as a solid offensive defenseman for the second or third pair and the power play unit. Markov is a UFA, which means he may not be back given the growing logjam on the blueline, but he played well throughout the playoffs and added a physical edge that the team typically lacks. Unless he wants a ton of money, it would be wise to keep him and dump Lilja.

Goalies: Dominik Hasek may be rightly maligned for being borderline insane, but I’ll be damned if I expected him to play much better than he did in this year’s playoffs. Yes, he allowed some poor goals along the way, but also made some critical saves that Manny Legace and Chris Osgood might not have. Signing him to a cheap one-year deal was a calculated risk that paid off. Osgood thankfully did not have to fill in for a Hasek meltdown, so I don’t have anything to say about his postseason performance as that guy on the bench who was wearing a jersey without a helmet.

As for the future, I’d love nothing more than the salary cap to increase enough that the Wings could sign Giguere to solidify their future net needs, but I just don’t think that’ll happen. Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom is the only other viable starter on the market (sorry Crazy Ed Belfour), so teams are likely to overpay for Giguere and Backstrom, leaving the Wings in the lurch. I’d like to see Hasek come back and split time with Jimmy Howard so the Wings can find out if Howard’ll make it as a starter in 2008, but I don’t think Hasek will play for his low base salary from this year. It’ll be a tricky off-season for Ken Holland in the goaltending department, but I didn’t think that the Hasek/Osgood pairing would get the Wings to the conference finals, so who knows.

I am now contributing to Gerard Cosloy's sports blog Can't Stop the Bleeding. I would imagine that most hockey and sports content will be posted there, so if you come to New Artillery for my sporadic insight on the Red Wings' goaltending situation, bookmark CTSB.

The NHL Playoffs have been a mixed bag this year. I’m not going to complain too much, since they are actually going on, but the final four seems like a worst-case scenario for the league’s newfound salary cap–enforced parity. For all of the griping sportswriters did in covering Calgary and Tampa Bay in the 2004 finals, those teams featured Martin St. Louis, Jarome Iginla, Miikka Kiprusoff, Vincent Lecavalier, and Nikolai Khabibulin, among others. These names may not roll off the non-fan’s tongue like Gretzky or Lemiuex, but they are star players nevertheless. Who’s left among the final four teams this year? Chris Pronger, Michael Peca, Chris Drury, Daniel Briere, Teemu Selanne, Scott Niedermayer, Erik Staal, Doug Weight. I have nothing against any of these players—Pronger and Niedermayer are certainly among the top defensemen in the league—but this league needs a Thornton, a Jagr, a Crosby, or an Ovechkin to put on an absolute show and pull fans back. I don’t care if Ovechkin is playing for Moose Jaw; if he’s on a team good enough to be in the finals, sports fans would take notice and start watching games. I love the heart and timely scoring of Chris Drury, but he is the league’s most electrifying player.

The other solution is for a big city—e.g., New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles—to actually make it to the finals, thereby meriting national coverage. I look back to the Rangers’ Cup run in 1994 and to the 1993 finals appearance for the Kings for times when those outside of the loyal cadre of hockey fanatics cared about the playoffs. I’m sick of people heralding the excitement of playoff hockey and then admitting to not watching any games, primarily because they don’t care about Buffalo, Edmonton, Carolina, or Anaheim and aren’t pulled in by the hype over a single player. Anyone who’s watched a Buffalo game should enjoy their speed, their heart, their creativity, but unfortunately, a good product isn’t necessarily going to come with an audience.

I can’t say that I particularly enjoy watching professional basketball, but there’s a definite benefit from being such a star-oriented team sport. Not every star pulls fans in—see Tim Duncan—but the effect of LeBron James’ stellar first playoff appearance has been noticed in higher playoff ratings. Cleveland may not be New York or Los Angeles, but the NBA system allows the city to matter far less than the player, if the player is a dominant star. Conversely, the Knicks are better at being a complete failure than any team in the NHL, constantly generating headlines and debates. Furthermore, the good teams stay in the NBA playoffs. The Spurs lost, but they lost to the Mavericks, the second best team in their conference. Every higher seed in the Western Conference lost their first-round match-up in the NHL playoffs. If this happened in the NBA (so unbelievably unlikely), David Stern would absolutely lose it.

Meanwhile, Gary Bettman manages to spin any event positively (well, maybe not the cancellation of an entire season or the Todd Bertuzzi debacle), so I can only imagine that a press release about the “fresh blood” in the finals is forthcoming. I’m rooting for the Sabres at this point, thankful that Drury is no longer on the hated Avalanche, but this season appears to be headed for a whimpering, not thunderous close. There is no national cry for a long-awaited rectifying of the Sabres’ finals loss to the Stars. The Oilers have won more than enough Cups in relatively recent memory and lack the urge for a Cup for the Maple Leafs or Habs. Even if the Ducks make a miraculous comeback against the Oilers, half of their local fan base still won’t catch the games on TV. And the Hurricanes must become a yearly power for a Cup victory to be anything other than a passing fad.

The rule changes have been somewhat effective in putting the emphasis back on scoring and skating, but it hasn’t fixed everything. It’s hard to ignore how effective the Oilers’ trap has been or how quickly they’ll slide into it (a one-goal lead to start the third period). I’d hate to think that this is the second coming of the 1995 New Jersey Devils, a team that sadly dictated the style of play for teams lacking offensive firepower. The frequency of penalty calls shouldn’t be a permanent trend, if players finally allow those tendencies to leave their systems. But if tons of penalties continue to be called, they must be the right calls. I’ve seen completely innocuous plays be whistled down, while infractions leading directly to goals (specifically, Ryan Smyth toppling over Toskala without help from the Sharks defense, allowing Samsonov access to the top shelf) have been ignored. Enforcing new standards takes compliance from both players and referees, which won’t happen overnight. I’m excited to see how NHL playoff games are played three years from now, but right now, they’re comprised of equal parts frustration and excitement.

The subtext to this entry is that my team, the Detroit Red Wings, bombed out of the first round, preempting a dream ending to Steve Yzerman’s career. At this point, I’m somewhat used to the Wings either winning the Cup, running into a blazing team, or merely not showing up for their first-round match, and I wasn’t sure whether the Oilers deserved the credit or the Wings deserved the blame for the outcome of the series. Yzerman’s injury had surprising impact—the Wings lost the 2OT game after his exit (despite appearing to win it on a Justin Williams magic trick), upon his return he was the best player on the ice—but much of the blame went to Manny Legace instead of the other offensive players who didn’t step up their games in the absence of their captain. Granted, Legace isn’t a long-term answer, particularly given the number of young goaltenders who have blossomed in this year’s playoffs, but his work in the final few games should have been enough to win those games. My dream scenario is that the Wings manage to steal one of the Ducks’ young goalies (Giguere’s stock rose with his win tonight, but hopefully he’ll be on the block anyway), Yzerman comes back for one more go at it, Jiri Fischer is cleared to play, and another young player steps up on the third or fourth lines for additional scoring, but the far more likely scenario is that none of those things occur. The Wings did an excellent job of filling in the gaps after the lockout ended, but it may be difficult to acquire a starting goalie, a power forward, and a top-four defenseman with the limitations of the salary cap.