There are only two things that have been lacking in this series between the Devils and the Rangers: consistent scoring by the Devils, and the play of Patrik Elias.
Through 15 games in the playoffs, Elias has managed to score three times and add two assists. The past five games he has no points and no assists and is a -3.
From NHL.com:
New York Rangers forward Brandon Prust will have a hearing with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety on Sunday morning after connecting with the head of Anton Volchenkov during a 3-0 win against the New Jersey Devils in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Saturday.
Volchenkov was carrying the puck along the boards and chipped it out of the zone when Prust landed an elbow to the back of Volchenkov’s helmet in the second period. Volchenkov was down on the ice for almost a minute afterward, but was able to continue playing. No penalty was called on the play.
Click here for more on Prust.
This is almost scary: New York Rangers coach John Tortorella was actually less than dismissive and confrontational while speaking to the media after the Rangers’ 3-0 victory over New Jersey on Saturday, employing complete sentences and even paragraphs in his answers!
The Preakness Stakes race’s 6 PM start yielded a very, very early matinee game between the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils today, and as our friends at NBC seem to prefer to not mess with their Sunday evening lineup, the Los Angeles Kings and Phoenix Coyotes will play at 3 PM EDT—a noon start, local time—on Sunday. Due to conflicting cross-continental schedules and locales, the CBC aired Coach’s Corner but not its customary Satellite Hotstove’s worth of rumors and innuendo.
So, on what is, in Southeastern Michigan, anyway, a particularly sticky and hockey-less (unless you’ve got the NHL Network and the Memorial Cup to watch) Saturday evening, ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun gets a jump on the Sunday columnists by dishing out a blog entry discussing both Phoenix Coyotes goalie coach Sean Burke’s future and, well, the kind of controversy where the coach of the team with a 3-0 series advantage, one Kings coach Darryl Sutter, has called out a columnist by name in attempting to minimize his opposing coach’s suggestion that Kings players “embellish” to draw penalties:
“You know, in the three series, we’ve usually talked about it, because you want to make officials aware of it, and I think we’ve seen a little bit in the Vancouver series and hardly at all in the St. Louis series, and I haven’t seen it once in this one,’’ Sutter said.
“Quite honestly, the supervisors and/or referees will come over and say, ‘Tell Cam Cole next time not to dive,’ and I haven’t heard that yet this series. So, that really hasn’t been part of it.’’
Cole is the respected Vancouver Sun columnist who asked Sutter about the diving Friday.
After pulling off something of an upset in a 3-1 victory over their “big brother” Czechs in the World Championship semifinals, Slovakia remains a heavy, heavy underdog in terms of their attempts to win gold against the powerhouse Russians, who all but plowed over Finland thanks to another Evgeni Malkin hat trick, but when the Gold medal game gets underway at 1:30 PM EDT on Sunday, the Canadian Press’s Chris Johnston reports that the plucky Slovaks won’t be left wanting in the self-belief department:
Belief is a powerful thing. How else to explain Slovakia’s unlikely march to the gold-medal game at the IIHF World Hockey Championship? This is a country that had missed out on the quarter-finals for four straight years at the tournament and hadn’t won a medal here in almost a decade. There’s only one difference this time around: They’re playing for Pavol Demitra, the long-time national team captain who was killed in the Lokomotiv air crash in September.
“We all know that we’re not playing just for us,” Zdeno Chara said after Saturday’s emotional 3-1 win over the Czech Republic in the semifinals. “We’re playing for our country and obviously with the tragedy that happened … it’s also for Pav.”
This is the kind of story usually reserved for the movies. The Slovaks have been overmatched all along the way and barely got through a 5-4 victory over France that was needed to advance to the playoff round. And now they’ll face Russia for a gold medal on Sunday.
“This is something really special,” said forward Tomas Tatar. “I don’t even have words for this.”
File this one under, “Things that don’t quite make sense to me”: It’s entirely possible, if not probable, that the Wings will send the better part of their 12 World Championship representatives to Sochi, Russia for the 2014 Olympics, but the groupings for the teams which will be involved were, strangely, determined today when the IIHF released its 2012 world hockey rankings.
These rankings are mostly based upon teams’ performances at the last Olympic games and this year’s World Championships, where Russia and Slovakia will tangle for Gold tomorrow at 1:30 PM EDT, and the host Finns and the Czech Republic will battle for Bronze at 9 AM EDT. Per the IIHF, here’s how the groupings for Sochi, assuming that NHL players participate in the event, will shake down (with 2012 rankings in parentheses):
Continue reading “IIHF determines ‘groups’ for 2014 Olympic teams”
Once again in this year’s postseason, New York Rangers’ goaltender Henrik Lundqvist was the story for his hockey club as his 36-save performance help shutout the New Jersey Devils in Game 3 at the Prudential Center by a score of 3-0.
Much like in Game 1, except with a lot more shots in this afternoon’s tilt, Lundqvist stopped everything the Devils threw at him in the hockey game. He was especially good in the first period when he stopped several odd man rushes and made a terrific glove save on Devils’ sniper Ilya Kovalchuk in close.
Lundqvist also made several big stops in the middle frame to keep the game at 0-0 in the third period. The Devils outshot the Rangers 15-9 in that period but again were not able to put one past the “King”.
Then, in the third period, the Blueshirts found a way to put pucks past Martin Brodeur, who, like Lundqvist, was also have a solid game between the pipes for his hockey club. Rangers’ defenseman Dan Girardi put the team up 1-0 on the power play just over three minutes into the third period when a Brad Richards’ face-off win ended up in the back of the net off a Girardi snap shot that beat Brodeur stick side.
Two minutes later, the Rangers found the back of the net again when rookie Chris Kreider deflected a Ryan McDonagh shot past Brodeur for his fifth of the postseason and a 2-0 Rangers’ lead. While the Rangers did not generate a lot of offense all game long (22 shots), they were able to score two goals 1:57 apart.
Continue reading “Lundqvist Stonewalls Devils’ in Game 3 Shutout”
No penalty on the play but post-game Devils’ coach Pete DeBoer called it “head hunting plain and simple.”
from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,
It doesn’t matter how well the Coyotes defend at this stage of the game. If Phoenix wants to avoid a sweep in Sunday afternoon’s fourth game at Staples Centre, they’ll simply need to score more goals. All the talk about diving and embellishment is just window dressing. Somebody on the Coyotes’ side needs to get more pucks behind Kings’ goaltender Jonathan Quick, a Vezina Trophy finalist, who is winning the netminding duel so far in the series.
According to Coyotes’ coach Dave Tippett, the first period of Thursday night’s third game – in which Phoenix actually held an edge on the shot clock and played its most inspired hockey of the series – was really the only time they made life hard for Quick.
“Until we continue to test him for an extended period of time,” said Tippett, “he hasn’t had it very tough down there.
“They’ve done a good job of protecting him, but I don’t think we’ve created enough around him.
“That’s the thing I’m most critical of our group about – finding opportunities.”
The Rangers now lead the series 2-1 with game 4 coming up on Monday evening.
It was a back and forth game until the 3rd period when Dan Girardi scored on the power play early in the 3rd then the Rangers added two more goals to close out the game.
Rangers found as much offense as they needed, now the Devils must figure out a way to put some pucks past Lundqvist.
Here’s Jim Hughson of HNIC with the Girardi goal…