Here's what happened in hockey on Saturday night: Much ass was kicked, all of it by the same foot.
But for those of you who prefer 10 minutes of video to eight words of exposition, there's this:
Logan Stankoven tipped in a slap shot a minute and change into the game and staked the Carolina Hurricanes to a lead in the first game of their series against the Philadelphia Flyers. Then Jackson Blake outsprinted the entire Philadelphia roster and beat Dan Vladar at 7:30. Stankoven later took a near pass from Seth Jarvis late in the second and made it 3-0, Carolina. And then the boys got snippy with each other in the third period because Messages Must Be Sent, even if the highlights don't show you the fun stuff—a few roughing penalties, a couple of misconducts, all the usual LBL: Lads Being Lads.
So yes, Game 1 of this Eastern Conference second-round series went as you might have expected, provided you forgot the fact that sweeps are rare in the Stanley Cup playoffs and back-to-back sweeps are a relic of the years when the NHL had six teams and players traveled from city to city by ox cart. Carolina, which won its first-round series in the minimum amount of time over Ottawa, took their rest and turned it into a shutout win over a Flyers team that had to grind out six games against Pittsburgh, the last of which was a high-stress 1-0 overtime win on Wednesday night.
The differences between the two teams were as evident as their relative places in the standings, a gap best expressed through the 10 additional wins and 46 more goals that the Canes have on the Flyers. Carolina muscled the rest of the Metropolitan Division and ended with the second-best record in the league after Colorado; the Flyers, the lowest qualifier in the East, had to work frantically to beat the second-lowest qualifier to claim the honor of Interstate 76. A game between these two teams just felt like it should be something like this one, and lo, it was.
Not that the series is a fait accompli by any means, because playoff hockey series rarely are. The gentleman's sweep is essentially the equivalent of an actual sweep in this context: The last team to sweep even their first two series was the 1960 Montreal Canadiens, which was back when there were only two series because there were only six teams (and six ox carts). But Carolina certainly looked sharp enough to take the Flyers to immediate and enduring task, and even though only a fool would foresee three more wins in succession like this one, well, fit us all with conical hats because we haven't got a better answer.
Colorado, which ran out Los Angeles like a common drunk in four straight (also an unusual development), opens against Minnesota this evening. The Wild look like a much tougher out for several reasons, the best of which is this guy, although one should not sneak in a nap on this guy, either.
The Wild endured and eventually controlled a stern and often obstreperous battle with Dallas in the first round, and in so doing nearly but not quite redeemed the most derided part of the NHL playoff format—the one that stuck the third- and fourth-best regular-season teams together in the opening round simply because they were in the same division. It is less likely that the Avs can boatrace that series in the way they did the Kings, but they also won't have to. There are few extra points for style here, and the history of teams winning a sweep before getting knocked out in the next series is ridiculously lengthy.
More to the point, the last time the best teams in each conference even reached the Final against each other was 2001, when the Avs beat New Jersey. Fact is, the best fall much more frequently than they prove that they are best, because hockey.
But Game 1 between Carolina and Philadelphia applied a Swiss Army knife to that truism, as affirmed by Flyers coach Rick Tocchet. "I don't know if we were mentally prepared to play tonight," he said with his best drab face. "Winning our playoff series, (almost) not making the playoffs ... there was a lot of excitement. I don't think we got down to earth quick enough for this game. And then, that's what happens: Your legs aren't there. We just didn't make any plays."
More specifically, the Canes' start was the Flyers' finish, dominating the direction, space and pace of play in the first two periods, when they rolled up a 21-9 edge in shots. From there, they had goalie Frederik Andersen to let the Flyers punch themselves out in the third. "We had a good start," Carolina coach and fellow grimness distributor Rod Brind'Amour said afterward. "That's what won the game. After that, there wasn't much happening."
Just the way conference champions like it. Adrenaline is never as welcome to a favorite as the blah comfort of sameness, and Carolina did every bit of what Carolina is at its best. Colorado's Jared Bednar should live so well. The odds say otherwise, of course, but it's a bit early for odds.
