Posted on 06/02/2006 9:20:09 AM PDT by Hat-Trick
Category 5 thriller on tap
Hurricanes earn Cup berth against Oilers in homecoming of sorts
John MacKinnon, The Edmonton Journal Published: Friday, June 02, 2006
The Edmonton Oilers have a Stanley Cup final date, at last, beginning Monday night in NASCAR country.
And the speedy, skilled Carolina Hurricanes will be facing the Oilers in the final thanks hugely to Mike Commodore and Ray Whitney of Fort Saskatchewan and ex-Oilers captain Doug Weight, making amends for a costly penalty in Game 6 by scoring a key goal in Game 7, a dramatic, see-saw victory over the Buffalo Sabres.
Not to mention goalie Cam Ward of Sherwood Park, an emergent star in goal for Carolina as a 22-year-old rookie, who made 22 Game 7 saves.
It was Commodore, he of the signature flaming-red Afro, who got things started Thursday night, sending his signature average slapshot pinballing off two Sabres and past goaltender Ryan Miller at 12:05 of the first period.
"I was just thinking, 'Get it by the first guy,' and I barely did that," said Commodore, whose shot clinked off the skate of Taylor Pyatt, who came out to block the shot, then clanked off the skate blade of Adam Mair, redirecting a shot headed wide past a helpless Miller.
"I tried to get it up in the air, too, and it didn't even come off the ice.
"It hit a skate and hit another skate and went in. I'll take 'em however I can get 'em."
The Hurricanes took this game and kept it, in the end, but it was no breeze, even with the Sabres lineup shredded, its top four defenceman out with injuries, along with centre Tim Connolly. The Hurricanes, of course, were without power forward Erik Cole, gone for the playoffs with a neck injury.
The most recent Sabres casualty was defenceman Jay McKee, who woke up early Wednesday morning with a painful, swollen, infected leg. He didn't make the trip to Raleigh, joining Henrik Tallinder (broken arm), Dmitri Kalinin (broken ankle) and Teppo Numinen (groin) on the sidelines.
Still, in the end, the Sabres gave the Hurricanes all they could handle, erasing the 1-0 lead Commodore had provided, building a 2-1 advantage and going end-to-end with the Hurricanes in a wild third period.
But it took awhile for the rest of the Sabres to find their legs. Pyatt produced Buffalo's first second-period shot in the 12th minute and it was a good one, forcing Ward to make a splendid leg pad save. But the Sabres seemed to be out of gas until a seeing-eye slapshot by replacement defenceman Doug Janik eluded Ward about four minutes later, tying the game.
When ex-Oiler Jochen Hecht, shooting from behind the goal line, banked one in off Ward's skate to give the Sabres a 2-1 lead at 19:55 of the second period, it was almost enough to cause an observer to think there was a hockey god, after all, and she lives in the grim, urban wasteland of Buffalo, N.Y.
The Sabres didn't sag after Weight tied the game 2-2, burying a passout from Whitney at 1:34 of the third period. But the Hurricanes certainly claimed the momentum.
"It was a rough night after Game 6," said Weight, who was sitting out a boarding penalty when the winning goal was scored. "I was in the box when they scored.
"It was a terrible feeling. "I tell you what, these guys in this room are just great hockey players, wonderful people, great organization. "They were awesome to me, and said, 'Don't even blink an eye about it.' "
Rod Brind'Amour, the Hurricanes captain and one of seven team holdovers from the 2002 Carolina club that lost 4-1 to the Detroit Red Wings in the Cup final series that year, scored the Eastern Conference final-clinching goal at 11:22 of the third period, with Sabres defenceman Brian Campbell in the box serving a delay of game penalty. Justin Williams added insurance on a setup from Brind 'Amour with 52 seconds left.
As the party began, to the strains of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet at the Royal Bank Center (yes, that Royal Bank), a fan held up a sign that read 'Redneck Hockey.' Appropriate that, since the big-market hockey observers dismiss the first Cup final in the New NHL as an artistic triumph but a TV ratings and marketing disaster.
After all, it pairs small-market Edmonton with Raleigh, where their fans, the Caniacs, are wonderfully passionate, just not that numerous outside the 18,730 that filled the RBC Center on Thursday night.
Never mind. The final will be a once-in-a-lifetime homecoming to hockey-mad Edmonton for the likes of Commodore, Whitney, Ward and Weight, who finally felt free to talk about that scenario with the conference final out of the way.
"It's crazy there," Weight said, obviously up-to-date with the Whyte Avenue shenanigans. "It rivals this building, definitely, and they feed off it emotionally.
"They deserve to be where they are at, they beat some great teams. "They play a lot like us -- they skate, hit and finish.
"When you are the last two teams standing, the words heart and character (runs) throughout the rooms, both rooms."
No doubt.
Like BTO sang, 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' yet.'
Check out my blog at: www.edmontonjournal.com
jmackinnon@thejournal.canwest.com
The season has been expanded to the point where normal seasons won't end until the end of May, and this was an Olympic year with a two week stoppage in February.
The NBA season is going to end even later and they don't even have the Olympics as an excuse. Baseball season is just as long. When a league's not playing an league's not earning, except for the NFL which finds a way to get networks to pay to cover almost everything.
I long for the day when all of those hockey teams in silly markets like North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Florida, etc. just disappear.
No high profile players? So Chris Pronger and Rod Brind'Amour are nobodies? Of course the real punchline is that post season success is one of the keys to a player becoming high profile.
If you get the days you long for say goodbye to the NHL. The league needed to expand beyond the traditional market. Sure the old days of the league were nice if you lived in the snowbelt, but the population of the country is moving out of the snowbelt and the league needed to follow. And the Carolina and Texas teams make good money, better than Buffalo and some of the other teams in "traditional" NHL markets. Attendance was up league wide this year, revenue significantly better than projected, just gotta fix the TV situation.
If you get the days you long for say goodbye to the NHL. The league needed to expand beyond the traditional market. Sure the old days of the league were nice if you lived in the snowbelt, but the population of the country is moving out of the snowbelt and the league needed to follow.
This is one reason why collegiate hockey games often attract bigger TV audiences than the Stanley Cup finals. When you have national championship games involving teams like Boston College, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Lake Superior State, etc. you never have to convince fans that it makes sense for these teams to be playing on a sheet of ice for a winter sport.
And the Carolina and Texas teams make good money, better than Buffalo and some of the other teams in "traditional" NHL markets.
That's a good point. Keep in mind, though, that you are comparing teams from two of the fastest-growing metro areas in the U.S. with a team from a city that has been most aptly described for years as a poverty-stricken dump.
What's wrong with them being marquee players? They're good, they're tough, Pronger is photogenic, they've put up good numbers their whole career, they give good interview. They should be marquee players. The only reason they're not truly marquee players is that hockey isn't really a marquee sport, it's never gotten the kind of press coverage for more than 1 or 2 players to be known outside of hockey fandome.
Collegiate hockey numbers aren't that good. It's not a matter of convincing the fan, it's a matter of having the fan to convince.
That's my point, all the fastest growing metro areas are in the sunbelt now. That's the place where it's going to be easiest to grow a fanbase, between transplanted existing fans and just general population growth there's more potential to improve the fan base for the whole sport in places like NC and Dallas and Atlanta than in New York state, Chicago or Minnesota. If the league restricts itself to just the snowbelt it will die with the snowbelt, it needs to expand and turn non-traditional hockey markets into hockey markets. Football had to go through the same thing when it moved out of the "football swath" of industrial and South Eastern America. A lot of teams struggled, a lot of teams failed, but eventually they managed to make the game stick. To be a truly national league they need to make it a truly national game, that means following the population and getting out of the frozen north, if the NHL is ever going to move out of a distant 4th (and really with the rise of NASCAR one can argue it's not a distant 5th) it needs to make the southern expansion work. If it bails on the southern expansion hockey stops being a major league sport.
Hee-hee-hee.... I understand. You're just upset that you embarassed yourself with your conference finals prediction thread and your Devils took the big one right up the ol' wazoo. Yup, Devils in 5, Devils coming out of the East... tough to beat Brodeur this time of year...
BTW... We have cheerleader babes in the stands because we can. The Meadowlands are still looking for cheerleaders but they are having trouble luring them away from the trough over at the harness track.
Well, I long for the day that you pack up all your relatives and haul them back to New Jersey. Heck, their the ones buying all the season tickets down here.
Me too ... I'm old enough to remember the old NHL era ... Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Boston (think I got'em all) ... of course in those days the teams traveled mostly by train or bus. In that era, before helmets and goalie's wearing face masks for protection, it was rare for a hockey player to make the NHL ranks until well seasoned in the minors. Typically a player was at least twenty-one, usually twenty-three or older before making it into the NHL.
I give your team credit, they're good. But you've got no business talking smack about the Devs yet. Call me in a decade or after winning three cups. Which ever comes first.
Let's have Canada win one.
SD
Go Oil!!!
(at least this way the Cup goes to the team that embarrassed mine!!)
You know, I was going to root for the Hurricaines until I read this post - but now I hope they get greased.
BTW - how many cups do y'all 'n yer cuzins have down thar? Or for that matter did the Whale have?
Don't kid yourself, we obviously have done quite well without them. If your [candy]'Canes win the Cup, you'll soon discover how hard it is to keep it. When every team in the leauge is gunning for you, and the pressure of defending/repeating is ever present, we'll see how the [candy]'Canes hold up. One thing the Devils have proven is that they are arguably the most consistently successful team in the league over the last 10+ years.
Face it, that's all you have right now is the past. You inherited your team thirty years ago and suffered through more seasons before you even sniffed the Stanley Cup than the Hurricane fans have even had seasons. A lot of good those 3 Stanley Cups did this year, huh? The interesting part is that, generally speaking of course, the true southerners down here couldn't give a damn whether the Canes win or lose and we STILL whooped your @$$.
This game is way too easy.
But, I will go easy on you guys. You are doing what you can to make the best of it, what with you living in New Jersey and all... ;-)
All on my account? Bless your heart!
GO WHALERS!
(heh heh)
>>I've liked 'em ever since they moved to Carolina. Don't know why. Just do.
Funny I liked them BEFORE they moved to Carolina. Way back to WHA days.
Speaking of which, this is the first Stanley Cup final with two WHA teams, only one of which is still in their original city.
What a game! The old school teams couldn't beat the atmosphere in the RBC tonight!
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