Posted on 05/27/2018 1:48:49 PM PDT by airborne
Vegas Golden Knights vs. Washington Capitals
Golden Knights: 12-3 (defeated Los Angeles Kings 4-0 in first round, San Jose Sharks 4-2 in second round, Winnipeg Jets 4-1 in third round)
Capitals: 12-7 (defeated Columbus Blue Jackets 4-2 in first round, Pittsburgh Penguins 4-2 in second round, Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 in third round)
Season series: VGK 2-0-0; WSH 0-2-0
(Excerpt) Read more at nhl.com ...
You are on!
Welcome to the team!
Got kids in suburban Maryland that have waited a lot of years for the Caps to get this deal done.
They are a hockey family and had season tickets for many years. It is so bad the Dad can’t watch except after the score is known and he can speed through the recording.
you wanna see “possession” hockey?...watch videos of the Soviet Red Army teams...or the 1980’s Edmonton Oilers. Again...these teams are scoring at the rate that teams did in the 1940’s..when they only played 70 games. The fact that the league keeps trying bizarre rule changes to “open” up ice tells u somethings not right. Imagine the Oilers playing with no center red line and 2 line passes. The goalie equipment is ridiculous...this might sound crazy..but the game is too fast now...ive never seen so many 2 and 3 on 1’s butchered because these guys are skating out of control. Theres no way an expansion team should be in the finals..but the teams all play alike...Wayne Gretzky said that this stuff is being taught at the bantam and midget league level...the games to robotic now. You gave me a few plays of “skill”..but it all comes down to who gets the lucky bounces. During the season...out of 7 or 8 league games on any night, 5 or 6 ..the score will be 2-1..or 3-2. Ive watched game from the 80’s and 90’s,,,and i cant believe its the same game. You gotta let your stars be stars. Every niow and then ill see a good game...but its mostly just a boring, scrambled mess.
You can't even see what happened at real-time speed. But when you watch the slow-motion replay you see how well coordinated this goal was. The Phoenix center won the faceoff back to his defenseman. At around the 0:34 mark he sees that the defenseman has possession and is preparing to shoot, so he bolts to his left and takes the opposing center with him -- thereby opening the shooting lane for the defenseman.
Meanwhile, Shane Doan lines up at right wing and immediately gets position inside his defender so he can move toward the goal and get his stick down on the ice as the low shot is made on goal. The goalie plays the original shot well, but Doan deflects the puck perfectly up to the far corner over the goalie's shoulder.
you wanna see “artistry”?...you never see goals like this anymore...this is the kind of stuff that makes you want to go and rent the ice...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isCV73zAvoQ
The Soviet Red Army is a good example of "possession" hockey, but the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s really aren't. Don't just watch highlights of those Edmonton teams. I recently watched a few entire games from their Stanley Cup years, including the clinching games against Philadelphia in 1987 and Boston in 1988. Yes, those teams had skilled players (I think Jari Kurri was one of the most underrated players of all time) ... but I was surprised to see how sloppy and chaotic those games were for long stretches.
I think time blurs our memories. Legendary Montreal goalie Ken Dryden said something like that a few years ago. He described watching some video clips from the peak of his career in the 1970s, and he was embarrassed at how slow the game looked compared to the modern NHL.
I agree 100% about the goalies, though. It's not just the equipment that's the problem here. What you're seeing is the second or third generation of NHL goalies who were actually trained as goalies since they were young kids. They've almost perfected the position in terms of how it's played. Up until the late 1980s, almost every NHL goalie was a guy who played another position as a kid but then started playing in goal because they weren't very good forwards or defensemen. Go back to some of those video highlights of the 1980s, and you'll notice that the goaltending was -- with the notable exceptions of Patrick Roy and Grant Fuhr -- uniformly awful by modern standards. They didn't play their angles well, gave up huge rebounds, didn't react quickly on cross-ice passes, etc.
in any sport..you have to be wary of it becoming too defensive..or you no longer have a “game or sport”. its why zone defenses were outlawed in pro basketball..nobody would ever score. In football, they had to change the rules to let the receivers get open, no more bump and run. Sadly, in hockey, the opposite has happened. They might as well take the NHL record book and just throw it away..these players of today will never come close to any of them..its too bad..cuz players like Conner McDavid etc will be forgotten in a haze of boring 2-1..or 3-2 games. They can change the rules and trapazoids all they want....but when teams are coached to play this style, its not gonna change anything. Hockey never had good television ratings..their best chance was the glory days of Wayne...Mario etc. Now...its just unwatchable...even the announcers today just suck. Hockey has taken a huge, forgettable step backwards. I used to really love it, not anymore.
or maybe i saw Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers do it so much , they destroyed the NHL record book and won a bunch of Stanley Cups doing it. All i know..the league keeps desperately changing the rules...its turned into a stupid looking game..bunch of guys whacking at a puck with sticks. The tic -tac- goals you posted are very much the exception..not the norm. Used to be 80% skill goals..20% garbage goals..now its the other way around. Teams score 250 goals and are considered “offensive”...never mind that the record is almost 500. Backwards.
For one thing, I'm actually pleased to see how NHL players seem to be getting smaller in recent years. Average NHL player size (both height and weight) peaked in 2004 and has been slowly declining since then. There is much more emphasis on mobility -- especially among defensemen! -- than there was 20 years ago. One downside of this trend is that speed effectively shrinks the ice.
I also think the expanded league, the salary cap, and constant player movement has diluted the talent and made it impossible to have a team with the kind of top-to-bottom talent you saw with the Montreal Canadiens of the 1970s (the 1976-77 Canadiens were arguably the greatest NHL team of all time), the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s, and the Pittsburgh Penguins of the early 1990s. You'll never see guys like Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Coffey, Ron Francis, Mark Recchi, Joe Mullen and Bryan Trottier on the same roster in the salary cap era.
That was a dumb move in my opinion. Fleury could give Murray a rest when he needed one. Pittsburgh would not have won the Cup without Fleury. Also well before the draft, it was rumored that Fleury was the guy Vegas wanted. Pittsburgh was throwing away a #2 pick.
Even the Islanders dynasty of the early 1980s never scored 400 goals in a season -- let alone nearly 500 (actually, the record is less than 450). In fact, the Oilers scored more than 400 goals in a season five times in the 1980s ... and no other team has even done it ONCE.
Fleury really hampered Pittsburgh because his salary made it difficult for them to put a full roster together for. 2017-18. You can’t have a part-time goalie making almost $6M in today’s NHL.
Go Caps!
I think the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars both made it to the conference championship in their second seasons (same season).
8 Franchises
25 Years
159 Cumulative Seasons of Futility.
Curse of St. Patrick.
Thank you.
Go Knights!!!
Who is watching? What a hell of a game!! Unbelievable. Cant believe I was worried about blowouts. These teams both want it. This is good hockey!
They have to wait until the ice is off.
One hell of a game is right.
It is Knight Time.
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