Wings Overachieve in Boston; Come Home Tonight With Home Rink Advantage

You didn't think they were going to sweep them did you?

A #8 might beat a #1 in the Stanley Cup playoff--hardly anybody knows that better than a Detroit Red Wings fan (#8 San Jose over #1 Detroit in 7 in '94 and #8 Edmonton over #1 Detroit in 6 in '06 rankle still, even to this day)--but in the 10  instances (26.3% of the 38 previous #1 v #8 match-ups) in which an 8 has knocked off a 1, never has the underdog pulled off the upset in a 4-game sweep. The closest any team has ever come to that is the Los Angeles Kings which KO'd #1 Vancouver in 5 games in 2012.  Of the all-time upsets, four have gone the seven-game limit, six have gone 6 and the other would be that Kings-Canucks series two years ago.

The best way to look at where things stand right now is that this Eastern Conference Quarterfinal between the Red Wings and the Bruins is that, while tied at a win apiece, it is now a best-of-five series with Detroit holding home-ice advantage over a Boston team which fought hard to earn it in the 82-game regular season, only to lose it on that bit of magic by Pavel Datsyuk with only 3:01 left to go in Game 1, that most memorable 1-0 Detroit win.   So, for Detroit to have taken home ice advantage away from the Bruins even if they didn't look so good in Game 2, well, as Jack Nicholson says in Mars Attacks, "That ain't too bad."

When the Bruins were last here on April 2, (and here's an interesting note: the Bruins haven't won here since March 7, 2011) it was hard not to be impressed. I mean, you could see why they had 110 points or what ever it was they came into that game with. (OK, it was 110.  I looked it up).  Boston was big and strong and fast and they won a ton of battles along the wall.  Like I said, you could see, heck it was obvious, why they were an elite team.  After the first period, I figured they would win and win rather easily. When they took a 2-1 lead early in the third, you thought, "Nice try, fellows." Entering the game that night, Boston was 45-4-5 (.925) in games in which it was tied or ahead after two periods. Who figured the Wings had much of a shot trailing a team with a record like that in the third?  But, as you will recall, that was the night Tomas Tatar scored off a goalmouth scramble to tie it with eleven minutes left and Gustov Nyquist won it by skating past the B's D on a one-on-two to move in on Tukka Rask and light him up high.  Here, just for the record, is the Bruins defenseman Nyquist beat to the outside and embarrassed (undressed) on the play:

#33 Zdeno Chara wasn't smiling the night he met Gustav Nyquist!

By the way and for the record, the guy Chara appears to be preparing to rag-doll above, Brendan Smith, is not a small human: he's 6'2, 200.  Chara, honest to God, is 6'9, 255.  Really.  6'9!  His wingspan, including his stick, has to be something like 30 feet. And you have to wonder how a 6'2 hockey player had to feel in the grasp of that gargantuan.  Our advice: outskate the bastads. Seriously.  Don't let them catch you like this!  Make 'em spend the night chasing you.  Like in that April 2 game here in Detroit.  Like in Game 1 there in Boston.

Also our advice: Have your goalie play better.  We said going in that the Bruins are the better team.  Let's face it.  There's a reason (actually there are several reasons) why Boston finished so far in front of Detroit--24 points for those of you scoring at home--and the biggest of them is that the Bruins are a better hockey team than the Red Wings.  That's how the standings thingy works. However, just because you are the better team doesn't always mean you win, especially in the playoffs in the National League. And the primary cause of this, of the better team losing more often than you would expect would be the case (remember, slightly better than one in four 1 v 8 matchups go to the 8) is that the inferior teams goalie played better than the superior teams goalie. 

That's why Detroit won Game 1.  In Game 2, Detroit's Jimmy Howard probably played about as poorly as he could play and I'm not even sure that's an accurate assessment. It was more a case, it seemed to me, of Howard not getting many breaks around the net and getting an especially poor one on Boston's first goal when Howard wound up putting the puck on a Boston stick when he was caught out of position, the net behind him essentially unguarded. But was that goal really his fault?  You don't want your goalie to have to come all the way out to the hashmarks to play a puck directly in front of his net if there is any way not to, but Detroit--caught a little bit I thought on a change--let exactly that happen. Then you get a bad bounce and Howard's hung out to dry and the puck is in your net and a team, Boston, which was 41-6-2 (.857) when scoring first during the regular season, has scored first against you.  A few minutes later, you're shorthanded and this happens:

See the puck in the back of the net?  #18 Reilly Smith makes it 2-0 Boston with a first period power play goal.

This was the first of three Boston goals Howard got a piece of before the puck crossed the line. Some night, you got a little of it and it stays out.  Some nights they don't.  This was a don't night for Howard and the Red Wings.

It's safe to say that if Boston scores four again, they will win again. So Howard needs to have a night where when he gets some of it, it stays out.  And pretty much, that is luck. So pretty much, it is luck on which this series rides.

When they drop the puck at the Joe Louis Arena for Game 2 it will be the first Boston-Detroit playoff game in Detroit since April 4, 1957 when the Bruins eliminated the regular season champion Wings in 5. This was Game 5, and I don't know why I wasn't alerted to the fact the Bruins and Wings were playing that night at the Olympia.  I would have wanted to be there.  I was something like twenty months old at the time, after all. 

Detroit, down three games to one, scored three: Alex Delvecchio, Ted Lindsay and Metro Prystai got 'em. Gordie Howe had two assists.  Johnny Bucyk, "The Chief", one of the greatest Bruins ever, played--for Detroit.  But on this night, just like Sunday, Boston scored 4 and they won.  They scored those 4 goals off Glenn Hall and they were the last goals Hall ever allowed as a Red Wing.  He had invited his boss, Red Wings GM Jack Adams, to go f--- himself earlier in the season (perhaps earlier in the series, the record is unclear) in response to an Adams intermission tirade in the Wings dressing room.  After the season,  still upset apparently, Adams shipped Hall to Chicago.  He did okay over there.  The Wings missed him. Bucyk was also traded in that offseason, to Boston.  He did okay over there was well.  The Wings missed him, too. We'll tell you those stories some other time as our mind, as always, is filled with hockey.