It can be said that three of the four quarterfinal series were upsets: Montreal eliminating the Stanley Cup champions, Philadelphia coming back from three games down to beat Boston, and San Jose getting the winged wheel of Detroit off its back in five games.
Hell, Vancouver fans were even starting to buy into the idea that they could be a Cup contender before the bubble popped on that dream when they were left with 4 and a half defencemen in the final game against the Blackhawks.
Here’s a quick look at the semi-final matchups:
MONTREAL (8) VS. PHILADELPHIA (7)
Next up for Cammalleri’s Cinderella Canadiens/Halak’s Heartbreaker Habs/the Riot-causers are the Flyers, who had everyone get injured including their third-string goalie Brian Boucher. Luckily for them, their backup goalie had just returned from injured reserve, with Michael Leighton now as the best remaining Canadian goalie in the playoffs.
It’s always said how Canada could put together two or even three teams for the Olympics and they would contend, with three goalies apiece; which team would Leighton earn a spot to, eighth? Eleventh?
Halak the Slovak on the other end didn’t wow as much as against Washington, but that was because Jacques Martin’s defensive strategies totally overwhelmed more inexperienced coaches in Bruce Boudreau (Washington) and Dan Bylsma (Pittsburgh).
It will be interesting to see what adjustments Peter Laviolette will make to counter this, as he is a more experienced than the two eliminated before him.
In Mike Cammalleri, the Flyers fans finally have a target to boo, as he’s starting to creep up on some Montreal playoff scoring records. The Canadiens were playing an amazing team game in the earlier games before Cammalleri started to distinguish himself from his peers.
For the Flyers, Simon Gagne is back from his foot injury to join Mike Richards as Philadelphia scoring threats and the likely target of Hal Gill and Josh Gorges, Montreal’s shutdown defencemen.
SAN JOSE (1) VS. CHICAGO (2)
Both these teams come into this series with questions about how they perform under pressure; the Blackhawks are still young and can put up terrible games every once in a while (game 1 vs. Vancouver) while the Sharks are still trying to pull themselves out of the “playoff underachiever” hole, although after that series against Detroit they’ve got a few more fingers grasping the ledge.
Chicago is a cocky, trash-talking team that yaps at opposing players from the bench but then tightens up from time to time when the chance to clinch comes around.
It seems that the Sharks are slowly building up their confidence with a potential turning point for the franchise being the Joe Thornton to Patrick Marleau goal in overtime of Game 3.
Both goalies are of the good, not great variety. Antti Niemi and Evgeni Nabokov benefit from the “offence as defence” strategy where they’re counted on to stop counterattacks and powerplays, so it will be interesting to see which team can spend the most time in the attacking zone.
Offense won’t be a problem with the depth both these teams possess, again led by Jonathon Toews (who leads the playoffs in points), Patrick Kane and Dystin Byfuglien for Chicago and Joe Thornton/Pavelski with Ryan Clowe for the Sharks.
The powerplays should be electric when you throw in Rob Blake and Dan Boyle for the Sharks to go up against Duncan Keith, Brett Seabrook and Brian Campbell of the Blackhawks.
Edit: Of the four teams remaining, Chicago is second with a 21.6 pp% and San Jose is actually last with 19.3%. The Blackhawks’ penalty kill is first at 88.7% and the Sharks are killing at 84.2%.
They key word then becomes “should” as these two teams have the best offensive talent and potential of the four, but the great penalty killing may put a damper on it.
In the regular season Chicago was 16th in the league with a 17.69 power play percentage, while San Jose was fourth at 21.03%. Montreal was actually second?!
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The potential Stanley Cup finals matchups will present some long-awaited reunions of players and cities like:
- Josh Gorges of Montreal facing the Sharks, as well as Marc-Edouard Vlasic returning to his hometown to take on the hometown Habs!
-Michael Leighton of Philadelphia, playing the Blackhawks who drafted him in 1999!
-Matt Carle wanting to pay back the San Jose Sharks for trading him in 2008!
-Cristobal Huet of Chicago wanting to prove that HE should have been kept by the Canadiens, not Carey Price! That way HE could be backing up Jaroslav Halak instead of backing up Antti Niemi!
