Happy Father’s Day
I spent the majority of Father’s Day working on the shower again. Alexis and I are slowly working on it when we have time. Today we pulled out rusty nails, broke up more mortar, and finally replaced the insulation that had mold on it. With the new insulation installed, we are more optimistic that we can complete this seemingly insurmountable task.
Since my last post there was a ton of NHL news that happened. The Red Wings lost in game 7 of the final Stanley Cup finals. They lost on home ice and there was some controversy over the captain of the Penguins not shaking everyone’s hand after the game. The Dallas Stars new general manager, Joe Nieuwendyk, fired head coach Dave Tippett and hired Marc Crawford, the ex-head coach of the L.A. Kings. Derian Hatcher, a former Dallas Stars captain, retired, but will stay with the Philadelphia Flyers as a player development coach. Derian was a great player for the Stars and his absence left a huge hole in defense that Dallas struggled to fill.
The Site & Stanley Cup ‘09
The website has been up and down due to a hard drive failure on the server. The provider has restored the files, but it appears that there are still some issues being ironed out.
On to my main topic, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings will begin the duel for the Stanley Cup tonight. This is a sequel, that I’m not entirely happy with. They played each other in the final series last year. With 30 teams in the league, it seems improbable for the same teams to make it to the final series two years in a row. I’m not a huge fan of the Red Wings to begin with and it doesn’t help that they’ve already won the Stanley Cup eleven times.
The Red Wings are not happy about the re-scheduling done for the playoffs. There was going to be a bit of a long break between the two rounds. In order to keep fans interested, the NHL moved the games up and scheduled two back to back games this weekend, one today and one tomorrow. The Wings have players that are injured or playing hurt and would have benefited from more days off. I think this is the best idea the NHL has come up with in a long time. Two consecutive games should make for interesting hockey and spark more interest.
| Game 1 | @ Red Wings | Sat. 7 p.m. |
| Game 2 | @ Red Wings | Sun. 7p.m. |
| Game 3 | @ Penguins | Tue. 7 p.m. |
| Game 4 | @ Penguins | Thu. 7 p.m. |
| Game 5* | @ Red Wings | June 6, 7 p.m. |
| Game 6* | @ Penguins | June 9, 7 p.m. |
| Game 7* | @ Red Wings | June 12, 7 p.m. |
* if necessary
Go Stars
Yes, I know they lost, but they were able to give the Red Wings a run for their money. Dallas lost for three reasons. They did not finish off the San Jose Sharks fast enough. The four overtime periods in game six wore our guys down for the first game against Detroit. The Stars simply were not able to score on the powerplay and could not beat the Red Wings’ exceptional defense.
So now I’m actually pulling for the Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup. I want them to sweep the Pittsburgh Penguins, because it will show that the Stars were that much better for putting up some decent resistance. Thus far the Penguins are failing miserably by losing both games in Detroit with shutouts. Game one was four to zero and game two was three to zero. If the Wings can sweep the Penguins, it will make it look like the deciding series was between Dallas and Detroit.
The sweep will also signal a change that NHL needs to make regarding cross Conference games during the season. The Eastern Conference teams don’t see much of the Western and the Eastern teams don’t travel as much as the Western. Both Conferences need to be evenly matched to have an exciting Stanley Cup final series. That doesn’t seem to be the case this year.
