Since the NHL season could be over as soon as Wednesday, let’s give you an update as to where the site will be over Summer Vacation.

We, of course, will be doing Awards coverage June 13-June 15.

June 17-June 22, I will be revealing #’s 30-1 of my NHL First Round Mock Draft. Derek will have his analysis as well, and we will likely liveblog as much of the draft as VERSUS broadcasts, if there is no Devs draft party.

June 23 we will be keeping an eye on Day 2 of the Draft.

June 25 - June 30 We will preview UFA day.

July 1 We will be liveblogging UFA Activity.

July 2 - July 8 We will keep you posted on UFA activity as it happens. Press Conferences and such.

On July 9th or until all the Devs and Rags UFAs are signed (As late as July 30th), Battle of New York will go on a long-deserved and long in length hiatus, as long as Scott Gomez has signed by then.

I cannot promise that all 3 of us will be back next season, but I can tell you that Battle of New York will return on September 1st once the hiatus begins.

Until all of this, Enjoy the hockey!

The Senators battle the Ducks in Orange County at The Pond. 8PM start time on VERSUS and VERSUS HD. Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk with the call.

Check out my preview, including a further look at Elgin Alexander Fraser, at SFM

For more Finals coverage, including BoNY Friend Greg Wyshynski’s liveblog of Game 1, head to the NHL Fanhouse over at AOL

Here’s our friend Earl Sleek from Battle of California with an exclusive look at why the Ducks DESERVE to win this series:

Why the Ducks deserve Lord’s Stanley’s Cup

On a personal level, we have Teemu Selanne, playing in his first cup finals at age 37. Teemu has been a tremendous story for the league, starting from his 76-goal rookie performance, to his winning the inaugural Rocket Richard trophy, to his international scoring for Team Finland, to the Masterson resurgence of last year. He has been heavily checked, cut up, and bruised this playoff year, but he can’t hide the excitement of playing for the ultimate prize.

Add to that J.S. Giguere, Chris Pronger, Rob Niedermayer, and Sammy Pahlsson, four veteran NHLers who have all fallen one game short of Lord Stanley’s Cup, only to watch another team savor it.

From a team perspective, Brian Burke and Randy Carlyle deserve a Cup for their aggressive and no-nonsense approach to team-building, especially for a team whose budget puts them significantly below the salary cap ceiling. They have incorporated talented kids in with talented veterans, providing clearly defined roles and a hard-working attitude. The team architects are certainly cup-worthy.

Anaheim fans have endured the mockery of all “legitimate” hockey fans throughout their first decade, and have watched a team fight its way through early (necessary) playoff defeats—the team has lost in all four rounds of the playoffs. No team on the left coast has ever won a Cup, somewhat thanks to travel disadvantages; should hockey’s ultimate prize finally extend coast-to-coast, it should mean promising things for the health of the Anaheim hockey market and the whole western continent as well.
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Thank you very much Earl, for even more info check out our linemate sites Battle of California and Battle of Ontario

Enjoy the game everybody!

This one really got to me folks. I’m sure it will do the same for you.

http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/new…7a-9344a27212f4

Littlest fan’s final joy sees Ottawa Senators off to Cup

Katie Lewis, with files from Ken Warren, Ottawa Citizen CanWest News Service

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

CREDIT: CanWest files

OTTAWA — In the end, it was a hockey game Elgin-Alexander Fraser was not going to miss.

The three-year-old spent his last hours at home, nestled between family and friends on a mattress on the living-room floor in front of the television watching the Ottawa Senators reach the Stanley Cup finals.

His right lung had collapsed and he breathed loudly, wheezing. When it became too hard to keep his heavy-lidded eyes open, because of the morphine, his family whispered the play-by-plays to him.

“Go if you want to go now bud,” said his father, Hamish Fraser to his wee son, who weighed just over 30 pounds. “You don’t have to hang on.”

But that night, Elgin saw the Senators win.

Two hours later, as his mother and father tightly held his hands and told him they loved him, he softly closed his eyes.

Afterwards, his mother Victoria Fraser washed him, clipped his nails and dressed him in a grey Senators jogging suit. She then cradled him in her arms for over an hour.

“Everything that happened just seemed to fall into place and everything felt right at that moment,” she said.

Elgin died of a rare form of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma, and had captured the emotions of thousands who raised funds to fight cancer at charity events for him.

“He went peacefully,” said his father, adding that his son loved hockey “more than anything,” and was the Senator’s biggest fan.

And they loved him too.

Elgin met the Senators after his family was introduced to Chris Phillips, a defenceman and father of two, and his wife, Erin Phillips, through mutual friends.

In April, Elgin found himself in a front-row seat at a practice as part of one of his final wishes. At the time, Mr. Fisher held Elgin while skating around the ice. Elgin also got a tour of the dressing room. Since then, Elgin had been to more than eight Senators games, including their final home game against the Buffalo Sabres last Wednesday.

Elgin’s father said his son’s room is littered with Senators paraphernalia — from jerseys, to hockey sticks, to goalie masks.”He loved to tear around and pretend to be players on the team,” he said.

On Thursday, Senators centre Mike Fisher visited Elgin at home in Carleton Place, Ont. They watched a movie and played with toy cars, because Elgin was too weak to pick up his hockey stick.

Fraser talked to his son on the phone during the visit and asked Elgin to ask Fisher if the Senators were going to win the Stanley Cup.

“Okay, Dad, hold on,” said Elgin over the phone.

“Mike,” said Elgin, “You’re going to win the Stanley Cup, right?”

“We sure are buddy,” came the reply.

“Dad, he said yes,” said Elgin, recalled Fraser.

Sunday, Fisher said he was saddened by the news and that he had thought about Elgin before the hockey game on Saturday night.

“The impact he had on me was incredible. With the things he went through and how well he handled them,” said Fisher. “I was blessed to spend some time with him. He’s in a better place, for sure.”

Elgin was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system, when he was nine months old. He went through a flurry of treatments, radiation, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant and finally went into remission. Bad news came in January, as the cancer came back as the growing tumours took over his stomach and vertebrae.

By the end, Elgin’s back was almost a solid mass of tumours, with fluid leaking into his lungs.

His doctors had told his family on Monday they didn’t expect him to make it through the weekend.

Despite his pain, Elgin still managed to go to the Senators game on Wednesday, along with his mother, father and eight-month-old sister Alysston.

The brave little boy was decked out in his red Senators jersey, a sawed off hockey stick clenched tight in his hand.

“He didn’t take his eyes off the game,” said Fraser.

After the game, Elgin met some of the players, including Fisher, Ray Emery and Chris Phillips.

Phillips told Elgin that night that the Senators were going to win the next game on Saturday for him.

They did.

Elgin’s funeral will be held on Thursday at the Carleton Place Arena.

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If you’re not in tears yet, watch this TSN report, and you will be.

http://broadband.tsn.ca/tsn/?id=348&vid=8024

Should be great stuff. Interestingly, both teams in this year’s final are followed by Battle sites.

Perhaps Jay Jardine or Earl Sleek will pop in and give us a little insiders perspective if their kind enough, or if I’m not too lazy to keep from asking.

We’ll be blogging more frequently as we get to Monday.

Before we start, the Cup Finals schedule was released today. It will be a Monday-Wednesday-Saturday rotation, starting Monday and Wednesday on VERSUS, then Saturday-Monday-Wednesday-Saturday-Monday on NBC.

Frankly, Derek wanted it to start earlier. I wanted it to stay on 5/29 like it was originally planned. We would’ve had to wait 5 days for the final, but then we’d have only had 1 2-day break instead of two. It’ll be really hard to get into this series. At least the two 2-day breaks will be travel days, so the more media members can attend.

Advantage Detroit if they can win two in a row.

Game 6 is tonight. There is a precedent for this. 5 Years ago, down 3-2 to Colorado in the height of that rivalry, on the road, they get the win at Pepsi Center and go on to the Finals. I think they can win tonight. Good luck to our friends on both sides, like Paul Kukla and the KK gang, and Earl Sleek and Co. at Battle of California. 9PM Tonight. It is on!

There are many reasons the Sabres fell short to the Senators as Ottawa exacted sweet revenge on their Northeastern archrivals by winning in basically the same cruel fashion as Buffalo did last year.

I’ll just cut to the chase as to why:

1.Alfredsson, Spezza and Heatley couldn’t be contained. All Spring, the dangerous top line trio has been unreal. It continued in this series. Buffalo did accomplish a minor miracle by shutting them out in their one-goal win in Game 4. Right now, no line is better. Alfredsson in particular has really raised his level. He’s silenced many critics.

2.Ottawa defense wasn’t broken. If you watched this series, you know what I’m referring to. Steve can certainly relate as can Pens’ fans. The Sens D was very stingy against Buffalo preventing great scoring opportunities and limiting shots. With blocked shot machine Anton Volchenkov getting in the path of many and breaking up plays, it made Ray Emery’s life much easier. The Ottawa netminder hasn’t had to steal many games. Today was one of the few he was required to make some tough saves.

3.Special teams not so special. Sure, Buffalo found a way to silence Ottawa’s power play the last three games. But their PP was nothing special only connecting twice all series with both coming via the two-man advantage. They had a couple of chances to win today’s game in regulation on it but couldn’t. In Game 2, they had a PP in OT but got nothing done before losing on a Joe Corvo blast. It hurt them at key instances.

4.Role reversal. Plain and simple, Buffalo was victimized the same way they upset Ottawa as a fourth seed last year. Three one-goal defeats and lost twice in OT. Last year, they won all three games which went to OT including Jason Pominville’s shorthanded clincher. Every game aside from Game 1 (4-2 loss) was decided by one goal. It was eerily similar last year. And also, the road team after winning the first three dropped Game 4 on their own home ice only to win on the road in sudden death and clinch. Go figure.

5.The Sens were the more determined team. Buffalo showed this in the last two games, finally doing whatever it took to win including blocking 21 shots to only Ottawa’s 7 yesterday. Problem was they didn’t have that same will or desperation early in this series which put them in the 0-3 hole.

For more Game 5 analysis and series discussion, please check out our commentary over at Hitting Back.

They take Game 5 3-2.

Brett Hull on why Buffalo lost: “Too many Europeans”.

I think Buffalo needs to get tougher. Let Briere walk, pay up for Drury, and add Sheldon Souray on the defense.

On VERSUS, 7:00 pm… Does anyone really think the Sabres won’t make this at least somewhat interesting? I say let’s head back to Buffalo for Game 5.

They want ratings?!?!?!?!?! Screw the damn ratings!!!!!!!!! I’m so fed up of this dreaded word which has absolutely no freaking meaning when it comes to our sport.

They crave for people to watch? Then maybe they shouldn’t have locked out the players! It really did a lot of good. And no. I’m not referring to three years ago but back in 1994 instead. They had a hot product back then which was getting people talking. Even rappers such as Snoop Dogg were wearing jerseys. Who could forget the Canucks one he wore?

The sad truth is the NHL screwed itself here. They will never ever get the kind of media attention they want. Is the sport exciting? I think so. Is it great? Depends. If you took away the 4 blind mice, it could be.

The playoffs are still great and arguably the toughest in all sports to win. The players sacrifice their bodies in an attempt to get their hands on the most prestigous trophy aside from the Wimbledon crown. The Stanley Cup!

But as the game continues to remain where they are, it’s awfully hard to get the kind of attention it deserves.

Here in the city that never sleeps, you have this thing called baseball and as long as the Mets or Yanks are good, they’ll steal the backpages. It was a freaking disgrace that Michal Rozsival’s multiple OT winner didn’t make the back page for one paper. It’s just sad in general how much what the baseball teams so early in their season dictate what goes on.

They want ratings? Go fucking watch baseball or football. I give up.

Ratings are never going to happen with our sport. It’s time for this absurd talk to finally die.

I’m Derek Felix and I’ve spoken my piece!

Boy, someone needs to wake up this Buffalo team. Corvo wins it on a long slapper from Joe Corvo, who has a killer one-time. 4-3 in 5 periods.

2-0 Senators, and the NHL haters lick their lips at another Canadian team in the finals to diss the ratings of. Pray for Detroit!