Busy Black Friday

November 28, 2008   ·   Derek Felix   ·   Jump to comments

It’s a day late but I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone was safe out there and had a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends. There’s certainly a lot to be thankful for during this special time of year. Not everyone has it as good out there. Especially with it being a tough time these days. Always appreciate what ya got.

Wishing everyone the very best. And on this crazy Black Friday which sadly has taken the life of one due to chaos at a Walmart, if any of you are holiday shopping, please be extremely careful out there. People.

All that said, I’ve been pretty busy the past couple of days scoring basketball games and visiting relatives in Jersey City for Turkey Day. It was certainly fun to catch up with my cousins. I don’t see them too often and don’t really have many family I see due to our situation. It’s def something I wish could change. Anyway, I’m gonna be leaving the house shortly to visit my Mom for dinner. So, lots to do.

All the Thanksgiving stuff out of the way, there’s plenty of hockey going on with a few afternoon Friday games including the B’s routing the Isles 7-2. The Islanders were coming off a brutal 5-3 defeat at home to the Pens in which they blew a three-goal lead giving up four in the third where league scoring leader Evgeni Malkin had a natural hat trick and assisted on a Sidney Crosby tally. The 22 year-old Russian tallied twice 50 seconds apart during an awful stretch as the Islanders paid dearly for sitting back.

Today wasn’t any better against the first in the conference Bruins, who got contributions from everyone including emerging star Phil Kessel, who scored twice. Right now, there isn’t a better team in the East. Boston is deep at forward and boasts one of the better bluelines along with Vezina candidate Tim Thomas, who got the day off with Manny Fernandez filling in admirably. You’d be hardpressed to find a better D pair in the conference than Zdeno Chara and Dennis Wideman, who again tallied and setup another. With Matt Hunwick also emerging, they’re only improving.

I wasn’t sure about Thomas going into this season and didn’t realize how good the talent was on this roster picking them to finish ninth behind the Sabres. Looks like a huge miscalculation. All this team does is win under Claude Julien, who wasn’t good enough to coach the Devils for reasons only known to Lou Lamoriello. I can’t think of a more deserving coach if they were to hand out the Jack Adams today. But we do got a long way to go.

The Devils are one team not in action with a road match at those hot Pens tomorrow night putting a five-game win streak on the line. It’ll be part of a big test in their sched which Hasan noted in his previous entry. Them and the Flyers are hot and Philly is looking to win again today tied with the Canes 2-2 after a couple of periods. Another win would give them 28 points.

Meanwhile, the Rangers conclude their Thanksgiving Florida visit with a match at the Panthers with faceoff set for 7:30. They won 3-2 over the Lightning in a shootout (Naslund, Zherdev) on the strength of what else but the goaltending Henrik Lundqvist. While the Post’s Larry Brooks predictably complained about Tom Renney sending Blair Betts and Fred Sjostrom out late in overtime, is it any wonder that the coach played for the shootout at that point after controlling the OT? When you have one of the premier goalies in the game with that valuable extra point up for grabs, it’s sensible strategy.

It might not be very popular with Brooks or a wealth of Ranger fans who dislike the coach for how conservative he is but this is what you get in this new NHL. Where more and more games are being decided by the skill competition. There are just too many OTs I catch like last night’s Toronto-Ottawa contest where nobody comes close to scoring forcing it into the shootout.

Part of the problem is players just refuse to shoot passing up chances from in the circle to make extra passes. When skilled stars a la Daniel Alfredsson are passing up the opportunity to test the goalie from 20 feet out with a world class wrist shot, you know there’s an issue. Whatever happened to just letting it go? Players are now overthinking out there and don’t take shots when they’re in primary scoring position. It only makes goalies’ lives easier. The offensive players need to simplify their games and get shots through.

The Rangers enter with 16 wins in their first 25 games good for 34 points in the East and while they’ve played more than any other team, if someones told you they’d have that record at this point, I bet most Blueshirt fans would take it regardless of the 5-1 shootout record along with the inconsistencies from Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival, who coincidentally played his best game of the season chipping in with two assists the other night. Is it any wonder it came paired with Marc Staal?

Is this team perfect? Hardly. I’ve said it myself that they’re overrated. However, they do deserve credit for getting out to the good start. Something which was missing the past two seasons where they needed furious finishes just to make the postseason. Every point they get now will be one less that they’ll require in March and April when business picks up. And in a conference so competitive, that could be vital.

My only beef right now with Renney is his continued insistence on sitting Nigel Dawes while playing Aaron Voros when his game has dropped off. As is, this team doesn’t score a ton and Dawes is capable of helping offensively and seemed to be coming around before Scott Gomez returned. Why is he the odd man out? I can understand Petr Prucha being out of the mix as he was outplayed by others.

However, Dawes needs to be in the lineup if this team is to have success. Try these lines:

Naslund-Dubinsky-Zherdev

Callahan-Gomez-Drury

Dawes-Korpikoski-Fritsche

Sjostrom-Betts-Orr

Dawes takes Voros’ place obviously. I don’t think they should be this way entirely. I still say Gomez needs to have a finisher on his line. Moving Zherdev there makes sense. I’d like to see that. But then who does Drury play with? This dilemma will be going on probably the whole season thanks to our salary cap fiasco overpaying Redden and Rozy.

Anyway, I gotta get going. Larry Brooks is still Scrooge and deserves to cover an offensively challenged team like the Panthers who aren’t going anywhere. Now watch that jinx tonight.

Cya later!