NHL Playoffs Predictions Update
I haven't really stayed on top of this, have I?
I predicted that Tampa Bay would win in 6, and they won in 4.
I predicted that Philadelphia would win, but Boston won.
I predicted that Vancouver would win in 5, and they won in 6.
I predicted that Detroit would win in 7, but San Jose won in 7.
I think that's all accurate, from what I remember.
My predictions from this round are that Vancouver will beat San Jose in 6 games, and Tampa Bay will beat Boston in games.
I hope I'm right! Then the Canucks can beat the Lightning in the Finals, and everything will be awesome.
Playoff Time Approaches
It's almost playoff time!
The last games of the 2010/2011 NHL regular season will be played on Sunday, so as soon I know which teams are in, and what the matchups are, it's going to be prediction-making time.
I'll probably share some thoughts on how things are going as the playoffs progress. There are several teams I'm interested in seeing go far, but of course my two big favourites are the Canucks and the Lightning. I'd love to see Vancouver beat Tampa Bay in the finals.
First the Canucks have to stop losing to teams like Edmonton, though. They clinched the President's Trophy, so it's not like it means anything at all, but it's still a little disheartening to lose twice to the worst team in the league.
As for the Bolts, I want to see Stamkos pick up his game. It's great that Lecavalier has been stepping up big time, but they need all of their top scorers to be rolling, and Roloson to stand on his head, if they want to go deep this year. It's going to be tough for them, I think, but they have the tools they need. It's time to put it all together, though. Now's when it really matters.
Stay tuned for lots more hockey talk over the coming weeks!
Oh, also, I'm getting married in 24 days. Huh.
There’s Plenty of Hope for Hodgson
Cody Hodgson is on fire.
The Canucks' best prospect is ripping it up in the AHL right now. He had a slow start to the season, but he's leading the team in scoring now (well, tied with Sergei Shirokov, but Hodgson has more goals). This has me very excited about him again. I had scaled back my anticipation a little after his lingering back problems and slow start, but I've been encouraged by hearing what a hard worker he is, and now that he's starting to see the kind of success everyone hoped for and expected from him, it's happy dance time!
I don't expect, or even really hope, that the Canucks will call Hodgson up this year, unless there are some really significant injuries to the top six forwards. It makes more sense to me to save him for next year and let him earn a solid roster spot. There's still a lot of time for him to develop as a player and a person this year, and we have a good team right now. It would do more harm than good to have him with the Canucks.
Besides, it's good for the Manitoba Moose to have as much team success as possible, and what's good for the Moose is generally good for the Canucks.
Also, the better the Moose are, the more good players there will be sent down to the Victoria Salmon Kings, and since I live in Victoria, I want to be able to go see a winning team every now and then. Go Kings!
Through Four Games
The Canucks have not had a good start to the 2010/11 season. They're 1-2-1, which isn't nearly as bad as it could be, but their actual play has been discouraging at times. In their first three games, the Canucks could say that they were getting their chances but not getting the bounces they needed, and their defensive play was pretty decent, other than a couple of mishaps that the other team was able to take advantage of.
But the "We're playing well, just not getting lucky" excuse can't extend too much further, especially after last night's 4-1 loss to the Kings. The Canucks looked out of sync, they made poor passes, they had trouble clearing the defensive zone and entering the offensive zone... Combine that with an average night from Luongo, rather than a star performance like he had in the first two games, and you have the recipe for an ugly loss.
I'm not sure what they need to do to work their way out of this. Kesler needs to start hitting the net with his shots (and, to be fair, so does everyone else). Henrik needs to start looking to shoot a little more, but we've known that for his entire career. Besides, Daniel is on a goal-per-game pace, with Henrik helping to set up most of those, so criticizing the Sedins isn't really fair. We can't expect them to be in on multiple goals every game, really. Raymond is shooting, but not scoring. Samuelsson is... I'm not sure what he's doing. Not a whole lot. Hamhuis has been solid, but Bieksa has been making dumb mistakes. Alberts hasn't been too noticeable, which is good for him, but last night he made a couple of mistakes, too. Torres has been playing hard but taking too many penalties. In fact, the whole team has been in the penalty box too much.
It's lots of little details like this that have to start going the Canucks' way. Score more, take fewer penalties... They'll put it together somehow. They're too good of a team to be playing this badly. Maybe the first couple of games just made us think our team wasn't going to have another one of their traditional slow starts. We got our hopes up, and now we're getting unnecessarily disappointed.
Hopefully things will be better a month from now.
My NHL Team Preferences, Sorted
As I'm sure I've said before, while I am primarily a Vancouver Canucks fan, I'm also a fan of hockey in general. As such, there are several teams I'm interested in and would like to see do well.
I was thinking about this the other day, and while I had already determined which five teams I was most interested in watching, I figured I might as well go all-out and sort the entire league along those lines. So here's my list of NHL teams, sorted by how interested I am in watching them this season. (They're also sorted within the categories from most-interested-in to least-interested-in.)
Click "Continue Reading" below to see the rest of the list.
Favourite Team:
Vancouver Canucks
Secondary Favourites:
Tampa Bay Lightning
Phoenix Coyotes
New Jersey Devils
Teams Whose Games I Will Attempt to Watch:
Toronto Maple Leafs
Los Angeles Kings
Florida Panthers
Philadelphia Flyers
Galloway’s Hunt
Galloway's Hunt is a novelette set in the world of Galloway's Voyage, my work-in-progress novel based on the same title character. Buy it now for only $0.99!
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Special People
Special People is serialized superhero fiction with a fistful of twists.
Special people have special problems.
