The Lightning have been firing on all cylinders during the current playoff round versus the Bruins.Tampa Bay has a high flying group of sharpshooters which have proven to be somewhat of a problem for Tim Thomas and the Bruins' blue liners. Young forwards like Purcell and Bergenheim are consistently good and Stamkos and Lecavelier are always a problem for opponents. The Bruins have to come out tonight and keep the Bolts back peddling.The B's are stronger and they have an in your face game that should put Tampa on their heels.Once the Bruins lose control of the middle of the middle of the ice, it's game over.
The obvious question here is how far can Tampa go on the back of a 41 year old goaltender.Roloson looks a little tired and more heroics could be hard to come by. Tim Thomas is ten times the goalie that Roloson is on any night.Thomas led the Bruins past the Habs and he was a big reason that the Flyers were sent packing with ease. Bergeron, Chara, and Seguin will also have to play a decisive role if Boston is to take a lead tonight. This team is better rounded than Tampa and they will have to take it up a notch.Our writers have been on top of Boston all year so we have high expectations.
We won't get into how, technically, the Islanders' second goal on Sunday shouldn't have counted because of the referee's incompetence in whistling the play dead earlier than it took the team to hire Garth Snow after replacing Neil Smith as general manager four years ago (and that was pretty early on in their search for a replacement for Smith; hell, it was pretty early on in their search for a replacement for Mike Milbury). For all intents and purposes it was a goal, and even if the ref intended on blowing the whistle a few milliseconds before the puck reached Philadelphia Flyers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (meaning the play should have been dead at that point, when he intended to blow it, down on his knees and all), it was nice to see the Islanders get a call just one time, because God knows they needed it, and a few hundred others up to this point this season.
I mean, you can kind of see how the ref would assume that Bobrovsky would make the save on Frans Nielsen. For one, it was a routine save. For another, it was just 30 seconds after the previous goal, meaning a goal being scored was doubly unlikely. Finally, it was the freakin' Islanders!
Still, however nice it was to see the Islanders get a break, the Flyers responded with two quick ones of their own against Islanders goalie Dwayne Roloson to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 victory, bringing into question the very questionable goaltending situation on the island.
By far, Roloson has the better numbers between him and Rick DiPietro. Roloson has a decent 2.50 goals-against average, compared to DiPietro's horrid 3.76. Roloson's .913 save percentage also easily trumps DiPietro's .874 (of course, no offense to Roloson, but so would my grandmother's .895 in her senior league). Roloson even has one assist to DiPietro's none, and, somehow has compiled two less penalties in minutes. Evidently, DiPietro got the extra penalty, two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct, after throwing a tantrum upon realizing that the local hospital he frequents stopped serving his favourite flavour of Jell-O at lunch. He's clearly due for a return visit after playing through a third of the season unscathed.
Oddly enough, however, Roloson can't seem to win as often as DiPietro. The loss yesterday was Roloson's 11th, to go along with two wins and one overtime loss. DiPietro meanwhile has a 3-4-4 record. As such, it begs the question: does head-coach Jack Capuano go with the goalie that gives his team the best chance at winning, or the goalie that actually wins, although "wins" is used very loosely here. It would probably be more accurate to say "loses less". It's a fair question, but one that doesn't have a relevant answer.. the Islanders are screwed no matter what. Even once the likes of legitimate talents Kyle Okposo and Mark Streit get healthy, the Islanders will find themselves way out of playoff contention, and attention must turn to next year already. Hardly the kind of mindset you want your team to have in early December, but one that is unavoidable with the team already 16 points out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern conference.
For the record, the two goals were not the fastest in Islanders history, with the team actually scoring five in a mere 2:37 in a January 1982 game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Among those were goals 16 seconds apart care of John Tonelli and Bryan Trottier. How depressing it must be to realize that even when this edition of the Islanders does something right, they're still so far away from matching the success of the team during its dynasty years. I wonder what Billy Smith is up to these days.
It will go down in the history books as a 1-0 shutout win for the Anaheim Ducks, but it should be noted that the stars were aligning for a much different result. In fact, it was a night of overall absurdities between the New York Islanders and the Ducks. For example:
1) Career back-up Curtis McElhinney, who wasn't even good enough to play five games a year for the Calgary Flames behind Miikka Kiprusoff, somehow got his first career shutout and actually has a better save percentage than starter Jonas Hiller (.924 vs. .918).
2) The Islanders, despite losing just 1-0, probably have the worst overall blue line in the league without Mark Streit back there to give it some actual credibility, and yet they gave up just 14 shots in the game.
3) The Ducks, despite winning 1-0, probably have the second-worst blue line in the league (despite stars-in-the-making Luca Sbisa and Cam Fowler being on it), and yet gave up just 27 shots on goal. Their average to date this season is 36.6 shots allowed per game, the second-worst in the league, next to the Atlanta Thrashers (the Islanders have for the record only given up 27.9 shots per game).
4) The Ducks have now won five straight, lending credence to the hypothetical notion that the Ducks are actually a good team.
5) Teemu Selanne, getting to the point that he should not only be thinking about retirement but retirement homes, assisted on Saku Koivu's game-winning goal, giving him a share of the team's scoring lead with 18 points in 17 games. Forget the Finnish Flash, the dude should be nicknamed Ponce de Leon for clearly having discovered the fountain of youth.
6) After reading through all reports of the game, Roloson seems to have actually made it through at least one game without suffering a collision with an opposing skates and then losing his mind.
Makes you kind of wonder about this topsy-turvy world in which we live, doesn't it?
It might have had something to do with the fact that he felt the slightest bit physically violated, it might have been the fact that he had let in a hideous goal mere seconds beforehand (see below) and he was feeling particularly touchy, or it just might have been that he is a complete psycho, but New York Islanders goalie Dwayne Roloson absolutely lost it on Wednesday night, taking his frustration out on Montreal Canadiens Benoit Pouliot following a breakaway opportunity that led to a penalty shot.
The Islanders lost the game 5-3, but they do have the chance to redeem themselves on Friday, when the Habs play visitor in New York in the second part of the home-and-home. It's relatively clear that Rick DiPietro should get the start, though, lest the the Islanders want to risk letting an unhinged Roloson loose unnecessarily.
Goalies obviously do not like getting run, but Pouliot's supposed attempt to injure Roloson was just a clear-cut attempt to score after being taken down on his breakaway. There's no need to take it personally, really. No one's out to get you, Dwayne, no matter what the voices in your head say. I really do think Pouliot has better things to do, like actually secure himself of a permanent NHL job at this stage of his lacklustre career and actually score regularly, than run a 50-year-old goalie into retirement. But maybe that's just me.
