The Kings lost the Cup in five games to the Montreal Canadiens, an outcome that scans as definitive yet had seemed quite unimaginable in the third period of Game 2. Up 2-1 late in the third, the Kings were less than two minutes away from returning to Los Angeles with a 2-0 series lead. The whistle was blown, and the Kings' Marty McSorley was called over.
1. Chris Paul: !!!!!
Chris Paul! Unstoppable! Unforgettable! Probably some other "Un-s", too! Chris Ryan, whom you might remember as your regular Rankonia writer, nominates our hometown hero for this week's top spot:
"I've watched every minute of the Grizzlies-Clippers series. I've seen Tony Allen try to stop Chris Paul. I've seen Mike Conley, Jr. try to stop Chris Paul. I've seen Allen, Rudy Gay, and Marc Gasol try to stop Chris Paul together. I've seen O.J. Mayo try to stop Chris Paul for 90 feet and I've seen Quincy Pondexter try to stop him at the last second. It just doesn't matter. I don't think I ever really knew what it meant for an athlete to be unstoppable until I saw Chris Paul play basketball in the fourth quarter and overtime. Now that I do, I certainly won't forget it."
Shortly before Alexei Ponikarovsky followed up on his own shot to give the New Jersey Devils a 4-3 win over the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, New Jersey's Ilya Kovalchuk had collected his own rebound too.
Welcome to the second episode of the Triangle Podcast. This week, with the NBA playoffs in full swing, I thought I'd catch up with some of my Shootaround partners and talk basketball. Robert Mays stopped by the studio to discuss Zach Randolph's dominance over Blake Griffin in the Clippers-Grizzlies series, the Bulls and life after Derrick Rose, plus what we expected from Game 3 of the Knicks-Heat series.
Rembert Browne called in to lament Paul Pierce Tebowing on … the city of Atlanta, and the caliber of celebrity sitting courtside at Hawks games. I also talked to Katie Baker about the Stanley Cup playoffs (specifically Wednesday night's heart-stopping triple-overtime Rangers-Caps game) and Jonah Keri about Bryce Harper, the Rangers, the Rays, and an exciting few nights in Major League Baseball.
"Probably an hour," he said, kidding-except-actually-serious.
Shortly afterward, in his postgame press conference, Rangers coach John Tortorella explained that winning this first-round series in seven games was no easy task, that it was invaluable experience for a team with so many youngsters. (The Rangers went into the playoffs with the least combined postseason experience of the 16 teams.) "They should be real proud of themselves," Tortorella said. "For about an hour."
It's the inaugural episode of The Triangle Podcast. Each episode, I'll talk to a few different Triangle writers about the sports they cover. This week, I talked to Bill Barnwell about the falling NFL draft stock Vontaze Burfict, the Dolphins pinning their hopes on Ryan Tannehill, and whether a system should come before personnel when it comes to drafting players. I also checked in with Katie Baker on the crazy, bloody, and dramatic Stanley Cup playoffs, then Roger Bennett, one half of the Men in Blazers, joined me to recap two insane days of Champions League semifinals and the upcoming Manchester derby. Finally, I talked to Jonah Keri about Carl Crawford's trip to Dr. James Andrews and Oakland's five-tool star in the making, Yoenis Cespedes.
Tonight is a perfect storm of sports. There are two Game 7s in the NHL playoffs, eight NBA teams playing for better seeding on the final night of the regular season, and the NFL draft begins. Thus, there could not be a better night for Grantland Live.
Recording a new album can quickly become an exercise in doing a lot of waiting around. But for Wes Miles and Mat Santos, the lead singer and bassist, respectively, for the band Ra Ra Riot, their downtime over the last couple of weeks has been largely consumed by one thing: playoff hockey. Both Miles, who grew up a Devils fan in New Jersey, and Santos, who roots for the Bruins, are big hockey fans — and they've got the tattoos, Starter jackets, and national anthem performances to prove it. Grantland's Katie Baker spoke to the pair over the weekend, as their favored hockey teams (and Baker's) faced first-round elimination.
So you're down in Mississippi recording a new album, and you're also big hockey fans whose teams are currently in the playoffs. What are your days like?
Mat: Well, usually we've been doing six-day weeks, and we're usually here at the studio for about 12 hours a day. It sounds like a lot but it's relaxed because usually only one of us is doing something at a given time. Right now, in this phase in our recording, because we've been here for about four weeks, Rebecca [Zeller] is doing violin overdubs. So the rest of us just get to sort of hang out. You might hear a basketball being bounced around. And we bring our hockey net. So we play street hockey in the parking lot, watch hockey … we mostly do hockey-related things when we're not recording.
When the Phoenix Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith went down after a collision with the Chicago Blackhawks' Andrew Shaw, it appeared Phoenix's playoff hopes would fall with him. Smith has been such a large part of the Coyotes' success this season (although, to be fair, Phoenix's defensive system has been equally vital to Smith's improvement, so it's a little bit of a chicken-or-egg thing) that to lose him seemed like notably bad news.
He ended up being OK, though (to the great irritation of Blackhawks fans, who saw Shaw suspended three games based partially on what they felt to be a trumped-up injury to the goalie), and no one ever had to find out what Jason LaBarbera, the backup netminder, would have had to offer. But for seven other playoff teams, backups have had to bounce up off the bench. Here, we rank their performances, from worst to first.
We had some questions about the NHL playoffs, and because we only have like three friends who are actually watching every game of said playoffs (and they are probably pretty sick of our e-mails by now), we turned to Grantland's resident hockey fan, Katie Baker. Please take it away, Katie:
The Canucks and the Penguins could be eliminated with losses Wednesday. Which collapse do you find more surprising?
The Penguins. It's not that I necessarily assumed they would win — I thought it would be a back-and-forth slog of a series and Philly definitely had a chance — but I was NOT expecting them to just completely unravel. Evgeni Malkin, who scored 50 goals this season, has been almost invisible. Marc-Andre Fleury has melted down — the best stat I read was from TSN's Scott Cullen, who said if Fleury had even a .900 save percentage (which isn't even good by playoff standards) it would have been good for nine fewer goals against Pittsburgh in three games. It's just gotten so ugly so fast, and I don't think anyone saw it coming.
Other than the Panthers and Devils, who will meet tonight, all of the teams in this year's NHL playoffs have played a game of their first-round postseason matchups. And just about all of them, probably much to the delight of the NHL and NBC, have been doozies.
Grantland's Katie Baker joins Bill Simmons to discuss the NHL playoffs, which start Wednesday night.
Buccigross discusses his favorites to win the Cup, and the bad blood between the Penguins and the Flyers. Then, Wyshynski recalls the hockey message board days of the Internet, talks about whether he's sold on the Rangers, and mourns Patrick Kane's playoff mullet.
You don't get to the Frozen Four without having a really good goalie. I haven't been keeping an official count, but I'd estimate that, of all the players and coaches and writers and fans and sports information directors and random guys in elevators who I've spoken to over these last few days, roughly 93 percent of them have at some point uttered a variation on that theme.
And yet for both Ferris State and Boston College, the two teams who will play for the national championship Saturday night, the 2011-12 season began with much uncertainty in net.
The last time the Florida Panthers made the playoffs, Bill Clinton was president and Metallica was suing Napster. The NASDAQ had just reached an all-time high. Elian Gonzalez was soon to be seized by feds at gunpoint. 'N Sync was breaking album sales records, AOL was purchasing Time Warner, and Ben Affleck was dating Gwyneth Paltrow. (The world would not be introduced to the concept of "Bennifer" for another couple years.)
It's been more than a decade since that Panthers postseason appearance, the longest active drought in hockey. (The Toronto Maple Leafs, who haven't made the playoffs since 2004, are second on that dismal list.) But it looked as though it would be finally coming to an end — or at least getting a new beginning — on Tuesday night. The Panthers, who could clinch with a win over the Winnipeg Jets, certainly started off the game on track: Tomas Fleischmann's goal just 25 seconds into the second period gave Florida a comfortable 3-0 lead.
I can't say for certain, but there's a pretty good chance that the New York Rangers' John Mitchell was haunted by some fever dreams last night: Think something along the lines of Elephants on Parade, except with the Cheshire grin of Marc-Andre Fleury in place of all the Dumbo heads.
Fleury was in net Thursday night as the Penguins came to Madison Square Garden to take on the Rangers, who held a six-point lead over Pittsburgh in the Atlantic Division (and the Eastern Conference). By the end of the night, though, that gap had narrowed to four, as the Penguins defeated New York 5-2 based in large part on the play in net by the goaltender colloquially known to teammates as Flower. He stopped 29 of the Rangers' shots, five of which belonged to poor Mitchell, who was robbed every which way by the 27-year-old netminder. After one sequence in which Fleury, already down on his side after making some pad saves, managed to glove an attempt by Mitchell, the Rangers forward couldn't help but take out his mouth guard so he could laugh.
