MVN - Most Valuable Network

Who Will Win the Southeast Division? Ovechkin or Staal

What a strange hockey year for the hockey fans. Who could have thought that with Rod Brind’Amour, Ray Whitney, Justin Williams, and Matt Cullen on injured reserve the Hurricanes would be in first place atop the Southeast Division? Who could have thought after their mid-season struggle to finish and win games the Washington Capitals would be fighting tooth and nail to knock Carolina down from their Southeast Division perch?

The play offs started a couple of weeks ago for these two teams: the Canes have 41 wins and 88 points so were the season to end today they would make the play offs, while the Caps are on the outside looking in with 38 wins and 84 points. Yet the Capitals’ victory over Carolina this week brought them within four points of the Hurricanes. Each team has played extremely well over the last few weeks and it would be great if both teams qualified for the play offs, probably only one team from the Southeast will qualify.

Neither the Caps nor the Canes have given up this year and both teams had opportunity to do that, instead both have persevered and played hard. Success came to the Capitals when they replaced coach Hanlon with Bruce Boudreau; although players’ intensity seemed to be there for both coaches. The energy that I saw when the Caps played the Thrashers the other night was no different from the team I watched beat the Canes earlier in the season. The Canes seemed to right their ship with the trade of Cory Stillman and Mike Commodore to the Senators for Joe Corvo and Patrick Eaves; since that trade the Hurricanes have played extremely well at home. With Corvo and Kaberle re-discovering their games the Hurricanes have been able to play well enough to stay ahead of the Capitals and Panthers. Both the Caps and Hurricanes have similar styles, they keep coming at you on offense and while at times their defense men get caught out of position in the neutral zone, I love how Mike Green, Joe Corvo, Sergei Federov, and  Fratisek Kaberle help out the offense.

The leaders on each team have been incredible this year, Eric Staal and Alex Ovechkin. The great “8″ makes an already exciting game that much better to watch. Every time I watch Ovechkin live at the Verizon Center I am left wondering; How does he do that? Eric Staal is now the leader of the Hurricanes with the injury to Brind’Amour. He reminds me of Phil Esposito, only more talented and better looking. Staal has been great at disrupting opponents’ defense men around the net and helping the Hurricanes work into the Coach Laviolette’s system. I have my tickets and am looking forward to the first night in April when these two young stars clash again in Washington, DC. I hope the Hurricanes have clinched a play off spot by that time.

From the gurney: 
Chad LaRose skated with the team on Wednesday and if his leg feels good he will be cleared for full contact practice and may even play this weekend. It would be great for the team that has skated two centers for more than a month now to get LaRose back. Ray Whitney after ankle surgery may be back next week. Even if LaRose and Whitney do not play for the remainder of the regular season, to have them for the play offs would really help an already competitive team. Justin Williams is on schedule to return to the line up at the end of April, perhaps he too will skate if the Canes make and stay in the Stanley Cup hunt.

The Caps just won in overtime, they pick up two points and now have 86 points, the teams are that much closer to one another - every game is important. Tuesday is looking to be even more important. Go Canes! Go Caps!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Peter Laviolette, Rod Brind'Amour, Ray Whitney, Frantisek Kaberle, Alexander Semin, Alex Ovechkin, Eric Staal, Carolina Hurricanes, Atlanta Thrashers, Sergei Samsonov. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.