MVN - Most Valuable Network

Wings 2, Sharks 0

The Detroit Red Wings are heading to the Western Conference Finals where they will face the Anaheim Ducks!! Here is the schedule for the third round of the playoffs with the first game this Friday evening in Detroit:

Date Time (ET) #1 Detroit vs. #2 Anaheim
Friday, May 11 7:30 p.m. Anaheim at Detroit
Sunday, May 13 7:30 p.m. Anaheim at Detroit
Tuesday, May 15 9:00 p.m. Detroit at Anaheim
Thursday, May 17 9:00 p.m. Detroit at Anaheim
* Sunday, May 20 3:00 p.m. Anaheim at Detroit
* Tuesday, May 22 9:00 p.m. Detroit at Anaheim
* Thursday, May 24 7:30 p.m. Anaheim at Detroit

The Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators will start the Eastern Conference Finals on Thursday evening.

Mikael Samuelsson scored two first period goals to give the Wings their fourth victory in the Western Conference semifinals against the Sharks. Unfortunately, I have a German exam tomorrow morning so this recap will be brief, but I’ll post more during my lunch break tomorrow.

- Both teams had 10 minutes worth of penalties. Neither team was able to convert on their power play opportunities.
- Chris Chelios had two assists. Pavel Datsyuk and Johan Franzen also notched assists.
- Dominik Hasek earned a shutout with 28 saves. Evgeni Nabokov had 20 saves on 22 shots. Hasek was key to the Wings’ success tonight and he had numerous big saves.
- In my opinion, the two best players on the Sharks for this series had to be Joe Thornton and Mike Grier. Grier seemed to be the only player who really showed up tonight. I was impressed with his hustle and play all series long.

Some quotes from the FSN broadcast:
- “Hasek almost pulled a Nabokov!” (Basically, Hasek practically gave the puck to Mike Grier who tried to bring it around the back of the net and it was Nick Lidstrom’s fantastic save that prevented a goal by Grier.)
- “Two for a dollar and Dom’s got ‘em both.” (Ken Daniels on Steve Bernier’s two great opportunities to score.)
- Had Nabokov been playing with that stick, he might’ve been able to handle that puck. (During tonight’s game, Nabokov lost his stick and was using another player’s stick. They were commenting that had Nabokov used a regular stick during Game #5, he wouldn’t have turned the puck over to Datsyuk.)
- Draper won only 27% of his faceoffs in the first two periods. Not like Draper at all.
- FSN showed Chris Chelios laughing at a sign that read, “Hey Chelios - My Grandma is Single!”

Reactions from around the blogosphere will be up tomorrow!

GO WINGS!!!!

Reactions

Mike Chen @ Battle of California:

Well, that sucked. I’m not going to make a full judgment until we get a full list of which Sharks were injured and to what extent, but my fears at the beginning of the season were realized:

1) The young defense wilted under pressure.
2) The lack of a #1 defenseman hurt the power play.
3) The overall inconsistency was maddening. I thought they’d overcome it with the last 20 games or so, but I was wrong.

There’s a lot of other places to point to: secondary scoring in the form of Steve Bernier and Mark Bell were non-existent all season, and the team had trouble adjusting when the opposition figured out what their break out was.

…

In the mean time, I begrudgingly tip my hat to the Red Wings. They knew how to exploit a team’s weakness, then drive them batty with it, allowing for their own self-destruction.

Helene St. James @ Detroit Free Press:

The Red Wings have grown so used to relying on Nicklas Lidstrom he is referred to as “the perfect human” and “a regular heartbeat.”

That generally refers to how he plays monster minutes without showing any wear and how he reads plays better than anyone. Monday night at HP Pavilion, Lidstrom showed a lesser-used skill when he made the save of the night to help the Wings clinch their second-round series against the Sharks.

Can’tStoptheGrier @ Shaved Ice:

Thanks for a great series. The Wings showed a lot of heart and, gulp, experience by winning this series. We will be rooting for the Wings to take out the Ducks, that’s for sure.

I agree with Mike - no excuses. Wings were the better team. It will be interesting to see what Dougie Wilson does in the offseason to improve the roster. I don’t see a major roster blow up, there is no reason to panic.

Scott Burnside @ ESPN:

3. Thin? Don’t tell Lidstrom. When Schneider got hurt, one might have imagined that as a turning point in the series against the Sharks. After all, Schneider was logging 23:35 a night in ice time, scored an overtime winner and had six points in total. Yet, all the Wings did was play two almost-perfect defensive games against one of the best teams in the NHL to advance to the Western Conference finals.

Schneider is out for the rest of the season, which will be seen as a significant factor as the Ducks will try and exploit that missing piece of a Detroit blue line that was already missing rising star Niklas Kronwall (fractured sacrum). Yet, if the past two games of the Sharks series are any indication, the Wings won’t miss a beat, especially if Lidstrom continues to play at his current level. Witness his goal-saving (maybe series-saving) block of Mike Grier’s open-net opportunity in the first period of Monday’s Game 6. Brett Lebda returned to the lineup to take Schneider’s place after missing the last six games with a concussion.

Dave @ Gorilla Crouch:

There were several signs this series was over in the lead-up to Game 6. The most obvious was a Game 5 blowout win in which San Jose players took several roughing penalties. That was followed up by Sharks head coach calling Pavel Datsyuk’s goal in the game a “back breaker emotionally” which was very telling of the emotional state of his team. And in Game 6 shortly after Samuelsson scored the first goal Jonathan Cheechoo took a bad, completely unnecessary interference penalty. The penalty wasn’t a killer, but it just showed that San Jose struggled to cope with adversity.

The Red Wings, meanwhile, stared adversity in the face before poke checking the puck from him and heading the other way with an odd man rush. The moment when the Red Wings possibly turned this postseason run from one of bitter disappointment to one that will likely restore the luster to their storied franchise came when Robert Lang scored the tying goal with 34 seconds left in regulation in Game 4. The series completely turned on that play and as a result the Red Wings will play the Anaheim Ducks for the opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup.

Mitch Albom at the Detroit Free Press:

As we always say, you can never have enough Swedes on your hockey team. Mikael Samuelsson may not be the first name you think of when rattling off Swedish Wings, but Monday night he was the Nordic Nuke, the Scandinavian Slayer, the Go-To Goteburger. His two goals in less than five minutes continued a streak of Swedish successes that have finally, finally, given the Red Wings two things they desperately wanted:

1) A return to the Western Conference finals for the first time in five years, and …

2) A day off.

Swedeness and light.

Matt @ On the Wings:

Well, that was quite the performance by the Wings. Ken Daniels said it best afterwards, “This is a resiliant group.” Dominik Hasek was huge tonight, as was the Wings’ defense as a whole. They’re throwing the word “gutsy” around on FSN and it fits perfectly. This team is special, folks.

Ted Kulfan at The Detroit News:

The Wings killed all four San Jose power plays. The Wings’ injury-riddled defense, led by veterans Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Chelios, responded to the challenge of not having Mathieu Schneider, who was lost for the remainder of the playoffs after suffering a broken left wrist in Game 5.

Samuelsson scored two first-period goals, giving him three in the last two games after not having scored in 16 previous playoff games.

“It felt great,” Samuelsson said. “But it felt great to win. We didn’t want to go back and play Game 7.”

Ansar Khan @ MLive.com:

“It means a lot just to get back there again,” Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. “We’ve been playing better and better as we get deeper into the playoffs. It’s different playing regular season hockey and playoff hockey and we’ve adjusted and adapted to that as a team.”

A pair of first-period goals from Mikael Samuelsson, both assisted by Chris Chelios, was enough to send the Wings to their third straight win in this series. Hasek made 28 saves for his first shutout in this year’s playoffs, the 13th of his career in the postseason.

The last time the Wings lost to a team facing elimination was in Game 5 of the 1998 Western Conference finals vs. Dallas. The Wings have since gone 11-0 when presented an opportunity to close out a series.

Hasek is the first goalie in franchise history to win six straight playoff series. He has allowed only two goals in the last five series-clinching games, dating back to the Stanley Cup run five years ago. That includes three shutouts. He allowed only nine goals in this series, just 11 in the last eight playoff games.

“The teams in the league that have good, stable goaltending, they have a chance every year at playoff time. The teams that don’t, have no chance, it’s that simple,” Babcock said. “It’s like trying to win in baseball with pitching. It’s impossible.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:53 pm and is filed under 2007 Playoffs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.