posted 2007/05/01 at 19:22
Somehow I have the feeling that the Red Wings are not going to advance past this round, thanks to dropping that first game against the Sharks at the start of the series. In a way I almost think that being the home team in a playoff series is kind of a disadvantage, if only because the pressure is on the home team for those first two games to win both or being forced to start stealing away games. Back when Scotty Bowman was still coaching the Wings, he had a novel idea which I thought made perfect sense: Switch the first four games, so that the higher-ranked team starts on the road for two games, then goes home for the next three, then go back on the road for the sixth game and home for the seventh. The higher-ranked team still gets four of the seven games at home, but they also get to relax for the first two games and put that initial pressure on the lower-ranked team to win at home.
I'm also not happy with the current scheduling and division formats in the NHL, mainly because the way things are right now, teams don't face every other team in the league, which I think is grossly unfair. With an 82-game schedule, you should be able to play every other team in the league once if not twice. Particularly when the NHL is hyping Crosby up as the next Gretzky, you'd think they'd be eager to make sure that he makes it to every NHL city at least once a season, but under the current format he'd only make it to Western Conference cities once every three years. Worse yet, this format dramatically inflates the travel gap between Western Conference and Eastern Conference teams. (For those of you unfamiliar with NHL geography, Detroit is actually in the West.) I remember that last year the Devils had a two-game road trip, and that road trip comprised the only time in their whole season that they left the Eastern time zone. Of course, Eastern Conference teams are eager to block realignment because the current alignment gives them a huge advantage, so I doubt change will happen anytime soon.
Over the All-Star Break, CBC's Ron MacLean suggested a North/South realignment that balanced things out much better (and also happened to add two new Canadian teams). At first I was strongly in favour of this if only because it would put all of the Original Six teams back in the same conference (I hated that the Red Wings never faced the Maple Leafs or the Canadiens in the post-lockout season), but now that I've thought it over some more, I think it would be better to have the Original Six teams split up across the conferences if only to create the possibility of a Stanley Cup final with two Original Six teams. Still, as much I believe in balancing schedules as much as possible, I kind of wish there was a way to tweak the NHL schedules so that the Original Six teams faced each other more often during the regular season.
Finally, one tidbit for those of you who don't pay attention to these kinds of minutia like I do. Recently I've noticed a trend in the Canadian NHL cities where the middle third of "O Canada" is sung in the non-predominant official language (English in Montreal, French everywhere else). I don't know if this is a Canadian government thing or an NHL thing (I'm guessing the former since in American cities they still sing the whole song in English), but it's led to an interesting thing in Vancouver. Instead of singing anything during the middle third of the song, the anthem singer there holds the microphone up in the air, and of course all the Canucks fans sing the English lyrics instead of the French lyrics that are being sung everywhere else in Canada. Part of me wants to say that this is disrespectful to French-Canadians, but there's also a part of me that admires just how subversive this act is. It's interesting to me, anyway.
Sean:
The whole Canadian anthem thing is neither government or league mandated. It also doesn't happen in all the Canadian cities. Montreal and Ottawa are the only two I've heard it in on any sort of regular basis, which makes sense because of the bilingual nature of both cities. Here in Calgary I haven never at a Flames game heard part of Oh Canada sung in French.
Keep those hockey thoughts coming Sean. You're the best contrarian indictor on the Net!
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon