Posted by Tim Kavanagh, special to ESPN.com
Most likely, if you're still reading these here NHL box score blogs, you're either heavily embroiled in a fight to the finish or you just can't get enough of our collective wit in describing the prior night's action. This edition promises to be a doozy for both cohorts, since there were eight games on the docket Friday night, and I've just eaten 12 fish sticks. Nothing gets the brain juices flowing like a platter of Dr. Praeger's breaded beauties, baby. "Brain juices" being the scientific term, of course.
The Blue Jackets, whose name stems from the apparent devotion in the Columbus area to honoring the memory of Union soldiers from the Civil War, have run smack into Stonewall Jackson in the form of Nashville's Dan Ellis. Tuesday night, they fired 36 shots upon him, and he turned them all aside like small arms fire upon the Merrimack. On Friday, he continued his role as master of the net, with a remarkable 43-save shutout. If this happens to you for two straight games in video game hockey, you spike the controller against the wall, but the Columbus boys are stuck listening to their big coach scream at them after these tough losses, with no controllers to throw. Jan Hlavac and Radek Bonk scored for the winners, but if you're stuck with either of them starting at this point, your season likely is already in shambles. Fredrik Norrena performed to expectations, stopping 23 of 25 shots he faced in the loss. Fun fact for this game: a guy named Pierre Champoux was one of the linesman. I've been out of French class for a number of years now, but I believe that last name is pronounced like shampoo. Like I said a few weeks ago, the NHL has cornered the market on fun names.
While Hlavac and Bonk's efforts didn't really make any difference to us in Fantasyland, the showdown in Detroit brought out the big guns, and the big guns didn't disappoint, as the Blues won 4-3 on an overtime winner by Brad Boyes. The game-winner was Boyes' second goal of the game and No. 40 on the season, a pretty good total for a guy who went largely undrafted in fantasy. If the draft was to be held today, and Tomas Holmstrom would continue to be out of commission, where would Johan Franzen go? Franzen scored two more goals in this one, giving him 17 points in the last 12 games. That's Ovechkinian, or at least Zetterbergian. Speaking of the bearded Zetterberg, he contributed a trio of assists, pushing him to 89 points on the season, four better than his career best with four games left. Pavel Datsyuk also had three assists, raising him to a career-best 94 points on the season. For the goalies, Manny "Subaru" Legace lived up to his nickname by coming through again in the clutch, with 36 saves on 39 shots, while Chris Osgood might've lost some people their championship in head-to-head with a stomach-turn-awful 17 saves on 21 shots. That's a 0.810 save percentage, folks. That won't win you anything.
Trying to show that they deserve that third seed in the Wales, er, Eastern Conference playoffs, the Hurricanes took nothing for granted, giving the lowly Thrashers quite a beating, 7-1. It took just 42 seconds for Eric Staal to score No. 36 on the season, and he was joined in the scorefest by Trevor Letowski, Joe Corvo, Jeff Hamilton and Tuomo Ruutu, the latter two of whom both scored twice. Goaltender Cam Ward, who has taken his licks for mediocre play several times this season, had a near-perfect game, stopping 25 of 26 shots, with just Jim Slater solving the former Conn Smythe Trophy winner. Strangely, Johan Hedberg was kept in net the entire game for the Thrashers, enduring all seven goals, while stopping 28 shots.
While the Canes seem to be heating up as the regular season winds down, it's been a 2007 New York Mets-like collapse as of late for the Devils. Fortunately, the Flyers came to town and the Devs "went to town," scoring four regulation goals (which, let's face it, is a lot for the red-clad warriors), and winning 5-4 after a shootout by converting 3-of-3 shootout chances. Johnny "Oh, Do Ya?" Oduya was the game leader in goals (and eyebrow thickness), scoring twice in the first period. Jamie Langenbrunner and Brian Gionta scored the other goals for New Jersey, while Vaclav Prospal, Jim Dowd, Randy Jones and Mike Knuble kept pace for Philly. This was a forgettable experience for both goalies, as winner Martin Brodeur stopped only 28 of 32 shots and Martin Biron, the loser, capped off a 29-for-33 performance by letting all the shootout competitors beat him.
It was a bittersweet night for Ryan Miller. In making the start, No. 73 on the season, he set a franchise record for games started, breaking a four-way tie with Don Edwards, Dominik Hasek and um, the aforementioned Martin Biron. However, Czechoslovakian scoring machine Tomas Plekanec scored two goals within 2:16 at the end of the third period to tie the game, and Long Island's own Christopher Higgins knocked in a rebound for the game-winner 3:38 into overtime, putting the Sabres four points out of a playoff spot with just four games left. Alexei Kovalev also scored for the victorious Habitants, who were backstopped ably by Carey Price (35 saves on 38 shots). Drew Stafford got the Sabres attack on the go in the second period with No. 16 on the season, while Nathan Paetsch and Daniel Paille added third-period tallies. Fun fact for this game: One of the referees was Mike Hasenfratz, a last name that is taken from one of Yosemite Sam's unintelligible rants, if I'm pronouncing it correctly.
Speaking of unintelligible rants and spiking video game controllers, I'd say I'm in a mood for both after seeing that my opponent in this week's playoff game in a head-to-head league was starting Niklas Backstrom, he of the 28-save shutout on Friday He led the Wild to a 4-0 blanking of the Canucks. Meanwhile, opposing goalie Roberto Luongo was chased after four goals through two periods, but the biggest moment of excitement shook down at 9:43 of the third, when all 10 skaters on the ice dropped the gloves for an ol' fashioned brawl, started by a stick fight between Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Alex Burrows. Bouchard, who scored one of the Minny goals, earned 10 penalty minutes for it, while Brent Burns, another scorer, had a game-high 19 PIMs. Burrows, owned in 41.9 percent of ESPN leagues for his brutish play, added another 15 penalty minutes for his role in the fracas. The remaining Wild goals came from Mikko Koivu and Todd Fedoruk.
The fundamental problem with having the head-to-head playoffs for fantasy coincide with the "coast into the playoffs" time for real-life teams has reared its ugly head again. Brian "Bobby" Boucher took a break from his usual duties of filling up Evgeni Nabokov's water bottle to start his third game of the season, and much to the chagrin of Nabokov owners, he got the spoils of a 3-1 victory, stopping all but one of the 24 shots the Ducks fired in his general direction. If that's not bad enough, get ready for this quote from Sharks' coach Ron Wilson to AP after the game, related to San Jose's clinching the Pacific Division title: "Now we've got four games, where some guys need a little break. Like Joe Thornton, Brian Campbell and people like that, you can take their minutes down ..." Guh! Hopefully the heavy hitters for San Jose can make the most of their diminished minutes in the last four games. For the victors, scoring was administered by Curtis Brown, Jeremy Roenick and Patrick Marleau, who should be up for the Comeback Player Within the Same Season Award. Scott Niedermayer tallied the lone goal for Anaheim, who was once again without Jean-Sebastien Giguere, out for four straight games now with back spasms.
Fighting to stay ahead in the playoff race, the Avalanche got a game-tying goal from Joe Sakic with 5.9 seconds left, and it was his score in the shootout that proved the difference as Colorado bested Edmonton, 5-4. Believe it or not, the Oilers, with their All-Star Injured Reserve list, are just two points out of the playoffs. To what do they owe this remarkable run? If you've been reading up on your fantasy hockey news on this site, you know it's the youngsters. In fact, if you combine the years of service of Friday's four Edmonton goal-scorers (Curtis Glencross, Jarret Stoll, Tom Gilbert and Sam Gagner), it's just six years. For comparison sake, Super Joe alone has 18. Peter "Foppa the Floppa" Forsberg, who added three assists, has 11. With a steady goaltender behind them, this Oilers nucleus could do some serious damage in the next few years, a much different prognosis than was entailed earlier this season. Andrew Brunette and Milan Hejduk were the game's other goal-scorers, with the former player netting two. As with the Devils-Flyers game, the goaltenders in this game would just as soon forget it from a statistical standpoint. Dwayne Roloson stopped 32 of 36 shots in the losing cause, while the well-coifed Jose Theodore managed 27 saves on 31 shots for win No. 26.
Tim Kavanagh is a fantasy hockey analyst for ESPN.com
