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NHL Playoff Observations -- Fight Night

Just a few things that caught my eye ...

  • At what point does intensity cross the line? This isn't Slap Shot or the Vigilante Hockey League ... or is it? Yikes.
  • It was just 23 months ago that Sami Salo's ruptured testicle got the NHL on ESPN's Sportscenter. Ryan McDonagh came close to accomplishing the same feat tonight. A bag of peas just ain't gonna cut it. 
  • Is it wrong of me to think of the Daytime Emmys when I think of Mike Smith?
  • It's hard to believe but the Caps-Bruins' game was the kindest and gentlest of the day. Yep, you read that right.
  • You'd have thought Andy McDonald was from Lucan (Ontario) and not Strathroy -- he had the Luck o'the Irish with him on the Galiardi hit. Did you see his helmet afterward? That wasn't a crack; it was a fissure.
  • Alexander Ovechkin has re-found his intensity. But I'd rather see him have 12 shots and four hits instead the other way around.
  • How many overtimes would one playoff round have if a playoff round were to have overtimes? And doesn't the Cup get further and further away every time a team plays an extra frame?
  • Daniel Alfredsson, please don't go out like this. Godspeed, good man -- you deserve better. 
  • To my Canadian readers -- are you as uncomfortable as I am hearing Marc Crawford's machinations on the TSN panel? I'm not really sure he should be talking -- and not so indirectly -- about a concept better known as vengeance. I'm pretty sure Steve Moore's lawyers will consider adding a couple of those clips to the DVD they submit for that famous civil case.
  • The ugliness we saw Saturday night is the result of one of only two things (or a bit of both). It could be as simple as mimicry of the big, bad Bruins -- imitation of the previous year's Cup winner is standard for a lot of teams. But the players may have also reached the boiling point after the hypocrisy of the Shea Weber non-suspension. Who handles matters if the league doesn't ... or won't?