When the NHL promised to reinvent itself after the Lost Season of 2004-05, it wasn’t kidding. Twice in this year’s playoffs a series has ended on a power-play goal in overtime. The course of another series, meanwhile, may well have been altered by a penalty called (and quickly capitalized on) in OT.
This is just my way of pointing out that you aren’t alone in your misery, Capitals fans. Yes, it’s a pity the Flyers eliminated Your Heroes in Game 7 with Tom Poti off for tripping in the first extra period, but it’s also a sign of the times. The same misfortune just befell San Jose, which was this close to pushing Dallas to a seventh game after falling behind 3-0 in their series. Worse, the Sharks and Stars were in OT No. 4 when Brian Campbell was exiled to the penalty box.
That never used to happen in the NHL. Late in close playoff games — and for the duration of overtime — whistles were rarely if ever blown. Unless one of the players did something that qualified him for “America’s Most Wanted,” the officials would let the two teams settle the issue five-on-five. Such leniency could promote a certain lawlessness on the ice, but at least the games were decided by the combatants and not the guys in the striped shirts.
But all that went out the window when the league, dogged by declining interest, decided to crack down on on-ice crime — and told officials to start calling penalties regardless of time and circumstance. It was part of Gary Bettman’s plan to open up the game and, hopefully, return it to the scoring levels of the Gretzky years.
The latter hasn’t happened — and may never happen — but hockey is more uniformly policed these days. The door to the Sin Bin doesn’t automatically get padlocked with five minutes left in regulation, and the results have been interesting, to say the least.
Witness the way the Flyers and Stars advanced in the playoffs. The Canadiens, too. They won the second game of their seven-game series with the Bruins on a power-play goal by Alexei Kovalev. In fact, for that entire overtime — 2½ minutes in all — Montreal had at least a man advantage, and for a brief stretch it was skating five-on-three. (Thanks to a double minor against Boston’s Shawn Thornton that carried over into OT.)
Caps owner Ted Leonsis, still binding his wounds after the loss to Philadelphia, isn’t entirely supportive of the NHL’s new penal code. “I think in OT of [the] playoffs there should only be penalties that impede a goal being scored. No ticky-tack calls,” old school Ted said in an e-mail yesterday.
He’s hardly the only one who holds that opinion. Indeed, the officials themselves seem torn between The Way Hockey Used To Be and The Way The Board Of Governors Wants It To Be. In the Dallas-San Jose finale, for instance, they went more than an entire game — 70 minutes, 52 seconds, to be exact — without sending anybody to the box. Then they called hooking against the Stars’ Nicklas Grossman in the third OT and tripping against Campbell in the fourth. San Jose couldn’t cash in on its power play, but Dallas (or rather, Brenden Morrow) did.
It was a killer defeat for the Sharks, the latest in a long line of disappointments. Do you realize that since 2004, they’ve won more playoff games than any NHL team — and also lost more playoff games? And of course, they’ve yet to appear in the Stanley Cup Finals; they’re 0-for-16 (despite topping 100 points in three of the last four seasons).
Still, old friend Ron Wilson, now coaching San Jose, resisted the urge to flay the officials — as did Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News. “This [penalty] had to be called,” Purdy wrote.
So it will be a long summer for the Sharks … and the Bruins … and for the Capitals, for that matter. The Flyers, after all, bullied past Montreal in the next round and will meet the Penguins for the conference championship. Leonsis remains utterly convinced, though, that “our team is as good as any team in the East. We will just have to prove that next season,” he said.
In the meantime, the franchise can bask in the glow of its biggest awards haul since 1985. Alex Ovechkin’s scoring exploits have already earned him the Art Ross and Maurice Richard trophies, and he’s a strong candidate for the Hart (MVP) and the Lester B. Pearson Award (most outstanding player, as voted by his peers). Then there’s Bruce Boudreau, who’s up for the Jack Adams Award for coaching, and Nicklas Backstrom, who has a shot at the Calder Trophy for rookies.
Ted’s prediction: “I think Alex sweeps all four awards, and our coach should win [the] Jack Adams. I don’t think Backstrom will get [the] Rookie of the Year Award — although he deserves it. European bias; they will vote Canadian or American.”
Were it not for a penalty in overtime, his team might be still playing. But this is the new NHL, and the Caps — and everybody else — are going to have to get used to it. As Bettman would tell them: It’s for their own good.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.