Day 1 Round 1 NHL Playoffs 2009

Here are some things I noticed from the 4 games played on Wednesday, April 15th:

Washington Capitals vs New York Rangers: New York wins 4-3 (1-0 series lead)
By all accounts Washington had this game in hand after the first period. Alexander Ovechkin was single-handedly destroying the Rangers at both ends of the ice, and it translated to the first goal of the game in the second period. Then came Sean Avery. An obvious trip on Mike Green led to an uncontested shot by Scott Gomez to tie the game. Then a flurry of Ranger goals gave them a 3-1 lead, eventually leading to a 4-3 win despite the Capitals being able to tie it 3-3 in the third.
The big question mark for Washington coming into the game was Jose Theodore, and he did not show up to play. Gomez's game tying goal was a straight-forward shot. Brandon Dubinsky's game winner was a nice deke around the defender, but he shot it to the short-side which Theodore should've sealed off. I said Washington should win, but Theodore is worse than Lundqvist, and he showed it Wednesday night.

Pittsburgh Penguins vs Philadelphia Flyers: Pittsburgh wins 4-1 (1-0 series lead)
The Penguins absolutely dominated the Flyers in all aspects of the game. Biron let in a couple of soft goals. The Flyers wanted to come out and dominate the physical game; not only did they get into penalty trouble, the Penguins were out-hitting them at one point. The 1 goal was a remarkable shot by Mike Richards which rebounded to an easy goal for Gagne, but Fleury, despite his regular season struggles, is starting to look like the goaltender that helped the Pens into the finals last year. This might be over way before my predicted game 6. First goal of the game: Crosby on the power play with assists from Malkin and Gonchar. All 3 key players on Pittsburgh factoring in.

New Jersey Devils vs Carolina Hurricanes: New Jersey wins 4-1 (1-0 series lead)
Martin Brodeur only allowed 1 goal on 19 shots to win the game. But it does not answer the question as to whether or not he has gotten out of his funk, as it was the Devils offense that absolutely manhandled the Canes, outshooting them 39-19. The defense needs to step up in front of Cam Ward, and that was the biggest problems for the Hurricanes coming in. And the Devil's offense is making me look like an idiot.

Vancouver Canucks vs St. Louis Blues: Vancouver wins 2-1 (1-0 series lead)
By all means St. Louis should've won this game. They outworked the Canucks for most of the game, and Chris Mason was solid. Unfortunately for the Blues, there was a man named Roberto Luongo in the net. And a failed 5-on-3 for a minute and a half turned the tide and the Canucks were able to convert the Blues's failure into the first goal of the game for Vancouver. The Canucks defense wasn't pretty, which led to a minimal amount of offensive chances, but when Luongo is playing like this, they should have no problems with an injury-filled Blues line-up. Something to take notice of however: Mats Sundin was relatively quiet in the game.

Overall, this was a very undisciplined first day of the playoffs. The least penalties taken in a game was a total of 6 between the Hurricanes and the Devils, and they were the two least penalized teams in the playoffs so far, with Carolina taking 4 penalties and New Jersey taking 2. Pittsburgh and New York also had only 4, with every other team suffering at least a one man disadvantage 6 or more times. Those are a lot of penalty minutes in the first 60 of a series. Another theme developed: as long as you keep the puck in the offensive end of the zone, your goaltender will end up looking good on the stat sheet. Brodeur and Fleury were prime examples, making a minimal amount of saves and not a lot of sensational ones as their offenses were just pummeling the opposing netminder.