Depending on your thoughts about how a 2-0 game goes down, chances are you might’ve been far more entertained by the other news of the day yesterday. While Tim Thomas was busy shutting out a seemingly listless Lightning team, reports indicate that the Thrashers are indeed headed off to Winnipeg. All that means right now is that we’ve got a lot to sound off on in our Five Thoughts this morning.
1. We knew going into Game 3 that it wouldn’t be the up-and-down madness of goals and high-tempo play that we saw in Game 2 between Boston and Tampa Bay, but even last night’s game came off as way more of a letdown considering. Thankfully, Tim Thomas was there to save us and the game with some of his patented ridiculous saves. Tampa Bay really pushed play in the first period including a flurry of shots that saw Thomas come up especially huge.
After two games that saw Thomas both get hung out to dry at points and struggle with the Lightning attack, they got a prototypical Bruins-style game out of everyone and shut things down hardcore. If the Bruins play more games like that, they’ll do very well the rest of the way.
2. I don’t like to be critical of players before they’ve really shown they don’t have what it takes to keep up with things in the NHL, but I’m casting my worried gaze towards Victor Hedman. David Krejci’s goal in the first period happened when Hedman went to go help Brett Clark in the corner to go after the puck, leaving Krejci all alone in front of the net to score.
While Guy Boucher’s system calls for players to rotate around to make sure no one’s left alone like that, that’s a situation where Hedman absolutely cannot leave his man to blindly stick to the system. While Dominic Moore and Steve Downie offered no help there as they were both caught up in chasing Nathan Horton, all it took was one quick decision by Hedman to get after Milan Lucic to make things fall apart in an instant.
If Hedman can’t stick by a forward in front of the net that’s a bad matchup to make a forward race down to get on him. While Hedman’s eaten up big minutes through the playoffs, he lacks a physical element to his game and his offensive numbers don’t pop. Hmm...
3. If the Lightning weren’t worried about Patrice Bergeron coming back, after seeing him in Game 3 they should know better. While Bergeron didn’t factor in the scoring, it’s everything else he can do to help give the Bruins an edge that makes him a difficult matchup for Tampa. With Bergeron and Krejci out there to take faceoffs, the Bruins were able to control play right off the bat 67% of the time. Bergeron won 64% of his draws while Krejci won an astounding 72% of his.
With Tampa Bay unable to win draws anywhere on the ice, getting their offense started or getting their defense a break just didn’t happen. Guys like Vincent Lecavalier, Dominic Moore, and Steve Stamkos had better get working on those draws during practice before Saturday afternoon’s Game 4 (1:30 p.m. ET on NBC).
4. All right Winnipeg, it looks like you’re going to get an NHL team back. After all the hardship after the Jets moved to Phoenix, they’re being rewarded with the Thrashers as their situation in Atlanta appears ready to peter out without a local buyer to step in. Since this move seems all but done, let’s again reignite our stand about one thing: Call them the Jets.
I don’t care if it’s the Winnipeg Jets or the Manitoba Jets, but with the NHL apparently holding the rights to the Jets name, getting that name back and bringing back that name and the history of the team is the thing that makes most sense. There’s talk that True North wants to hang on to the Manitoba Moose name or may want to go with something else entirely different, but it was the memories and the history of the Jets going back to their days in the WHA that kept hope alive in the small Manitoba city of ever getting the NHL back. Now that it’s seemingly about to happen, here’s to hoping that Mark Chipman and David Thomson tell their ad wizards to stuff it and honor the city’s NHL past moving forward.
After all, which jerseys do you think are going to sell more once this is a done deal, Jets retro merchandise (which the NHL already sells a ton of) or whatever board room creation True North might come up with? There’s a reason why fans who gathered on the streets in Winnipeg last night after Stephen Brunt’s report of a deal being done started chanting “Go Jets Go” and it’s not because they were telling the Thrashers to hurry up and fly into town.
5. As for whether or not realignment happens this year or next, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why it can’t happen this year. By all accounts the NHL prepared for this possibility by drawing up multiple schedules for next season factoring in whether or not the team would be in Atlanta or Winnipeg. According to Brunt, this is also a deal that the owners wrote off on depending on what the negotiated sale price was a few weeks ago.
Instead of having the Winnipeg team play a lame duck and horrible travel season in the Southeast Division and making everything harder for everyone in the Eastern Conference for a year, it just makes too much sense to have things prepared in advance and ready to roll since this was something the league knew might happen. It’s not as if the NHL doesn’t know who’s interested in coming to the Eastern Conference to take the Thrashers spot. Here’s to hoping the NHL did things the right way as opposed to their own way.