Next round! First of all, while I'm delighted at the lineup of Western teams that made it to the semis, I have to say I've seen too few of their games to have any particularly well-thought-out picks. I'll just say I'm picking the Kings and Preds for the conference finals. My first round picks were 4/8, so I might just as well have flipped a coin.
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The East I actually have something to say about. I'm damn disappointed that my dream of a Panthers-Kings final is not to be, but the Panthers played a heck of a series. The Devils are another team I can't really figure out: are they better than they look, or not?
As for the Flyers, I picked the Penguins to win the series because the Flyers don't have the team defense to succeed in the playoffs. In my opinion, that's still true, but they compensated by scoring a gazillion goals. If the Penguins hadn't been so lousy and had Marc-André Fleury been able to stop anything, you have to think they would have won the series despite the Flyers' offensive firepower. When Pittsburgh briefly got their game together in game 4, there was nothing the Flyers could do about it.
But they didn't get their game together. Instead, the entire team disintegrated, and Fleury was as terrible in net as the guys in front of him were at defense. I've said over and over on this blog that Fleury is overrated, and this series was a fairly good example. But the bulk of the blame has to go to coach Bylsma and captain Crosby. Ever since he came to the league, we've been inundated with the NHL's official propaganda about what a great leader Crosby is. It's nonsense, similar to the notion that he's somehow a two-way player. The league and the North American hockey media say these things because as the anointed Next One, Crosby has to be a great leader and a great two-way player. Both are just lies.
In this series, Crosby really showed his character. On the ice, he degenerated into a childish rat and a punk, knocking Jakub Voracek's glove away from him, bitching about how he hates the Flyers and holding a guy down while his team-mate beats him up. Shades of the Boris Valabik nut shot on that last one. Meanwhile, Bylsma seemed to have no control over his team whatsoever.
When the Penguins win, no matter what happened, Crosby's boosters give him all the credit, because allegedly whenever the Penguins succeed, it's due to Crosby's leadership. How many times have we been told about how he supposedly makes everyone around him so much better? If he gets to take credit for the Penguins' successes due to his supposed leadership, then he has to take responsibility for their defeats as well. Given the way the team fell apart, Crosby shouldn't be held responsible only for his lackluster personal play but also for the breakdown of discipline that he directly contributed to. Of course, as everyone knows, no such thing will happen, because we've already been told that the Penguins lost despite Crosby. That's just bullshit.
The Flyers-Devils series will turn on team defense. If the Devils can defend against the Flyers offense, they'll win the series. The few times the Penguins out together any kind of defensive effort, it stopped Philadelphia. If not, the Devils are toast. Flyers in six.
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The Caps are in many ways the biggest surprise of the second round. I didn't think there was any possible way they could get past the Bruins' depth and team defense. Except apparently when Nathan Horton got injured, that depth vanished. When David Krejci's line, including the supremely overrated Milan Lucic - less Cam Neely than Chris Simon - failed to produce, so did the rest of the team. What looked like tremendous forward depth last year now looked like a bunch of overpaid third- and fourth-liners. In other words, the Bruins looked like the Capitals usually do. Brayden Holtby was tremendous in goal; Tim Thomas slightly less so.
It's beyond sad that the tightest series in NHL history should end in an outbreak of racist tweeting by disappointed Boston fans.
They'll be going up against the Rangers, who unsurprisingly beat the Senators but surprisingly took seven games to do it. Shockingly, I have to pick the Caps to win. While the Caps beat the defending champions, the Rangers struggled to defeat the Senators; Holtby has played better than Lundqvist; the Caps' offensive potential is better than the Rangers'. Who knows, maybe Alex Ovechkin will show up. Unless something bizarre happens, it'll be a close series.
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