I’ll start off by saying that we are officially playing Anaheim in the first round of the playoffs with our victory against Phoenix tonight.
The Stars played well tonight, especially in the first two periods. I thought Holmqvist played well in his first full game with the Stars. I’m not used to a goalie stopping the puck that much; it seemed like the Stars were always taking faceoffs in their own end.
Niskanen and Robi each had a goal tonight. It’s always great to see either of them score, but it was especially good tonight after the news about Zubie this afternoon. Brenden also scored, and Mike Modano had an empty net goal at the end.
I just don’t like the way our team plays in the third period. We are going to have to change that before the playoffs start, because we won’t be able to play a weak period every single game.
I like our chances against Anaheim in the playoffs. As long as the Stars don’t implode, as they’ve done recently and in past playoffs, they should have a chance. Otter has been great all season with pissing off the Ducks, and that almost always proves costly for them. They take a lot of penalties and it’d be great for our power play to be able to take advantage of that. I also like that there’s some rivalry between the two teams. It’s not the artificial rivalry the league tries to manufacture by making teams play everyone in their division 8 times a season (thankfully that’s changing next year), but it’s a rivalry from the playoffs in 2003. I really hope they can beat the Ducks this time. As for home ice advantage, the Stars will start on the road unless we win out and Anaheim gets no more than 1 point.
Everyone should go out and eat duck sometime in the next two weeks!
In other playoff news, the Caps are in the playoffs as of tonight. They beat our boys in Tampa tonight to get into the 8th spot. I’m hoping they’ll get in because Ovechkin definitely deserves to be in the playoffs, and you can see how hard he’s working on the ice to get his team there.
Last note: I really enjoyed not seeing Richards out there tonight.
Amy
