There are a lot of hockey fans who get so wound up cheering for their own team, such as the Minnesota Wild, that they quit paying attention to the Stanley Cup Playoffs once their team is knocked out. I feel nothing but sympathy for them.

The divisional playoff finals going on right now are displaying some of the best hockey you could ever hope to watch. And two games into the two series, there is no way to pick a clearcut favorite.

If you watched Tuesday night, you got a perfect example. People who follow the NHL but live east of the West Coast always underestimate the fact that the California teams – the Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks, and Anaheim Ducks – are among the NHL’s elite teams. This year, in this most balanced of seasons, the Ducks are carrying the torch for the Californians, and they proved their strength by whipping the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 in the first game of the West Division final series.

Of course, that 4-1 score was misleading, because it was a tight, tense 2-1 game until the Ducks scored a late goal. Then they added an empty-net tally, and had their 1-0 lead in games.

Game 2 was Tuesday night. This time the Blackhawks jumped ahead 2-0 on a pair of power-play goals. But Anaheim came back for one, then a second. Then they battled through the rest of regulation and on into overtime. Then a second overtime. It became the first triple-overtime game in California history, and the longest game ever played by the Chicago Blackhawks when the third overtime got down to its final six minutes.

I’ve suggested that Chicago goalie Corey Crawford might not be an elite goaltender, except against the Wild, but that now requires amendment. He was fantastic against the Ducks. Finally, at 16:12 of the third overtime, Marcus Kruger positioned himself in front of the Ducks goal, and a shot from the right point hit him squarely in the knee. As it fell to the ice, Kruger knocked it past Fredrick Andersen and in, and Chicago prevailed 3-2.

Crawford made 60 saves, while Andersen made 53. That sends the teams to Chicago with their West final tied at a game apiece.

Then there’s the East. The New York Rangers are loaded, and flying, while Tampa Bay has a young and rebuilt outfit, but they have rebuilt with amazing speed. The Rangers were the clear choice of television color commentator Mike Milbury, and after they won Game 1 by a slim 2-1 count, Milbury acted like that was just following the script. If you broke it down, however, the game-winning goal came on a hard, high puck thrown across the crease that glanced in off a knee.

Tampa Bay came back for Game 2 in Madison Square Garden and stunned the Rangers when Tyler Johnson scored the Lightning’s first three goals, en route to a 6-2 pasting of the Rangers. They headed off for Tampa Bay tied 1-1 in games.

We know Henrik Lundqvist is perhaps the best goaltender in the world, manning the Rangers goal, but we know very little about Ben Bishop, the tall, lanky Lightning goaltender. But he has been spectacular in his showdown with Lundqvist.

My picks going into this round were Tampa Bay and Chicago, but for sentimental reasons. Norm Maciver, a star defenseman for UMD in his mid-1980s college days, is the assistant general manager for the Blackhawks, and has had a key role in some of the acquisitions that put this team together. Meanwhile, Tom Kurvers, another former UMD star defenseman, is the assistant general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

I asked Kurvers who his defense partner was on that NCAA final team at UMD, and he said: “A scrawny freshman named Norm Maciver. He came to college with two things in his possession – a fork, and a Wayne Gretzky clock.”

Wonderful line, and two fantastic people who not only were great players in tandem for the Bulldogs, but are still contributing mightily to the game at the NHL level. What are the odds that two teams could make the Stanley Cup finals with assistant GMs who once were partners on defense for the same college team?

Deflatgate Over

It’s amazing how the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady have dealt with the “Deflategate” incident. Brady has either been vilified or defended by sports fans everywhere. But he’s drawn a four-game suspension to start next season, and after a threat to sue the NFL to have the ruling rescinded, apparently the Patriots are going to accept it and move on.

In case you missed it or ignored it, the story goes back to the AFC playoff championship against Indianapolis. The Patriots romped in the game, but as they were building a 17-7 halftime lead, a Colt defender intercepted a Brady pass and complained that the ball felt soft.

One thing led to another, and the officials checked the balls. As I understand the rules, instead of both teams using the same balls, at playoff time teams can bring their own balls. But amid rumors and behind the scenes stories, the word seems to be that Brady looked at the cold and foul weather that day and got the word out that he wanted the balls softened. We can’t be sure of that, of course. The balls are supposed to be inflated from 12.5-13.5 pounds of air pressure, and 11 of the 12 balls the Patriots had somehow ended up at about 11.

A quarterback might like the footballs to be hard as rocks, so they can throw tighter spirals longer distances. But Brady apparently thought it would be better to have the balls softened just a bit, making them easier to grip and throw, and also easier to catch. At halftime, after the complaint, officials had the balls reinflated to the proper hardness.
In my world, a team could decided on its own inflation hardness. It doesn’t matter whether a team uses harder or softer footballs, so much as both teams either agree or get to fix their own footballs to their chosen inflation. Some say the second-half blowout came after the balls were reinflated. But a 17-7 deficit is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome against a team as strong as the Patriots, and if an easier-gripped ball led to some of those first-half points, punishment is necessary.

To me, the problem isn’t necessarily intentionally softening the footballs so much as the whining and complaining and, apparently, outright lying that he and the team knew nothing about the deflations.

Those defending Brady act as though it was just gamesmanship, and shouldn’t matter unless they were caught. But they were caught. And then they lied about it. That puts the whole matter on a different level. We’re now not talking about gamesmanship, we’re talking about slitting a nasty gash in the integrity of the game.

Four games sounds about right.