Five times Game Two was the Stanley Cup final turning point

The Nashville Predators suffered one of the strangest losses in Stanley Cup final history on Monday, erasing a 3-0 deficit while holding the Penguins without a shot for 37 straight minutes before allowing a back-breaking winning goal late in the third.

The way they lost was bad enough. But just losing at all is a big deal. After all, as we're constantly told, the team that wins Game 1 in the final wins almost 80 percent the series, including each of the last five. To hear some tell it, this one's basically over.

It's tough times to be a Nashville fan. So as we head into Wednesday's crucial second game, let's offer up some hope for anyone rooting for the Predators. Here are five times in Stanley Cup final history that Game 1 didn't end up mattering, and Game 2 turned out to be the series turning point.
 

1986 – Canadiens vs. Flames

After one game: Calgary went into the final sporting a distinct "team of destiny" feel. After years of living in the Oilers' shadow, the Flames had knocked off their provincial rivals in seven games on Steve Smith's infamous own goal. They arrived in the final holding home ice advantage, and opened the series with a convincing 5-2 win over the Canadiens.

But then: Looking to take a 2-0 series lead back to Montreal, the Flames opened the scoring in the first and added another goal just seconds into the second period. But they let the Habs off the mat, as Montreal came back to send the game to overtime. Once they got there, it didn't take long to make some history.

Brian Skrudland's overtime goal was the fastest in playoff history, and knotted the series at a game apiece.

The rest of the way: The Canadiens didn't drop another game in the series, winning three straight tight ones to take the Stanley Cup in five games.

1974 – Flyers vs. Bruins

After one game: The Bruins and Flyers had been the league's two best teams by a wide margin during the season, with Boston earning home ice throughout the playoffs by a single point thanks to a win on the season's final day. They cashed in on that home ice advantage in Game 1, when Bobby Orr's goal with seconds left in regulation gave them a 3-2 win and a series lead.

But then: The Bruins came out strong in Game 2, scoring twice late in the first to take a 2-0 lead to intermission. The Flyers closed the gap with a goal in the second, but couldn't get any closer as regulation ticked away. But with the Bruins on the verge of taking a two-game lead in the series, Andre Dupont tied it with less than a minute to play, sending the game to overtime. That's where Bobby Clarke scored what may well be the most important goal in franchise history.

The rest of the way: The Flyers would ride the momentum from Clarke's goal to a pair of wins on home ice. The Bruins avoided elimination in Game 5 in Boston, but the Flyers closed the series with a 1-0 win back in Philadelphia, earning the franchise's first Stanley Cup and becoming the first modern expansion team to capture a championship.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Assembling the worst NHL all-star roster ever

The NHL all-star game is this weekend, and the rosters are… well, they’re fine. Maybe a few names that are mild surprises, sure, and there are probably too many Blackhawks, but there always are. Overall, the league did a reasonably good job of filling out the rosters this year.

That hasn’t always been the case.

To be clear, there’s really no such thing as a bad all-star. If you’re on the all-star team, you can’t be all that bad. Even if you really shouldn’t be there, you’re still a halfway-decent hockey player.

So no, the all-stars we’re going to talk about today aren’t bad. Let’s come up with a more polite term for them. They’re, uh, “differently qualified.”

That works. Today, let's go through some of the more questionable picks over the years and see if we can put together a full roster of the oddest all-star picks in NHL history.

To do that, let's figure out how non-all-star-type all-stars end up on the team in the first place. Usually, the picks fall into one of a handful of categories:

• The late replacement: Somebody else was supposed to go, they couldn't make it, and you were available.

• The one-per-team rule: Most years, the NHL insists on having each team represented by at least one player. When a team is really bad, that can lead to some interesting choices.

• The ballot-box stuffing: Somebody gets voted in by an enthusiastic fan base and/or a small Baltic country.

• The weird format: When it's the traditional conference-vs.-conference or the current division-vs.-division format, things tend to go OK. When the NHL tried to more creative, things got weird.

• The Crazy Mike Milbury: We'll get to it.

One important note: For this team, we're not counting commissioner picks. For a few years back in the ’90s, the commissioner could add a player or two to each roster after they were finalized. It was a way to recognize respected veterans whose careers were coming to a close, and it would feel wrong to pick on those guys. So that's why there's no Brad Marsh on our roster.

With that in mind, let's meet our team.

GOALTENDERS

John Garrett, 1983

Qualifications: The popular veteran (and current beloved broadcaster) had enjoyed a long career, first in the WHA and then in the NHL. But he wasn't exactly anyone's idea of an all-star, posting a career GAA north of 4.00, which wasn't great even in the offensive 1980s. When the Canucks acquired him in February, 1983, it was to serve as a backup to starter Richard Brodeur.

Category: The late replacement, with some one-per-team rule mixed in

Brodeur was supposed to be the Canucks' representative. That would have been an iffy pick in its own right, but somebody from Vancouver had to go and Brodeur was having a decent season. But he got hurt a few days before the game, meaning the league needed another Vancouver goalie to take his place. Garrett was the only option, even though he'd been a Canuck for less than a week and had only six wins on the year.

As a side note, Garrett played well in the game. In fact, legend has it that he had been voted MVP midway through the third. But then Wayne Gretzky scored four times, the vote was changed, and Garrett lost out on a free car.

Peter Sidorkiewicz, 1993

Qualifications: After a few years of steady work in Hartford, Sidorkiewicz wound up in Ottawa for the Senators' first season. Playing behind one of the worst teams in NHL history, he got shelled every night. When the all-star break rolled around, he had a record of 4-32-3 and a goals-against average of 4.40.

Category: One-per-team

Hey, somebody from Ottawa had to go. Most expected it be someone like Norm MacIver or Sylvain Turgeon. But instead it was Sidorkiewicz, a surprise pick that left bigger names like Ron Hextall and Tom Barrasso at home. Hey, think of it this way – who better to suit up in a game where nobody plays defence than a goalie for a terrible expansion team?

Craig Billington, 1993

Qualifications: He was midway through the only 20-win season of his career, and Martin Brodeur was still a year away from arriving as a full-time NHLer.

Category: No idea. This is the only pick on our roster where not one of the standard categories seem to apply.

It's fair to say that 1993 was a weird year for goalies, as Billington joins Sidorkiewicz on the Wales squad. Fun fact: A few months later, they'd be traded for each other.

Honourable mentions: Tim Cheveldae (1992), Manny Legace (2008), Rick DiPietro (2008)

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

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Five other obscure Cup final OT heroes

This year’s Stanley Cup final between the Sharks and Penguins has been a tight one, with two games going into overtime. And in a series packed with superstars and future Hall of Famers, it was two relatively unknown rookies who got to play hero, as Pittsburgh’s Conor Sheary and San Jose’s Joonas Donskoi found the net.

The two players joined a relatively exclusive club. According to the archives at hockey-reference.com and NHL.com, Donskoi’s goal was the 86^th overtime winner in nearly a century of Stanley Cup final history. Some of those have been scored by legends, including Bobby Orr, Guy Lafleur, Mike Bossy and Maurice Richard (three times). But others, like Sheary and Donskoi’s, have been scored by more obscure names. So today, let’s look back on five little-known names at the time who found themselves with the game on their stick in sudden death, and came through with the biggest goals of their lives.

2006: Fernando Pisani, Oilers

Before: Pisani was in his third NHL season, and was coming off a career best 18 goals. It’s probably fair to say that, prior to the playoffs, not many fans outside Edmonton knew his name. But that was before Pisani went on one of history’s great postseason hot streaks, scoring five goals in an opening round upset of the Red Wings and then twice more in each of the next two rounds. He’d already added two more in the final against the Hurricanes by the time the Oilers found themselves facing elimination in overtime in Game 5.

The goal: With the Hurricanes on the powerplay and the Carolina crowd on its feet in anticipation of the Cup-winning goal, Pisani picked off a pass at the blueline and went in alone to score the first shorthanded overtime goal in Cup final history.

“They have time to kill now, folks. Time. To. Kill. Now.” Bob Cole is the best.

After: Pisani’s hot streak continued with goals in Games 6 and 7, giving him 14 total in 24 games. He never topped that number in five more regular seasons, and the 2006 run ended up including the last playoff goals of his NHL career, which ended in 2011.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

A history of ridiculous NHL all-star selections

The NHL All-Star rosters were announced on Saturday, and everyone is mad because that’s the whole point.

Some guys were undeserving, several more were snubbed, and at the end of the day none of it really mattered because All-Star games are kind of pointless when you think about it. But it’s all in good fun, and considering the entire Blackhawks roster had already been voted in, the league did the best it could with the few spots it had to work with.

Besides, if you think some of this year’s choices were odd, none of them come close to matching some of history’s strangest All-Star choices. After all, the league has been doing this for decades. The odds say that every once in a while, things are going to get truly weird.

So today, let’s take a look back at some of the oddest All-Star picks from over the years. Maybe by the end of this post, Justin Faulk won’t seem so bad.

John Garrett and the Case of the Disappearing Car

If John Garrett’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he went on to a very successful broadcasting career after his playing days were over. He’s been in that business for more than 25 years, working for properties like Hockey Night in Canada and Sportsnet. He’s a really good TV guy.

What he never was, though, was an especially good NHL goaltender. He spent six years in the league, mostly backing up, while posting a career goals-against well north of 4.00 and never winning more than 16 games in a season. Given all that, it sounds strange to describe Garrett as a former All-Star. But the story of how he got there is even stranger, and there’s a good case to be made that he’s the most unlikely NHL All-Star pick of all time.

Here’s how it happened. In February 1983, Vancouver’s starting goalie was Richard Brodeur, a pretty good player who’d just been chosen as the Canucks’ lone representative at the All-Star Game. The team traded for Garrett on February 4 to add a veteran backup. The next night, Brodeur suffered a serious ear injury that took him out of the lineup just days before the All-Star Game would be held.

That left the league with a problem. Brodeur was the Canucks’ only All-Star selection, and the rules said that each team had to be represented. And since he was a goalie, his replacement would need to be one too. That left Garrett as the only possible choice, even though he’d won only six games all year. At the time, the whole thing was viewed as “kind of a mockery of the sport,” according to, uh, John Garrett himself.

Old-time fans may remember what happened next. Garrett came in midway through the All-Star Game and stood on his head, making several spectacular saves. He played so well that when MVP voting was done during the third period, he was chosen as the winner of the award, and the new car that went with it.

Then Wayne Gretzky scored four goals, all in the third period. There was a hasty revote, Gretzky won, and Garrett presumably had to hitch a ride home. He still earned the win, though.

The Senators Double Down

You might assume that Garrett’s six wins would be an unbreakable record for the fewest by an All-Star goaltender. And if the NHL All-Star Game were really about honoring the best of the best, you’d be right.

But here comes that tricky “at least one player per team” rule again. In a normal year, that can result in some odd picks. But when you enforce that rule during an era of historically awful expansion teams, things can get downright silly.

It’s how we wound up with forgettable early-’90s All-Stars like Bob Kudelski, Brian Bradley, and Kelly Kisio. And it’s how we ended up with the owner of perhaps the worst stat line to ever be honored with a selection: Ottawa Senators goaltender Peter Sidorkiewicz.

Sidorkiewicz was a decent goalie who’d had some success in Hartford before heading to Ottawa in the 1992 expansion draft. That Senators team would turn out to be awful, and poor Sidorkiewicz had to bear the brunt of it. He played 64 games and led the league in losses and goals against.

That didn’t prevent him from being named to the 1993 All-Star team, even though he headed into the game with an almost unthinkable 4-32-3 record. Maybe it was pity. Maybe the Senators just didn’t have anyone else. Either way, Sidorkiewicz got the call.

Ironically, he didn’t end up being the lone Senators pick after all. This was back in the days when the league would honor players with a “commissioner’s selection,” allowing veteran players at the tail end of their career to get into the game. In 1993, one such pick went to Ottawa’s Brad Marsh, the journeyman defensive defenseman who’d plodded his way through a 15-year career with five different teams.

So the Senators actually sent two players to the All-Star Game that year: a goalie with four wins and a veteran with 23 career goals in more than 1,000 games. If there’s ever been a worse All-Star pairing from a single team, I’m glad I wasn’t around to see it.

Needless to say, Marsh scored a goal and Sidorkiewicz earned the win.

>> Read the full post on Grantland