OoooooooooooK, I hit the publish button a little too soon there.
I promise I'll have a full post here in a bit, unless work derails me from accomplishing this task.
G1: Bruins 4, Hurricanes 1 (BOS leads 1-0)
Three teams have gone undefeated thus far in the playoffs, including the defending champs, the Detroit Red Wings.
And with respect to those defending champs (whom I'll get to in a minute), the Bruins look like THE team to beat right now.
Any doubts that an eight day layoff would hurt the B's were quickly answered by David Krejci. His goal just 94 seconds into the contest gave Boston an early lead. And in the second, Marc Savard and Michael Ryder added a pair of goals to snap a 1-1 tie and send Boston on their way.
From the 'former Stars still in the playoffs' department, Jussi Jokinen did manage to score Carolina's only goal of the playoffs with 1:10 to go in the opening frame. But from that point on, it was the Tim Thomas show as he stopped the next 17 Carolina shots to snuff out any hope the Canes might have had on coming back.
I noticed that Hiafex left a comment about where one could watch these games in the US since Versus and NBC are going to cram the Pens, Red Wings, and Hawks down everybody's throats in this round.
Fortunately, Game 2 of this series will be broadcast in it's entirety. The next two games after that will be the dreaded JIP.
G1: Red Wings 3, Ducks 2 (DET leads 1-0)
NEWSFLASH: THE RED WINGS FINALLY TRAILED IN A PLAYOFF GAME!!!
But only for 5:05.
After Corey Perry opened the scoring 7:28 into the first to give Anaheim a 1-0 lead, The Mule tied it back up at the 12:33 mark.
In the second, Nik Lidstrom scored at the 14:24 mark to give Detroit it's first lead at 2-1. 5:19 later and just before the horn, Teemu Selanne scored on a 4-on-3 power play to tie it back up.
Third period came, chances also came for both teams but were denied by Chris Osgood and Jonas Hiller.
Except for one.
And when Lidstrom has time and space late in a tie game, say your prayers. Because he's not going to necessarily wait to make the first move. He's going to wait for the goaltender to make that mistake. And when Hiller did, Lidstrom picked his spot and scored what would turn out to be the game winner with less 49.1 seconds left in the game.
So to total it all up:
- Anaheim had the lead for 5:05
- Detroit had the lead for a combined 6:08.1
By my rudimentary math, that means that Game 1 was tied for 48 minutes and 44.9 seconds.
As for what that means for the rest of the series, I think I'll let The Chief sum it up:
If you really need evidence that the playoffs suck? All you have to do is watch the rest of this series. Every game is going to be exactly like that one was. Every. Single. Game.