On Frozen Blog

Knee-jerks: Playoffs, Weekend 1

By The OFB Team Monday, April 16, 2007

Color us increasingly impressed with both Versus and NBC. Versus has a delightful habit of expanding its coverage with “in progress” transitions to late-night games. More puck for your buck. And it’s come so, so far from its primitive studio sets and sterile analysis there circa autumn 2005. We still think Bill Clement better at color work than studio hosting. Mike Emerick? Simply one of the best play-by-play guys in all of sports today. And Peter McNab! His ice-level analysis was so chock full of poise and polish and penetrating insight that NBC more or less converted him to a second color guy in the booth. His work surely shamed that of the ice-level puck bunnies of recent years . . . Erin Andrews (where has she gone??) exempted . . . for aesthetic reasons . . . of course.
Sean Avery with the luckiest/weirdest of all goals . . . off a crazy bounce from a dump in Saturday. Fortunately it wasn’t the Rags’ game winner. That trade deadline acquisition is fast turning out to be one of the better ones.
Finally . . . finally! . . . some decent use of “Mic’d up” and “Sounds of the Game.” We’ve waited about two seasons for it. While a scrum was broken up by the refs Saturday in Atlanta, Thrasher Brad Larsen said to New York’s Thomas Pock “Don’t fool yourself . . . it’ll be the end of the period for you . . . you don’t want that!” And Sidney Crosby actually articulated some insightful reflections for NBC Saturday.
Brett Hull laments Ottawa fans’ “respectful booing” of Crosby. Why? Is his memory that short? Mario got it pretty good on the road in the Patrick Division postseason in his day.
The final minute in the Mullet zone late Saturday afternoon was high octane incredible pressure by Ottawa, playoff puck at its regulation time most dramatic. That was one fabulous game for 80 percent of the U.S. to receive.
Saturday night: It’s HNIC and no Canadian teams are playing, yet they aired the complete singing of the U.S. National Anthem. There was a time when the U.S. broadcasters did the same. We miss those days.
Not the normal early game HNIC announcers on Saturday — they must have the main guys for the earlier Senators’ game. Which also means no ‘Coach’s Corner.’ Is this why we haven’t seen Grapes on NBC yet?
Speaking of NBC, both Saturday’s Sens/Pens’ and Sunday’s Wings/Flames’ games seemed to be a bit dark and yellowish. Saturday’s broadcast of Rags/Thrash, however, was bright. Is the lighting in Philips Arena that much better, or is it something else?
Scott Gomez can dramatically obliterate the meager numbers from his injury-plagued regular season with a prosperous postseason. Let’s hope he does, and that he seriously considers trading in that red, white and black for red, white, and blue.
It’s only one game, but in Buffalo Saturday night it was the Rick DiPietro Show, squashing talk of a SlugSweep, and as veteran Caps’ fans, we’ve seen enough Isles’ postseason heroics in net for four lifetimes.
Marty St.Louis with a killer one-timer from a sharp angle — the little guy always comes up with large goals.
Daniel Alfredsson can look uninvolved and marginalized for large portions of a game and then, as in Sunday in Pittsburgh, in a flash release a laser shot from the faceoff circle that sours the spirits of the Iron City-swilling faithful.
The Stars again are in an early postseason hole, but does anyone want to scapegoat Marty Turco? The margin between victory and defeat in this series, in all three games, has been sheer agony for Stars’ fans — it could very easily be a 3-0 lead in games for Dallas this morning.