Sharks Survive Again...Plus DERBY DAY!

This is going to be really quick today as I'm too excited about the Kentucky Derby today.

The Sharks finally showed a backbone last night. After trailing 2-0 heading to the third period, they stopped trying to make all these fancy passes and just put the puck on net.

They started generating chances and opened up passing lanes to finally be able to move the puck for a high percentage shot. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Joe Thornton may be the most underrated passer in the league. He's not going to score 40 goals in a season, but every year he puts up 60+ assists and is always among the league leaders.

The pass he made to set up the first goal last night was jaw dropping. I don't know how his teammates even play with the guy, if he sees a small shred of daylight, he's putting the puck through it.

Plus, the goal Brian Campbell scored to tie it up in the third was an absolute laser beam. Marty Turco had no chance whatsoever to stop that puck.

The way you beat Turco is to get traffic in front of him. Get in his kitchen. Give him a whack after the whistle. Give him a little nudge when he comes out to play the puck. I'm not saying lay the guy out or do anything to take a penalty. He gets frustrated very quickly.

Take last night for example, one two occasions late in the 2nd and early in the 3rd periods, he got some contact and started screaming at the refs to make a call.

If you keep going to the net and crashing into him, he'll get mad and that's what you want if you're the Sharks. You need him thinking "I'm taking out the next guy who touches my paint."

That's how the Sharks will win the series. If they keep being passive, we won't even see a game 7.

Now, onto Derby Day.

I am going out on a limb today and making my own call. Cheech thinks this is a wide open field and with Big Brown being out the far outside post at No. 20. Write this down. BIG BROWN WILL NOT WIN. It's a sucker's bet today. Yeah he's the favorite, but no horse has ever won the Derby from the 20 post. EVER.

The only way he wins is if he gets down to the rail by the first turn. If he's on the outside heading into turn one, rip up your tickets.

Now, here's what I'm going to play.

Since, Big Brown will spend a ton of energy early in this race I'm looking for a solid closer in this race. Keep your eyes on the No. 10 horse Colonel John. In the Santa Anita Derby John got boxed out big time coming around the final turn, had to change his line and still ran down four horses in the final straightaway to win it by 1/2 a length.

This horse will be stalking the pace the entire time and watch for Colonel John to make a big kick down the stretch. Colonel John will be your 2008 Kentucky Derby winner.

As a longer shot on the board and if you're looking for a value bet. Take a hard look at Smooth Air in the 12 post. This horse lost to Big Brown in the Florida Derby, but has a noticeable post advantage over Brown this time around and might be able to take Brown down.

Now as for the other favorite on the board, I'm not all that impressed. Pyro has a great name and my favorite number in 9, but finished 10th in his last race at the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. I didn't see the race, but for him to come in 10th in a decent sized field does not bode well for a race with 20 horses. I think he'll be a mid pack horse at best, but what do I know? I'm just a puckhead.

Pens Falter, Wings Dominate

Rather than look at the game in general let’s look at how this loss is actually a good thing for the Penguins shall we? Everyone will probably write something about the game and what happened in it to turn the tide. Let me just do that in one sentence.

Malkin missed the penalty shot in the second period.

That’s it. That’s what turned the tide in the game. Nothing more, nothing less. If he scores, the Pens win and I’m on here typing all in caps in celebration.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about this since we went up 3-0 on the Rangers are were 7-0 in the playoffs. No one is ever going to go 16-0. No one has even gone 8-0 since the Oilers did it in the 80’s. The longer this winning streak went on the more damage it could have potentially caused these young Pens.

How you ask?

Winning gives you a false sense of security. It makes you think that you don’t have to try as hard in order to win. It makes you expect to win rather than working and earning the wins. I’m not saying the Penguins quit in this game at all. The Rangers were the better team tonight, plain and simple.

This loss tonight should do a couple things for the Penguins. First off, the loss will remind them of the feelings they had last year when they were getting stomped by the Senators. It should remind them how it feels to lose and remind them of what they were doing in the first seven games in order to win. It should give them the bad taste in their mouth to go out and play harder just so they don’t have to see the opposition with smiles on their faces.

The loss tonight will shatter any sense of superiority that these young Pens might have developed during these playoffs. There was some tensions that boiled over at the end of the game tonight, but since the next game isn’t until Sunday, I’m not as worried about a momentum carry over. Expect the Penguins to come out absolutely flying in Game 5.

Henrik Lundqvist will have to be ready to face a barrage of shots and what will no doubt be a very hostile Mellon Arena crowd. Man I wish I was going to be there for this. At least I’ll be able to watch this one and not have to worry about listening to it on a severe delay and having Gopher ruin any suspense like tonight.

I’m also not totally upset about the loss tonight because if you’ll recall I only asked the Penguins to split in NY and head home up 3-1. As a Pens fan, I can’t really be that upset about getting what I asked for right? How often does something like that happen? I wish it were that simple about winning championships. If it were you’d only see the Red Sox, Patriots and Penguins winning everything every year. (Yes, I grew up near Boston. I became a Pens fan when the first game I ever saw when I was about 5 or 6 was a Bruins/Pens game and Mario Lemieux went nuts and the Penguins won easily. The love affair began that young and hasn’t ever faltered.)

At any rate, I hope we pull this off on Sunday and can get some time to rest up before the next round. I’d also just like to add that I’d love very much to see the Canadiens come back and at least force a Game 7. Main reason being that I want the Pens next opponent to be beaten and battered, especially since both of those teams went the full seven games in their opening series. This would mean that provided the Penguins win in Game 5, that they would have played nine total games in the playoffs and if Montreal forces Game 7 the winner would have played 14 games. That’s the only reason I want Montreal to come back.

Let’s just hope we take care of business on Sunday.

As for the Red Wings, there's not much to say about this one. Johan Franzen singehandedly beat the Colorado Avalanche. Franzen scored 9 goals in the series which was the combined total of what the Avs did in four games.

The Avs were terrible in every game in this series and didn't deserve to even be on the same ice surface as the Wings.

Jose Theodore finished the series with a GAA probably over 10. I don't have the patience to figure this out and nor do I care. Needless to say, he was awful. In game 4 he let up 3 on 15 shots in the first period and was pulled....again. The guy I really feel for in this series was Peter Budaj who came in and faced a shooting gallery already down by and insurmountable amount.

I wonder if anyone in the Avs organization made a call to Patrick Roy. I'm not saying he would have stepped in and won the series, but he at least would have skated down to the other end of the ice to kick the crap out of Chris Osgood and show his son how to really fight.

In case you haven't seen this by now, here you go.



Anyway, there's not much I can even say about this and my head is throbbing from trying to figure out what went wrong. Complain all you want about injuries and such, but this was beyond any of that. This was a pathetic showing from the 2001 Colorado Avalanche.

In other news, guess what this weekend is? THE KENTUCKY DERBY! Now I haven't had much chance to look over the field, but don't worry I'll have my pick before the race.

I'm merely stating that this is the greatest two minutes in sports. Horse racing doesn't get enough credit. I'll admit, I wasn't a huge fan until a few years ago when Cheech got me hooked in college. I didn't realize everything that went into picking winners and how to chart a race and such. I still don't get it. I understand the logic behind it and know what I need to happen in a race for my schmuck pick to actually come in though.

I never miss the Derby, even before I met Cheech. Anyone who misses the Derby should have their sports watching privileges revoked for 6 months. Yeah, it's that important and fun to watch. What's sad is that the only way horse racing will return to it's glory days and get any attention whatsoever is for there to be a Triple Crown winner. Right now ESPN pays less attention to horse racing than they do the NHL and that's pretty hard to beat. Even the WNBA gets more play on SportsCenter than the NHL. Maybe if the Stanley Cup Finals go seven games, it might make it into the first 15 minutes of the show. Of course it will be behind Game 1 of the NBA conference finals and game 37 of some random baseball game, but hey it's in the first segment of the show.

I need to stop writing for tonight before I get really annoyed. Besides, it's my weekend and I intend on having a lot of fun.