PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

I am currently on vacation in Chicago, which unless your head is still in the sand; won the Cup this year.
The Hawks have been through some very rough times in recent years, and at one stage fans were dropping like flys – and with an NFL, an NBA, Two MLB and a (belch) soccer team; Chicagoians headed elsewhere.
However the last few seasons were good and this year things ended better.
The city of Chicago itself has truly embraced the team as winners. Almost every shop is selling merchandise and even a few restaurants sell fan gear. Be it flags, pucks, t-shirts or pennants; they are here.
Posters adorn windows regardless of whether the shop is open or vacant while electronic signs celebrate the win and banners fly from the lamp posts. Bizarley, even a dinosaur at the field museum is wearing a jersey.
Interestingly, on a trip to a small hockey store named Gunzo’s in Forest Park; a wide range of Detroit merchandise was available, a small memory of the years previous.

This is KevKev – over and out!

Yeah, I know. We’re a tad bit late to the party (the parade’s already taken place!), but we at PowerPlayGoal.com would like to congratulate the Chicago Blackhawks for winning the Stanley Cup this year, and for ending their near 50-year drought. Also, congrats to the Philadelphia Flyers for making it all the way to Finals.

Despite neither of our favourite teams making the playoffs at all this year, this postseason tournament turned out to be one of the best we’ve ever seen: who would have predicted that the low-ranked Montreal Candiens would have bested the NHL’s favourite players, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin? (And the teams that they play on, of course.)

And after going through years of mismanagement and irrelevancy in the city of Chicago, the Blackhawks made huge changes in the last few years alone, and eventually not only won back their fans, but also won a well-deserved Stanley Cup that they had been waiting so long for.

Right, now onto website related news: this year’s Aftermath series of articles is being worked on, so expect Part 1 to be added sometime soon – after this, I’ll probably go ahead and add one of our older articles, the 2007 edition, just for the sake of it.

But before this series goes up, there’ll be another special retro videogame review which I plan to put up maybe sometime later today, so be on the lookout for that.

I’m Wildwing64, and this is PowerPlayGoal.com

The 2008-09 NHL season is now finished. The Detroit Red Wings stormed through the playoffs only to meet the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final again. This time however, Pittsburgh returned the favour by ending Detroit’s defence of the Championship in their own city.

This six part series will consist of brief, but informal summaries of every team’s performance this season, starting with the Atlantic Division.

New Jersey Devils

Final standings: 51W, 27L, 4OTL, 106 points, 1^st Atlantic, 4^th Eastern Conference, 5^th NHL

This year’s Devils squad overall did slightly better than last year’s, beating the previous points tally by 7 points, with a particularly good part of the season being an eight game winning streak during January, although a seven game slump near the end prevented them from gaining a higher playoff spot. For the second straight postseason, the Devils couldn’t get any further than the first round, losing in game 7 of an evenly matched series with eventual Conference finalists the Carolina Hurricanes.

New York Islanders

Final standings: 26W, 47L, 9OTL, 61 points, 5^th Atlantic, 15^th EC, 30^th NHL

Prior to this season, the Isles brought back an old jersey from their early years in the 70s as a rather nice third uniform. Unfortunately, not much more good would come for this team as the piss-poor managed Islanders finished with the worst record in the league, also suffering from the misery of being the only team from the Atlantic Division to miss the playoffs. Anyone remember their embarrassing 22 game 2-17-3 record through December and January? I certainly wouldn’t want to if I were a fan of this team. On an upside, the Isles won the 2009 draft lottery, choosing Jon Tavares of the OHL’s London Knights as the Number 1 overall draft pick in Montreal.

New York Rangers

Final standings: 43W, 30L, 9OTL, 95 points, 4^th Atlantic, 7^th EC, 12^th NHL

After a disappointing preseason tournament, the Blueshirts spent some time in Europe, winning 8-1 in an exhibition game against SC Bern of Switzerland, and then defeating Metallurg Magnitogorsk 4-3 to win the inaugural Victoria Cup (Yay?), soon going to Prague, Czech Rebublic for two regular season games against Tampa Bay, winning both games 2-1. After these two games and going back to North America, the Rangers began with their best start in franchise history, going 10-2-1 over the first 13 games, and had a pretty good season except for a 14 game 2-8-4 slump through the end of January and into February. During the first round of the playoffs, the Rangers met up with the Washington Capitals and appeared to have the upper hand after game 4 with a 3-1 series lead. Unfortunately for them, the Caps bounced right back and won the next 3 games, taking the series away from them in game 7, no thanks to head coach John Tortorella’s suspension after a quarrel with a fan during game 5.

Philadelphia Flyers

Final standings: 44W, 27L, 11OTL, 99 points, 3^rd Atlantic, 5^th EC, 9^th NHL

The Philadelphia Flyers this year got off to a good start during the early months of the season, with an 8 game points streak (7-0-1) in November and a 7 game point streak (6-0-1) in December. For most of the season, they held onto the number 4 spot in the playoffs, but the inconsistent hockey they played for the rest of the year eventually cost them their home ice advantage in the playoffs. Much like two of their division rivals, the Flyers weren’t able to make it past the first round as they lost in 6 games to state rivals Pittsburgh. During the offseason, the Flyers were able to boost their defence by acquiring Chris Pronger from the Anaheim Ducks, so look for the Flyers to have a much tougher presence on the ice, as well as… well, more Pronger hate by other teams’ fans being directed onto them.

Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins

Final standings: 45W, 28L, 9OTL, 99 points, 2^nd Atlantic, 4^th EC, 8^th NHL

After going back to North America after two games in Sweden with the Ottawa Senators, the Pens started off fairly good, until December and January when they suddenly started playing inconsistently, posting a 10-16-2 record over the two months. During February, head coach Michel Therrien was fired and replaced by Dan Bylsma, previously the coach of the AHL Penguins, and for the rest of the season the Penguins played far more consistently, and under their new head coach posted a record of 18-3-4, losing only one home game. Their sudden rise in the standings allowed them to gain home ice advantage over Philadelphia, beating them 4-2 in the first round, and then moving on to the second round to defeat the Washington Capitals in 7, sweeping the Carolina Hurricanes in the Conference Finals and then, like last year, met Detroit in the Stanley Cup Final, making this the first time in 25 years that two teams met in back to back Cup Finals. Detroit held the home ice advantage for this series, and for the first 6 games the home team came out as the victor. However, Pittsburgh won 2-1 in a very tight game 7 in Detroit, winning their third Stanley Cup in franchise history.

Stay tuned for Part 2 as the Northeast Division will be covered.