Hogging II: Son of hogging

Among the many reasons to love the late Pierre Bourdieu, quite apart from the range and quality of his scholarly work, is the fact that he was willing to appear in the 1977 film <i>Slap Shot</i> as the character of Moe Wanchuk. He wrote about the experience many years later in <a href=”http://www.homme-moderne.org/raisonsdagir-editions/catalog/bourdieu/contref.html”><i>Contre-feux</i></a>, but most English-speaking readers remain completely unaware of Bourdieu’s brief career as a Charlestown Chief. I mean, talk about putting your cultural capital at risk:

Only kidding! Moe Wanchuk was played by <a href=”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076723/”>Brad Sullivan</a>. But I had you going for a second, didn’t I? A millisecond? A microsecond? A femtosecond?

OK, never mind. The important thing is that round two of the NHL playoffs begins tonight (it’s just after 5:30 pm Eastern (US) time as I post), and I’m here to explain why <a href=”https://crookedtimber.org/2007/04/11/hogging-time-at-last/”>I went a lousy 2-2</a> in my predictions for round one of the Eastern conference matchups. (And no, not all my CT posts will be hockey posts through the month of June. I have something <i>completely different</i> coming up soon, I promise.) Short version: triumph of hope over experience. Longer version: with the peppy young Penguins, I was torn between “they’re too young to go deep in the playoffs” and “they’re too young to know that they’re too young to go deep in the playoffs.” In the end, though, the problem with the Penguins wasn’t their youth; it was their lack of depth. Eleven different Senators scored for Ottawa; the Penguins got their goals from only five players. After the first three games, all eyes were on the Pens’ underachieving rookie phenom Evgeni Malkin, but I think the role players — guys like Malone, Talbot, Armstrong, and Christensen — bear a good deal of the burden as well. The Penguins actually did a decent job of shutting down the Sens’ big guns, and their defensemen (as well as their goaltender) answered their most severe critics; but the Penguins never managed to sustain the kind of three-line attack you now need for playoff hockey. As a result, they were outshot badly in almost every game (managing only 26, 21, 19, 24, and 20 shots — and getting outshot 37-21 even in the game they won), and almost every game had these debilitating seven- and eight-minute dead spots during which the Penguins never came anywhere near the Ottawa net. The Sens put their big defensemen (Volchenkov and Phillips) on the Crosby line, keeping young Sid’s offensive production within human limits, and the Penguins had little else to counter with. And then when the Sens won the pivotal game four, 2-1, <i>on a goal by that very same Volchenkov</i>, things were lookin’ bad for the plucky Pens. Volchenkov scored one other goal this year, in 78 games. His last playoff goal came in 2003. When your Volchenkovs are scoring, you know you’re ready for playoff hockey.

So, for next year: the Penguins need their second tier of forwards to step it up a notch. And though everyone’s saying they need more sinew on defense, I’d like to suggest that they need one more two-way defenseman like Sergei Gonchar: because when the chips were down in games four and five, and the Sens started playing some seriously stifling defense, the Penguins found themselves with only one defenseman capable of joining the play and creating odd-man rushes. Which is to say, the Penguins didn’t have many odd-man rushes. Or many shots. Or many goals. Or many wins.

About my miscall of Tampa Bay / New Jersey: look, if you will, at <a href=”http://scores.espn.go.com/nhl/boxscore?gameId=270422020″>the record of the ice time logged by the top lines of the Lightning and the Devils.</a> (Boy, they really keep good stats these days, don’t they?) The Elias-Gomez-Gionta line played about 17 minutes of the game for New Jersey. For Tampa Bay, Vincent Lecavalier played 26:44, Brad Richards 29:02, and Martin St. Louis an unreal 31:35. (A team’s best defenseman, like the Lightning’s Dan Boyle or the Ducks’ Chris Pronger, might log thirty minutes in a game. But forwards almost never do.) That’s not because Tampa Bay was on the brink of elimination and overplaying its stars; you can see the same pattern in <a href=”http://scores.espn.go.com/nhl/boxscore?gameId=270418020″>game four</a>, the game that salvaged the series for the Demonic Ones. It’s because, as I said two weeks ago, Tampa Bay only has a couple of scoring threats. I thought that the sheer talent of St. Louis and Lecavalier would be enough to overcome a Devils team that isn’t as solid as Devils teams of yore, and if Tampa Bay had pulled out the OT victory in game four, I might have been borne out; but the Lightning were so listless in that OT that I had to wonder whether the top guys weren’t depleted by overuse. I still think the Devils are weak and vulnerable. Their shaky defense coughs up the puck way too often, and the only reason this didn’t kill them is that the Lightning were, amazingly, even more generous — simply handing the puck, gift-wrapped, to some of New Jersey’s most skilled players at the most inopportune possible moments (as when, in game six, Tim Taylor threw a bewildering behind-the-back pass <i>into the middle of the ice in his own zone</i> just after Tampa Bay had scored to cut the Devils’ lead to 2-1; the Elias-Gomez-Gionta line immediately snapped up the loose puck and snapped it into the net, and that turned out to be the difference in a 3-2 game). Yes, Brodeur is still a great goaltender, and yes, he can still steal a series. But if the Senators play defense against the Devils the way they played against the Penguins, this series is going to be over surprisingly quickly. But for now, let’s just say <b>Ottawa in six</b>.

As for the Rangers – Sabres series: well, I picked the Sabres over the Isles in five, and that turned out to be my only dead-on prediction. For who could have guessed that the Resurgent Rangers would dispatch Atlanta in four straight? The Rangers don’t sweep people very often. In fact, they’ve managed only <i>two</i> 4-0 series sweeps in their entire franchise history since 1344. Then again, the last time they swept someone in the opening round, they proceeded to win the Cup. So I’m thinking happy good fun thoughts these days.

Now, I recently learned that a certain blog calling itself “Sabreocracy” has <a href=”http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/004176.html”>already declared Buffalo to be the Stanley Cup champions for 2007</a>. And it did not escape my attention that <a href=”http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/004178.html”>they have decided to call the Rangers are “a team we can all hate.”</a> That second link takes you to a completely unhinged post that says a number of truly vile things about fine young men like Jaromir Jagr and Sean Avery. What’s their problem with Jagr, you ask? Good question! They claim, bizarrely, that he’s “the most selfish player in the NHL,” but this is beyond ludicrous, since Jagr’s 66 assists in 2006-07 suggest that he is in fact the <i>fifth most altruistic</i> player in the NHL. No, selfishness has nothing to do with it. I think “Sivacracy/ Sabreocracy” is upset at the fact that Jagr wears number 68 in commemoration of the Prague Spring, because the bloggers at “Sivacracy/ Sabreocracy” have long been notorious for their unwavering support of the brutal Soviet crackdown against the Dubcek regime.

Therefore, the Rangers’ victory over the Sabres will also be a victory for the democratic left over the neo-Stalinist left of “Sivacracy.” And what will be really remarkable about that victory is that it will take <i>only three games</i>. The Sabres, demoralized by three consecutive routs at the hands of exemplary, upstanding, freedom-loving citizens like Jagr and Avery, will simply forfeit game four, giving the Rangers the very first three-game sweep of a seven-game series in NHL history — and, of course, the first in franchise history going back to 1344.

Actually, my better judgment says Sabres in six. However, since this would give Buffalo the decisive win on Garden ice, I’m going to ignore my better judgment and say <b>Sabres in seven</b>. But I want to point out that <a href=”http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/04/hogging-second-round-edition.html”>Infallible Scott says Rangers in seven</a>, and Infallible Scott, being infallible and all, went 8-0 in the first round whereas I went a very mediocre 5-3.

In the West, where I was 3-1: Sharks over Red Wings in six, Ducks over exhausted Canucks in five. Let the road to the Cup run through California!