The Tampa Bay Lightning advanced to the Stanley Cup finals for the second time in the franchise’s 22 season history, posting a second straight road (2-0) victory at New York vs the Rangers, in game seven last night. (The Lightning won game 5 in New York by the same (2-0) score).
Thus the Lightning became the first of the three Tampa Bay area teams to advance to the finals for the second time.
The Lightning defeated the Calgary Flames in 7 games in the 2004 Stanley Cup final. Both the NFL Buccaneers, who won the Super Bowl/final vs the Oakland Raiders and baseball’s Rays, who lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies, have made one finals appearance in their sports league.
Lightning goaltender Ben Butler joined Patrick Roy (2002) and Tim Thomas (2011) as the only goaltenders to record shutouts in seventh games twice in the same playoffs season.
Roy won 4 Stanley Cups, but the 2002 Colorado Avalanche lost in the semi-finals. However, Tim Thomas’ Boston Bruins won their first Stanley Cup crown in 39 years in 2011.
Coincidentally, Thomas’ 7th game shutouts were first vs the Lightning in the semi-finals and then vs current Rangers’ coach Alain Vigneault’s Vancouver Canucks, in the finals.
The Lightning are a stellar (7-3) on the road in this year’s playoffs and would open the finals on the road if Anaheim (Ducks) win tonight’s game seven vs the Chicago Blackhawks.
If the Chicago Blackhawks prevail tonight in Anaheim, the Lightning will host “Chi” in game one.
Stanley Cup Finals start Wednesday
The great NBA player and executive Jerry West turned 77 yesterday, one day after the Golden State Warriors, for whom he is an executive, reached the NBA finals for the first time in 40 years.
That is fine and so are Jerry’s exploits as a player, coach, general manager/executive for the Los Angeles Lakers. My comments today are more personal.
He is one of my favorite players and as was the case with Mr. West, at a key age, I was shy, and I shot basketball(s) alone, even as darkness emerged.
Unlike Jerry, I was never a player on an organized team and my shooting is only great when I crumple up a piece of paper and shoot it successfully into a waste paper basket of some width.
Perhaps sadly for both of us, each of us suffered greatly when “our” beloved Lakers lost playoff series–some truly gut wrenching–and were denied NBA titles. (Jerry won but one title as a player and his long time great teammate Elgin Baylor never “titled.”)
Also, it seems some of those losses have “stayed” with Jerry and that makes me sad. First off, he has won numerous titles, though only once as a player. That 1971-1972 team won 33 straight games at one point and is truly one of the greatest teams in sports’ history.
So I say to Jerry and myself, let’s relish the victories he truly had and ones I need to both appreciate, but also put in perspective. I feel being a fan, especially one as intense as I was, could be a big negative.
Yet there is something compelling and important about taking another’s example, in this case the effort, greatness and the perhaps out of whack intensity of Jerry West, and trying to improve one’s own life.
My father worked hard and remarked how I did not appreciate victory, but horribly lamented defeat. Jerry, truly a part of that overblown competition, not me as my father correctly pointed out, was the same way. Again, sad!
Thus let me recall with fondness being in the Lakers’ dressing room after the team repeated as NBA champions in 1988 and interviewing/congratulating then Lakers’ general manager Jerry West.
The Boston Celtics had repeated as NBA champions in 1969, their incredible 11th title in 13 seasons, so many won vs Jerry and Elgin Baylor.
Additionally, another of my favorites, Wilt Chamberlain, and his teams, were ousted so often by the great Celtics in earlier playoff rounds and twice in NBA finals, including the one in 1969.
I reminded Jerry that “our” Lakers’ (108-105) score/victory in game 7 that night in 1988 vs a gritty Detroit Pistons team that would itself repeat as NBA champions, winning the next two titles, was eerily similar to the Celtics’ (108-106) game seven win, when the NBA last had a repeat champion, 19 years earlier in 1969.
I do not remember Jerry’s response but both of us surely thought about West’s 42 point performance in defeat, playing on one good leg in that final game 19 years earlier.
Two undeniable good things in sports are comradery and good sportsmanship.
That helps explain that the fact Celtics’ players John Havlicek, Bill Russell and Larry Siegfreid all expressed their love and admiration for Jerry after that game is indelibly etched in my mind.
The New York Rangers are (7-0) in home game sevens in their history. Tonight in another game seven home game, this one vs the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Rangers are bidding for a second straight NHL finals appearance.
There has been at least one time that the Rangers did lose the decisive, maximum numbered game at home.
That was 40 years ago, when an upstart New York Islanders team won the decisive third game of a preliminary series at the Rangers’ Madison Square Garden home, to take the series two games to one.
That year, the Islanders began a span in which they at least made the NHL semi-final round nine times in ten seasons. They won 4 straight Stanley Cup titles from (1980-1983) and made five straight finals appearances from (1980-1984).
Coincidentally, on that same night in 1975 (it happened to be a Friday as is today) current Tampa Bay Lightning broadcaster Phil Esposito, a great NHL player, and his Boston Bruins team, were also eliminated at home in a decisive, maximum numbered game three of a preliminary series by the Chicago Blackhawks.
The Blackhawks will play a decisive 7th game of their semi-final series in Anaheim vs the Ducks tomorrow night.
Both NBA semi-finals series ended after a total of just nine games (one more than the minimum). In the NHL, both semi-final series will total fourteen games (the maximum)– just the second time this has happened since 1964.
Last night, while the NBA Golden State Warriors finished off the Houston Rockets in five games, the NHL Chicago Blackhawks forced a seventh game of their “semi” vs the Ducks Saturday night in Anaheim.
Unfortunately in all probability, Kenny Albert and not Mike Emrick will be the lead NBC broadcaster.
Kudos to Albert on his energy traveling back and forth to different games, but give me “inspiration”/talent, not “perspiration”/ just showing up, any day, as Emrick, a gifted play by play man, is in my opinion “night and day” better than Albert.
Mike Emrick
The New York Rangers eased to a (7-3) victory in game six at Tampa vs the Lightning, forcing a seventh and deciding game of the NHL semi-finals in New York on Friday night.
It was the fourth time in this year’s playoffs that the Rangers responded with a victory in a game in which they faced elimination.
The Rangers’ Derick Brassard had a brilliant game, scoring the three goal hat trick and also picking up two assists.
In a similar situation in 1994, the Rangers’ Mark Messier also had a hat trick in a game six of an NHL semi-final series in which the Rangers trailed three games to two and won game six on the road.
So far this season, the Houston Astros, a franchise that has never won a World Series game, have played very well.
They actually have a nice lead (five and a half games) in the American League West division.
In my baseball preview, I was tempted to pick the Astros, a team with budding young talent, to win the A.L. West.
I picked the Angels and will stay with that prediction.
However, to this point, the Astros are the division’s big story and I believe they will contend for the crown and do not be surprised if they do win the division.
Tonight is game five of the NHL semi-final series between the Western Conference top seed Anaheim Ducks and the Chicago Blackhawks.
The series is tied at two games apiece with both Blackhawks’ wins coming in overtime games which totaled 5 overtime periods.
I predict the series will go to a seventh game on Saturday night.
Speaking of five, this is the third Chicago vs Anaheim major sports league semi-final and all were contested in a year ending in “5.”
In 1985, the Chicago Bears eased vs the L.A. Rams, whose home was in Anaheim in the NFC title game/NFL semi final. The Bears went on to devour the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
In 2005, the Chicago White Sox defeated the Angels, who played and still play in Anaheim, in the ALCS/ major league baseball semi-final.
The White Sox then swept the Houston Astros, winning 4 close games, to win their first World Series in 88 years, a year after the Boston Red Sox ended an 86 year title drought.
In sharp contrast to the NHL, where both semi-final series are tied at two games apiece, both NBA semi-final series are one sided and almost certainly will produce a Golden State Warriors vs Cleveland Cavaliers finals series.
The Warriors, who at (67-15) easily had the best regular season record, ripped the Houston Rockets, at Houston, to take a commanding (3-0) series lead. The Rockets did stay close in the two Warriors’ home games (games 1 and 2).
No NBA team has ever come back from a (3-0) series deficit and it will not happen in the Golden State/Houston series.
Hence the Warriors will make their first finals appearance since they swept the then Washington Bullets, now known as the Wizards, in the 1975 finals.
The New York Rangers bounced back, as they so often do, with a (5-1) series squaring win in game four at Tampa, vs the Lightning.
This is the third time the Lightning have made the NHL semi-final round, with the previous two Lightning semis going to the home team in the seventh game.
In 2004, en route to winning their only Stanley Cup and with current Rangers player, Martin St. Louis, a star player on their team, the Lightning won game seven of the “semis” at home, vs the Philadelphia Flyers.
In 2011, the Boston Bruins won at home in game seven of the semi-finals vs the Lightning, en route to winning the Stanley Cup.
All three Lightning semi-final series, this one included, have “stood” at two games apiece, after 4 games.
In the previous two, the home team won the next three games. If that pattern persists, it will be the Rangers in seven games, which is my “in series” prediction.
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing a truly riveting play, “A Queen for a Day” at the Theater of St. Clement, located at 423 West 46th Street in New York City.
The four person cast of David Proval, Portia, David Deblinger and Vincent Pastore all were superb. Richard O’Brien also appears in a minor role .
Proval’s performance was mesmerizing. Playing an organized crime figure with a complicated past, he was on stage throughout the 90 minute show and did some of the finest acting I have seen in “many a moon.”
He and his fellow cast member Vincent Pastore are best known for roles as organized crime members on the superb HBO show, “The Sopranos.”
Proval played “Richie Aprile” and Pastore was a character known as “Big Pussy.”
Portia also really stood out in her interesting, mysterious role. The excellent performances of the entire cast makes “A Queen for a Day” a play I highly recommend.
“A Queen for a Day” is directed by John Gould Rubin and written by Michael Ricigliano Jr. It is an exciting and thoroughly enjoyable production.
For more info, click here and here.
David Proval: Mesmerizing
