I had a chance to head out to Ottawa to see Game 6 of the opening round series between the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins at Scotiabank Place recently and I have to tell you, nothing beats playoff hockey live.
That’s something that hasn’t happened in Toronto for five years now of course (there’s the mandatory dig at Leaf Nation!), but when it again does there’s no question this city will go crazy.
The defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins finally prevailed in that game, 4-3 in overtime, after rallying back from a 3-0 deficit. The game had everything you could ask for in a hockey game and more…and so did the series, as Game 5 in Pittsburgh was a triple overtime classic.
In addition to getting a chance to fully appreciate playoff hockey, it also left me with an appreciation of just how hard it is to win a championship in sports these days, especially the NHL.
There’s 30 teams to start with. So you need to fight your away into one of the 16 playoff spots, a task that isn’t as easy as it appears (right Leafs?). Then you have to win four consecutive playoff series over a gruelling two month period and the team that’s left standing is the team that gets to hoist the Stanley Cup.
The Pittsburgh Penguins have managed to get to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row, winning last year, as have the Detroit Red Wings of course. After watching the first round of the NHL playoffs you can really appreciate just how hard that is to do.
Think about how much can go wrong on the way to a Stanley Cup Final. A key injury, a hot goalie at the other end, a bad call, heck even a bad bounce…and yet the Penguins and Red Wings have been there twice in a row and were still alive on that night I was in Ottawa to go yet again.
The Montreal Canadiens winning five straight Stanley Cups makes them the greatest dynasty in hockey history in terms of Cup wins. But the greatest achievement in hockey history is the New York Islanders winning four straight Stanley Cups and then going to the final again in year 5. Why? The Canadiens only needed to win 10 playoff series, the Islanders had to win 19 in a row.
Just imagine – 19 straight playoff series wins in a row. That is phenomenal! The Penguins win over Ottawa was just their fifth straight – only 14 more to go!
Winning a championship is so hard – and you can see why in Round 1 of the playoffs. The senators could have easily won that game and then who knows? The Pens could have lost to the caps last year in the east Final. Detroit could have beat them last year.
Playoff hockey is the greatest spectacle in sports and winning a Stanley Cup is the hardest thing to do in sports (along with an NBA title I suppose). And you know that for sure just watching round 1…look how hard it was for a great team like Pittsburgh just to survive the first round.
And look at how hard it is for the Leafs to just get into the playoffs.
It only happens every once in awhile, but when it happens it’s an amazing thing to see…a team comes back from a 3-0 deficit in any best-of-seven playoff series.
Congratulations to the Windsor Spitfires, the defending Memorial Cup champions, who rallied back from a 3-0 hole to beat the Kitchener Rangers in seven exciting games to win the OHL’s Western Conference championship. They are now off to the OHL Finals.
What I said above about how hard it is to win a Stanley Cup applies double to winning a Memorial Cup. You have the same long regular season, followed by four playoff rounds – and then throw in a Memorial Cup tournament to boot! The Spitfires became the first team to come back from an 0-2 hole to win the round-round event last year, and now this – amazing.
Full credit goes out to Warren Rychel and Bob Boughner, who have done an incredible job with this franchise. They have put together two amazing back-to-back seasons and have a chance at two straight Cups perhaps. They are two of the best executives in junior hockey.
Their team will be forever remembered as a “dominant” team thanks to their amazing record in the past two years and they are indeed a great team. But was it easy? Were they “dominant” on the way to winning?
Hardly…and the series against the Rangers and their struggles in Rimouski at the Cup prove it. It is so HARD to win a championship.
And that’s what makes playoff hockey so great in both the NHL and OHL.