And he sort of screwed over Colorado this year. He got them to the playoffs and broke down again. He has got to retire now.

Oh, snap! A line from a column in the Phila. Inquirer: "Price, back in the net after being benched for Game 4, told reporters he was using a new glove for Game 5. He didn't mention it was Bill Buckner's."

Since the playoffs expanded to four rounds in 1980, the Flyers are just the second team to make the conference finals after having the worst record in the league the year before. Detroit was the worst team in 1986 and made it to the Campbell Conference finals the next year. Ah, the good old days of the Campbell and Wales conferences, the Patrick Division, the Norris Division, etc.

I still miss the incredible Bruce Martyn announcing the Red Wings games!
To me he was like the "Ernie Harwell" of hockey!

No surprise here, the Rangers are put out of their misery. The one cut on the Ranger player was bloody and nasty!!! So, you get the battle of Pennsylvania, with the Sens/Flyers. Should be SOME battle!

Finally! The Dallas Stars finish off San Jose in the 4th overtime to win the series in 6. I've been saying that San Jose was choking, but I don't think I'm giving the Sharks enough credit. 4 of the 6 games went to OT, and a fifth was a one-goal game in regulation. Still, there's got to be a sense of underachievement there. The conference finals are set!

East: Flyers-Penguins starting Friday
West: Stars-Red Wings starting Thursday

Pity poor Ron Wilson, whose team again, underperforms. How many years now??? You can't continue to play from behind all the time and expect to get ahead. It caught up with the Sharks, unfortunately..

Conference finals:
Flyers/Pens: This is tough to pick, really tough, but I am going to go out on a limb and say Pens in 7.
Wings/Stars: not an easy pick either IMO, but I will say Satrs over Wings in 7....

Should be something!

Good call, Tom...good call. However, I will predict again that the Pens win it in 6. Sorry, Joe.

Disagree with you for Wings-Stars. The Wings are rolling over their opponents. I say Wings in 6.

I don't underestimate Detroit, but they will be a bit rusty. Dallas may be tired, but they looked real hungry against San Jose. We shall see, eh?

I wouldn't say the Stars looked hungry against the Sharks...they looked very flat for most of the overtime periods, while the Sharks kept playing as if they could go at it all night long.

Tough to see Ron Wilson leave like this but in the end, his team has underachieved and it's time to move on. Expect him to be fired before the draft.

As for my predictions...

Flyers in 6
Wings in 5

Pens in 5
Wings in 5

Pens in 6
Wings in 7

If they win, let's just play all Finals games at a neutral site like ummmm......Ralph Wilson Stadium.

That was some game last night, huh? I was texting back and forth with a friend of mine, and we were just excited we didn't have class until 4:00 this afternoon haha. Yeah, Detroit ran over Colorado... but the Stars are not an injured Colorado team. It will be interesting to see how their young D holds up against that offensive firepower though. I'll say Stars in 7 though. In the east... man, I don't even care. I like the Pens... and I like the Flyers. I guess I'll say Philly in 7 for the sake of making a pick. Regardless, I think these are gonna make for two great conference finals series.

OT: Joe... I'm working for your baseball team's high A club down here in Florida this summer!

Is that the Clearwater Threshers? I didn't know you were in the Clearwater area. That's where the Phils have spring training.

Side note to the Flyers-Penguins: their AHL affiliates, the Philadelphia Phantoms (who played the longest AHL game ever) and the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins (featuring the player arrested for streaking) are matched up in a playoff series right now. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton leads the series 2-1. The last time that NHL teams and their AHL teams played against each other at the same time was 2002 (it was Maple Leafs-Islanders and their AHL teams were St. John's and Bridgeport).

I didn't pick the Flyers to win the last series, but what the heck I'll be a homer and pick them in 6 games. The Red Wings should also win in 6 games. Lucky for Dallas that they get to rest until Thursday after that grueling game, otherwise the first game against the Wings could have been ugly.

Oh... I don't have my location set here, do I? Yeah, I live in Sarasota which is like an hour's drive to Clearwater. BEAUTIFUL park...

Indeed, was just there for a spring training game this year. These practice baseball parks are getting out of control.

Now that Montreal has been eliminated it will be interesting to see what happens with the ratings for the conference finals up here in Canada and what kind of growth the ratings for the World Championships might be able to generate. A look at the Top Ten ratings for sports programs this past weekend up here in Canada show that the runaway winner was the Philly - Montreal game that averaged over 2.1 million viewers. That is more than double the number of viewers that watched the second ranked Sunday night 4OT thriller between the Stars and Sharks. That game averaged 801,000 viewers over the course of the game with the number of viewers peaking at 1,073,000 between 11PM and 11:30PM ET.

Canada's first game of the World Championships came in at # 10 averaging 240,000 - which is not a bad rating for a game that started at 3:30PM on a Friday afternoon. That number will only grow as the tournament moves along.

And I see that down in the US the only place to catch the Conference finals will be Versus until Game 5 in each series which are the only games scheduled to be on NBC. Reading some chat boards from Dallas there are many complaints about that from people who do not get Versus. And there were even complaints from some of those who do get Versus that some games were not available in HD. I did not fully understand the technical reason for it - but it sounded like Versus shares an HD signal with the Golf channel and for certain game slots replays of golf were on instead of live hocky in HD. Bizarre.

Travelpat, thats it. Get Versus standard definition or I can watch 665 which is Golf/VS HD..There ain't nothing better than hockey in hd.

Travelpat, you're always coming up with numbers, I think you deserve the title of Outsports' official "ratings junkie!" But that 2.1 million figure for the Montreal-Philadelphia game (played on a Saturday in prime time) doesn't seem all that impressive (to me, at least), as it represents less than 7% of this supposedly 'hockey mad' country's population, meaning of course that 93% of Canadians weren't watching it. I caught only bits and pieces of the game, as I was working at the time, so I'm not sure if I can be counted in that 7%.

So, now it's been 14 long seasons since the Stanley Cup was won by a Canadian-based team, by far the longest drought in NHL history. A far cry from the 1980s, when Canadian cities won six times in that decade. Granted, three different Canadian cities were represented in the last three Cup finals, although that's not much consolation. And actually the longest drought title for any single NHL team goes to a US club, the Chicago Black Hawks (1961). Even Toronto has won it more recently than that! Come to think of it, a team from Chicago has also gone longer without a World Series title than any other MLB team.

As for the four remaining teams, the Flyers have gone a lot longer than any of the others without a Stanley Cup, so maybe this is their year. But if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the Penguins over the Red Wings in the final. At least three of the four teams are based in cities where there is fairly good public support and interest in hockey (I'm not so sure about Dallas). But if the Stars somehow pull it off, that will make four consecutive Cup wins in 'non-traditional' hockey markets.

Oh no! How terrible!

And by the way... Dallas played to 97.1% of capacity this season... Detroit played to 94.2% of capacity...

I'm still not sold on Dallas as a hockey market. I remember their Stanley Cup parade was very sparsely attended. If the Stars falter on the ice will their attendance drop off? I'd also bet the economy is much worse in Detroit than it is in Dallas.

It seems odd to me that NBC wasn't showing any hockey this weekend, even on Sunday. Turns out they have the PGA tour stop, The Players' Championship, both days this weekend.

It also seems odd that the shared HD channel would show replays of golf at all if they have a live hockey telecast. There could be technical glitches involved, such as the one I blogged about a while back. There's a phone number for some Versus guy who replied on that thread. Perhaps those people not getting HD hockey should be calling him.

Don Cherry joins ESPN's Sportscenter for coverage of the Eastern Conference and Stanley Cup finals. More importantly here's my conference finals preview.

My picks: Flyers in 7, Stars in 7.

Flyers and Briere say they are ready for Pittsburgh, and sounds like they are relishing the idea of them being somewhat of an underdog, according to the story....its going to be a war. Can't wait for hockey to return!!

"While Canada is no longer represented, there are teams from three longstanding hockey cities. Oh, and also Dallas."

(above quoted from Joe's blog )

And this from the Dallas Observer:

"Admittedly stripped to a die-hard, bare-bones fan base after years of late-season flirtation begetting only playoff headaches, the Stars are at it again. Quietly, efficiently producing successful hockey that begs to be noticed. But for the most part playing to a city that doesn't give a damn."

Click here for the full article It gives a more complete, and contradictory picture (though not an entirely negative one) of the situation in Dallas than that "97.1% of capacity" statistic mentioned by Sooners.

Here are the attendance figures around the league over the past season; admittedly Dallas did place a respectable #14, better than some of the 'traditional' markets, but please note which team was #1 However, I always take these figures with a healthy dose of skepticism, as I'm sure they fudge the numbers, ie "seats sold" doesn't equate to "seats occupied". Some businesses buy up blocks of tickets for their employees but they don't necessarily get used.

Other random tidbits:

(1) Paul Maurice was fired yesterday as the Leafs' coach. No surprise there.

(2) More importantly, the Calgary-born but not overly-talented actress Elisha Cuthbert (who played Kim Bauer on "24" a couple years ago) seems to have a thing for hockey players. She is now dating Flames' rugged defenseman Dion Phaneuf. That's certainly a step up from her previous BF, the totally obnoxious Sean Avery. It's rumoured that she had 'liaisons' with Mike Comrie and a couple of other players as well.

Well that's a much better problem to have than a lot of the teams have which is announced attendance > actual attendance. Granted, you can't sell a hot dog to an empty seat, but for a team like Nashville who depends on revenue sharing which is based on paid attendance, the paid but empty seat is very valuable.

Stars@ Wings this evening. Looking forward to it.

Very, very bad news for the Flyers. Defenseman Kimmo Timonen is out for the playoffs. He has a blood clot in his left ankle. I'd now be shocked if the Flyers won the series, despite my prediction.

GO WINGS!!

We really really need this victory for some morale in this state- stupid triple Whammy of Bush/Granholm/Kilpatrick is getting the Motor City down!

Ain't it the truth?!

What a sloppy mess of a game for Dallas. Jeez louise.....and Turco is winless at the Joe? Not good news for Dallas. Looking forward to the battle of Pennsylvania this evening....

Just thought that people might enjoy this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsidzb1yy6g

Something only true Penguins fans can enjoy, but it's still fun to watch regardless. Go Pens!

Losing the first game of the series -- just like against Washington and Montreal -- the Flyers have the Penguins right where they want them.

The Flyers weren't playing a bad game at all but they made a few turnovers and they all ended up being Penguins goals. In part it may reflect not having their best defenseman. But this is definitely still a winnable series.

Meanwhile...a touching but sad story...

I agree with your assesment regarding the opening game loss. Nothing new here. The Pens really shut down the skating and passing lanes especially in the 3rd period. Flyers were not able to get much going....I get the feeling the next game, esp. from the Flyers standpoint is going to be far more physical...

Let's go Red Wings,let's go Red Wings! Up 2 games to none against Dallas and hoping it's all good and that it all stays good.Hopefully Franzen will make a speedy recovery.

I was at an arena football game last night and read about the little incident that happened at the end of the game last night between Detroit and Dallas....should make for a really interesting get togther for the next game in Dallas I would think....

Sidney Crosby scored a goal and added an assist on Jordan Staal's empty-netter to lead the Penguins past the Flyers 4-2 at Mellon Arena tonight. The win puts the Penguins up two games to none.

Crosby put the Pens on the board first on the power play at 10:48 of the first period after Mike Knuble was sent to the sin bin for cross-checking. In the second period, the teams traded goals, capped by Mike Richards's shorthanded goal with 24 seconds left in the frame. In the third, the Pens scored two unanswered goals, including Max Talbot's second of the post-season.

Flyers' defenseman Braydon Coburn was injured in the first period after the puck caromed off Evgeni Malkin's skate and into Coburn's nose, which was bloodied. Coburn did not return to the game.

Additionally, a goal originally credited to Crosby in the first period was waved off after officials decided that it did not go past the line, even though video replays showed that it did, but just barely.

Game 3 will be at the Wachovia Center on Tuesday night at 7:30.

I don't know if you copied this from an AP writeup or not, but no replay conclusively showed that it crossed the line. There was no replay showing a little bit of clear ice between the goal line and the puck. From the camera angles that might have shown it across the line the puck was obscured by Biron's glove. Since it was ruled no goal by the officials on the ice, they could not overturn it on review without conclusive evidence, and it's required that they actually see the puck fully across the line. They can't assume it was across.

I waited and waited to see if they were going to call that a goal. If they had, I was prepared to watch tonight's Simpsons and Desperate Housewives episodes and ignore the rest of the game.

Losing Braydon Coburn only 2 minutes into the game, after already being without Timonen, I'm surprised the Flyers kept it as close as they did. They did manage to cut down on the puck giveaways, at least until the one that caused the game-winning goal. But they are getting no traffic at all in front of the net and no consistent offensive pressure at all.

It's looking like another frustrating finish to a season.

Dear Lord, that Flyer player that took the puck to the face was just awful. Sure been alot of bloodied stories surrounding hockey the last several months....Flyers don't look as confident as the Pens right now. Briere has been pretty quiet too. I expect some kind of a game when the series shifts to Wachovia Center....meanwhile, really looking forward to a resumption of the Stars/Wings series in Dallas after the incident which took place at the end of the last game at the Joe.

Pens have played badly in Philly so I look for the Flyers to get back in it....

Not a copy from the AP, but a mistake on my part. According to officials, the TV replay did not definitively show the puck crossing the line. Also, the goal was originally credited to Sergei Gonchar, not Crosby. Nonetheless, the Penguins still win .

Given the fact that the Flyers played almost the entire game without their top two defensemen, I give them credit for keeping it as close as it was. Take the Pens top two defensemen away and see how far they go. I really think the difference has been the PP for the Penquins. While the teams are 5-5 the play is pretty even. I just wish their was a way for the Flyers to not take penalties at inopportune times. The Knuble cross-check to the back while the Flyers were already a man down was such an example. I saw no reason for doing it in that situation.

Yes! A juicy 5-2 victory,last night which included a hat trick by Datsuk! Love it!

I thought Dallas was giving the Wings to much respect last night. Not to take anything away from how Detroit played though. The Stars have not played a very physical game, like they did against San Jose, who incidentally fired Ron Wilson last night. Came as absolutely no surprise to me what so ever. Sharks have underperformed in the playoffs for years. Game 3 tonight in Philadelphia...this should be interesting.

With both series at 3-0 now, NBC is close to having no games to televise this weekend. Considering the ratings hockey usually gets they might not mind that.

More of the same for the Flyers. No traffic in front, poor puck possession, a shot goes off a defenseman and into the net, a stupid play turning over the puck leading to the 3rd Pittsburgh goal. Only 18 shots, only 8 shots through two periods. It's all over but the shouting.

All that as you said, and too many Flyers penalties too. This just doesn't look like the same team that knocked off Montreal, and I gotta belive those key injuries have a huge role in what has transpired so far. And again, Briere is too silent. Plus I was shocked that at the end of the period the Flyers had all but 8 SHOTS ON GOAL?! Not going to win many hockey games with that total obviously...

Nope. You need to do better than that. Hopefully, if and when the Pens play the Wings, the Pens can continue their smart defensive play.

or not!

Penalties were and were not an issue last night. There were only six penalties called -- three on each team. Four of the six were hooking penalties and none of those four were legit. But they were all called in the first period and entirely disrupted the flow of the game -- what flow there was. (Once the Penguins took the lead they went into a very effective trap.) And as usual, the officiating was inconsistent -- only one penalty called in the last two periods. They have to call a game the same way for both teams for the ENTIRE game.

I don't know if NBC considers it good news, but they'll televise at least one game this weekend as Dallas wins and stays alive. Of course, it might have been different if the first goal of the game went to Detroit, as it should have, but the officials decided (wrongly) that there was interference on the goaltender from inside the crease. A terrible, terrible call, and had Detroit taken the lead at that point after being outworked by Dallas, it might have really caused a Dallas letdown.

Give credit to the Stars, though. I hope the Flyers have as much fight in them tomorrow night.

I rarely comment on the officiating but they really stunk,last night.

Agree that that should not been a gaol, but on the bright side I get at least 1 hockey game for the weekend, do I hear two hockey games????????