weird night in playoffs

Ended up flipping back and forth between the hockey and basketball games the other night. Had expected to only do so for a while, but ended up watching until LeBron's last-second shot won it for the Cavs.

It was a weird night, though. When I turned the TV on, I think the Cavs were ahead 24-18. It took me a couple of minutes to find the hockey game (I forgot where Versus was on the HD tuner); when I did so, Chicago had just scored to extend their lead to 3-0. Seeing that that one was pretty well in hand, I flipped back to the basketball game quicker than expected.

Pretty soon, Cleveland was up 43-20 and Chicago was still leading 3-0. Seeing that both games were blow-outs, I almost stopped watching entirely. I'm glad I didn't, though, as Detroit stormed back to tie the game around the end of the second period (one of the goals was pretty amazing, too, as it appeared that the puck was deflected twice by the same player, once on the shaft and once on the blade of his stick).

Meanwhile, Orlando had been chipping away at the Cavs lead for a while, having chipped it all the way down to twelve by halftime, although Cleveland remained ahead by quite a bit.

Starting the third period, Chicago surprised me by inserting Huet in goal. This turned out to be a good choice, as he yielded no goals. But it got me to thinking; Huet spent the end of last season with the Caps, and did a great job for them. I knew he had signed elsewhere in the offseason, but hadn't realized that he'd done so to be the backup. So Chicago was willing to pay him more to be a backup than the Caps were to be their primary, apparently. I hope that the reason for that was because the Caps were expecting Varlamov (or Neuwirth) to be ready too soon to pay that much, although the amount Theodore is getting paid certainly calls that into question.

Anyway, getting back to the games, the third period of the hockey game was tense, with no scoring at all. And through the third and fourth quarters, the Magic kept chipping away, finally tying the game with a minute or two left. The game was back and forth the rest of the way, though still with Cleveland in the lead until the last minute. I believe the Magic got their second lead from Turkoglu with a second left, setting up LeBron's shot.

Meanwhile, in overtime, Detroit had continued to pressure, but Chicago was the one to score the winning goal after a shot on a rush had rebounded directly to a Blackhawk on the opposite side of the net. Sharp buried it in the mostly-empty net immediately, and Chicago was rejoicing.

Cleveland saw similar reason for celebration after LeBron buried the three-pointer to send their series to Orlando with a tie, although Orlando certainly had no reason to hang their heads after forcing the game to that situation.

All in all, and interesting night. :)