20140423

Flawless victory

I hadn't watched any of the first three games, but I caught the end of the Habs series-winning victory over the Lightning, last night.  I saw highlights of the Lightning pulling within a goal when I had the Red Wings/Bruins game on.  I flipped over a couple minutes later to find that the Lightning had tied it up at three.

There was a lot of back-and-forth in there for a while.  The Lightning threatened  several times on build-up, but the Habs had a great breakaway chance (bad pinch by the defenseman during a line change made it a clean breakaway).  But both goalies looked very good, in keeping it tied.

All this time, I thought there were a number of uncalled penalties, on both sides.  And here's where we get to my biggest problem with not calling a tight game.  When the Lightning (Paquette) were called for tripping with two minutes and change left... Well, it was a clear tripping situation, but because they'd been letting so many calls go (including Paquette getting boarded pretty badly only a few seconds prior), it felt like a favoritism call.  (To be clear, I'm not saying it was; I really doubt that it was.  But, as someone with no dog in the race, it felt like it.)

That pretty quickly led to a fluky Montreal goal by Pacioretty, although I missed the goal itself, as I was watching the defenseman who appeared hurt trying to block the initial shot (maybe he was just upset the shot got past him).

Congrats to Montreal, though, for being the first team to move on to the second round (and for their first playoff sweep since the last time they won the Cup in '93).  Boston looked comfortably in control last night to moving on to face the Habs.  That would be a great series, although I'd love to see Detroit push Boston to seven, preferably with several overtime games.

We'll see.

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