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We’ve still got about two months of Stanley Cup Playoffs to go before a champion is named, but when it’s all over, if you could stack all the games end-to-end, they might not add up to the scintillating show that Monday night’s Game 3 of the Minnesota Wild-Colorado Avalanche series singularly achieved.
The best thing about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that every series takes on its own personality, and the longer each goes, the more tunnel-visioned focus each has for its combatants. But sometimes, one game stands out and maintains that stature for the entire playoff season. That Wild-Avalanche Game 3 was in that category.
You must have seen it. The Wild beat the Avalanche 1-0 on a magnificent goal by rookie Mikael Granlund five minutes into sudden-death overtime. The game had a little bit of everything. No, make that a LOT of everything.
It started out with the Wild playing at home in Xcel Center trailing two games to none in their best-of-seven. A loss in that Monday night game would have plunged the Wild and their eager followers into the depths of a 3-0 hole, and it would have given an open season to the ill-informed media types in the Twin Cities who seem to be in a constant rotation between praising the Wild for winning and suggesting that coach Mike Yeo must go every time they lose.  These are columnist and radio guys who seem to recognize a good job by a baseball, football or basketball manager/coach, but who find hockey so alien they wouldn’t recognize a good coaching job unless somebody tells them it happened.
 Just as they were clamoring for Yeo’s head, again, Yeo pulled off a masterful series of manipulations. He inserted Darcy Kuemper in goal even thought he had never started a playoff game, but Ilya Bryzgalov had suddenly developed a slow-glove syndrome, and Kuemper stepped forward to make 22 saves and record a shutout.
He juggled forward lines, installing Justin Fontaine and Dany Heatley, and realigning his lines to alter checking assignments and free up some dynamic offense. The Wild responded by outshooting the Avs 46-22. He sometimes double-shifted Granlund, a stocky, tough little Finn, at times but mainly had him center Zach Parise and Jason Pominville on the top line. In the overtime, Granlund fought to get to the front of the net, chased down the puck in the right corner when he was barricaded from the crease, but then he pivoted away from a Colorado defenseman and darted for the slot, eluding a couple Avs and the glove-hand reach of Erik Johnson to get the puck and himself beyond the reach of goaltender Semyon Varlamov. The only way Granlund got himself past Valamov was to dive after the puck, and he swept it into the open net at 5:08 of overtime to send the huge crowd into ecstacy.
Yes, Game 4 (Thursday night) awaited both teams, and yes, that now became the pivotal “biggest game” of the series. But that 1-0 victory, before 19,221 fans (capacity 17,954), will live forever in the minds of those who watched it.
There was another facet of that game, and it was a play that met with considerable scorn from observers who will never consider Matt Cooke as anything but a villain. Cooke, a tough, unyielding performer, has played a key role for the sometimes mild Wild all season. He willingly has subverted his own play into a tight role as a checking-line winger, an unselfish, anything-for-the-team player who shows up every night, home and road.
Cooke was playing very well, joining Granlund and ex-Gopher Erik Haula and Kuemper as the top Wild men of the game. He had delivered six solid hits, and finished every check available. At the start of the third period, Cooke skated up toward the blue line as Colorado defenseman Tyson Barrie skated the puck up ice. The space between the two dissipated, and Cooke had Barrie lined up for a solid check, but Barrie, at the last instant, chose to leap to his right to avoid the collision. That happens, and when it does, the checker tries to widen himself to contain the checkee. As Cooke leaned and Barrie leaped, Cooke’s left knee collided with Barrie’s left knee, sending the Av defenseman spinning to the ice.
Cooke whirled around with his hand outstretched, as though he knew what the knee-jerk call would be, and wanted to plead his innocence immediately. The refs gave him a minor penalty for kneeing. Now, to me, kneeing is when two guys are grappling for position and one gives a kicking motion with his knee to nail his foe, usually in the thigh. But in the current climate of the NHL, knee-to-knee hits are always called as a penalty. In Tuesday night’s Detroit-Boston game, it was called tripping, but in Cooke’s case it was called kneeing.
Personally, I despise cheap hits, and I hate to see injuries occur in hockey. But at full speed, I saw the Cooke-Barrie hit as incidental contact - a hockey collision where the damage done to Barrie was mainly because he almost but not quite successful in dodging the impact, but his limp, trailing leg took the brunt of it. Commentators jumped at the chance to barbecue Cooke, because he has a reputation of being a bad guy.
One, Hall of Famer Mike Milbury, went to the extent of showing the very similar hit in the Detroit game and Cooke’s hit. They were virtually identical; in both cases the perpetrator didn’t stick his knee out, but Milbury claimed that in the Detroit game the player didn’t stick his knee out, but in the Wild case, he said that Cooke flagrantly stuck his knee out as far as he could to hit Barrie’s knee. He repeated that, even as the video indicated the two were equally free of malicious intent.
It took my wife, Joan, who once played hockey, to set the record straight. She said, “Don’t any of these people realize how difficult it would be for two hockey players to be skating at each other, and one to decide he would purposely hit the other knee-to-knee?”
Well said. My thought is that it is a perfect example of how video replay can be so effective to show us what happened, but also totally misleading in some cases. At full speed, there was no throwing out a knee by Cooke. At slow motion, there was the hint of Cooke leaning to his left to try to contain his foe. But at extra slow motion, you could make that slight lean appear to last for 5 seconds, and make the hit look far more flagrant than it was.
These playoffs are perhaps the best balanced ever in the NHL. Montreal swept Tampa Bay, but had to get a controversial disallowed goal against the Lightning in order to avoid being 1-1 after two games. Otherwise, the action and intensity are incredible. Pittsburgh got a break or two in order to go up against Nashville; Anaheim is flexing its considerable skill against Dallas in another great match-up; and Detroit is stretched awfully thin against an excellent Boston outfit; the Rangers are getting a new dose of ignition from Martin St. Louis against the Flyers - interesting to see St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier, two players who were Tampa Bay stars a year ago, playing against each other now.
That leaves two fantastic match-ups, with defending Cup champion Chicago finding the St. Louis Blues more than just a tough foe. The Blues, taking heart from captain David Backes being knocked out of action by Chicago’s Brent Seabrook, could eliminate the Blackhawks and make themselves Cup favorites in the first round.
But the most impressive team in the playoffs so far is the San Jose Sharks. Led by a pair of Joes - Thornton and Pavelski - the Sharks are making the most of an all-West Coast pairing against the Los Angeles Kings by rolling up amazing goal counts. The Sharks won 6-3 in Game 1, sending ace goaltender Jonathan Quick to an early shower. Then the Sharks fell behind 2-0 in Game 2 before rallying for a shocking 7-2 victory, with seven different Sharks scoring goals. The series shifted to Los Angeles for Games 3 and 4, but as one of the league’s premier goaltender-defense stalwarts, the Kings will be hard-pressed to subdue a Sharks outfit that racked up 13 goals in the first two games. In Game 3, former Wild prospect Brent Burns scored the first goal for San Jose, and former Wild star Marian Gaborik later scored to put the Kings up 2-1. Last I saw, it was 2-2...