ECQF - Game 3

First off, thanks to Stormbringer for this great link - it's a Gatorade commercial featuring Sidney Crosby. Is it just me, or do Canadians make better TV commercials? One of my favorite commercials of all time is a Nike Hockey commercial aired during the NHL playoffs a couple of years back. She has a link to that too - good girl. For you non-hockey fans out there, those players would be Marcus Naslund of the Vancouver Canucks (in the blue) and Ilya Kovalchuk of the Atlanta Thrashers (in white). Here is the second part of it (a continuation, although it's a much shorter spot).

OK, on to the game. The Canes won! Hurray. Of course, they didn't play like they were a team desperate to win, down two games to none. I spent the entire game cursing at my television and every player on the ice for their seeming lack of effort and inability to complete a tape to tape pass or win a faceoff.

It was like we had grease on our sticks and the Montreal players has sticky tape. It was very frustrating. I'm not a drinker, but you could make a viable drinking game from watching - every time the Canes make two tape-to-tape passes (controlled, mind you - not if the puck floats off the stick) - you drink. I guarantee you would have been safe to drive home by the end of the night.

The only player who really looked like he showed up to play was Cam Ward. Of course, it always helps if your goaltender is far and away the best player on the ice. He is the reason we won. We were very lucky it wasn't 5-0 at the end of regulation.

There was a scary moment when Habs' captain Saku Koivu took an inadvertent stick to the eye from 'Canes winger Justin Williams. If it's as bad as I'm guessing it is, he's done for the playoffs.

El Capitan again came up big with a Herculean effort to tie the game, basically outhustling two Canadiens players to a loose puck and squeezing it through the pads of Christobal Huet. Still, we were lucky to come out of this with a win. Staal scored in overtime on a 5 on 4 power play that was, in truth, more of a 5 on 3 since one of the Canadiens defenseman broke his stick (it was replaced by a forward during the kill). A win is a win.

Elizabeth was watching with me and commented how dejected the fans looked, just like we were in the Game 2 OT loss. She felt bad for them. I mulled her words over for a second before replying "No.. no, fuck them up the goat ass." I was still angry about how we played earlier and the attitudes of most Canadiens fans (there are exceptions, of course). I have never cared for the Canadiens as a franchise and I would like nothing more than for them to suffer ignoble defeat to the Canes.

Game 4 is huge for both teams, obviously. If the Canes win, they regain complete momentum and home ice. It becomes a best of three series with two of the games in Raleigh. Montreal does not want to head back to Raleigh having lost two straight either. Game 4 is Thursday at the Bell Center in Montreal. I'll be at home watching. It's a good thing we won last night for that reason too - I vowed not to watch game 4 if we lost game 3.