Today Vancouver hockey fans were still buzzing about Roberto Luongo's record 72 save performance in Wednesday night's game. It reminded me of a game nearly thirteen years ago. It was game one of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals. The Canucks were in New York to face the Rangers. Kirk McLean had magnificiently backstopped his team through three rounds of playoff hockey including a save in the seventh game in overtime versus the Flames that people still talk about today.
I was fortunate enough to watch that game on TV, then again, most of BC was doing the same. McLean was simply brilliant all night, stopping wave after wave of Ranger forwards. It probably should have been a blowout but McLean kept the Canucks in it until Adams scored in overtime.
In my opinion, that first game in Manhattan still remains the greatest display of Canuck goaltending in the history of the team. The short video above shows some highlights of that night. Stay until the end where you see Adams one-time the puck past Richter. My heart had never felt so much joy.
The Canucks defeated the Stars tonight in the fourth OT period, with the game ending around 12:30am local time. Six hours after it started, it was all over. For people who attended the pre-game ceremony it was probably a seven hour affair.
Vancouver game up three one-goal leads and a single two-goal lead. They were thoroughly outplayed in the third period. They gave up 40-something shots by the end of regulation. If you examine the stats, they really had no business winning this game. The reality is they got lucky tonight. If they don't make some adjustments for tomorrow, I guarantee you the next game won't go into OT.
There are going to be some tired people out there tomorrow and I don't mean the players.
As much as I was hesistant, I have a Facebook account. This thing looked like a MySpace clone from a mile away, so I was ready to lump it into the same trash pile as Xanga and all these other social networking sites.
I've been on Friendster for years but very few others that I knew were on it. It just didn't reach critical mass. On the other hand, I've been amazed by Facebook. People who I never thought would join a social networking site are on it... lots of people. Why is Facebook taking off while sites like Friendster didn't? The answer is unclear to me.
Actually, there are some things about Facebook that I'll cautiously say are nice features. First, Facebook prevents you from taking your profile page and turning it into a UI disaster. There's no embedded audio of some stupid song. There's no changing the colour of the background so that your text is illegible. Compared to MySpace, it's night and day comparing the two interfaces.
I haven't bought into the whole Facebook thing yet but look me up if you've got an account. Feel free to poke me or add me as a friend.
Throughout this hockey season I've been nearly silent about the local professional hockey team, the Canucks of Vancouver. To be honest, at the beginning of October, I believed the Canucks would fall short of making the playoffs. I wasn't alone it seems since a local poll run by one of the newspapers showed a majority of respondents thought they wouldn't make it either.
Fast forward to several months later and it turns out I was wrong. The team won their division based on the heroics of their new goaltender, Bobby Lou himself, Roberto Luongo. Yes, there many other players with a great showing but if you averaged it out, Luongo was the difference this season.
On Wednesday, the playoffs begin with the Canucks hosting Dallas. On paper, Vancouver is the third seed while Dallas is the sixth. In reality, the Stars finished the season with two more points (and one more win) than Vancouver and their year was just as good, if not better. Dallas played in the super competitive Pacific Division, while the Canucks were able to capitalize on a bad year for Edmonton and Colorado.
To say the Canucks have an advantage would be folly. Indeed, I am going on record here to state that Dallas will win the series in six games. The Stars are a powerful team and the Canucks will undoubtedly try to go to the well one too many times. Bobby Lou is only human and he can't rescue an entire team all the time.
I'm fascinated by new stories such as this one. A California care centre for seniors is being sued for negligence. The suit claims that the centre allowed a rat to enter the mouth of a 90 year-old senior, whereupon the rat died.
Apparently, this centre has been in trouble in the recent past as well. Just last year, a senior with dementia wandered away from the facility and was never found.
