Winning on the Road In The Stanley Cup Playoffs - Could it be sweeter?
If you can't win on the road in the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, you may as well hang up your skates and dust off your golf clubs.
Road wins matter almost as much as good goaltending in the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. In just the first round alone, road teams won 28 out of 42 games or two-thirds of all games played. The Montreal Canadiens, the #8 seed in the East, took 3 out of 4 road games against the #1 seed Washington Capitals, so it really comes as no surprise that #1 is on vacation and #8 is tied in the Eastern Conference semi-finals against the #4 Pittsburgh Penguins, having already snatched one on the road.
In the Western Conference the #5 Detroit Redwings grabbed 3 out of 4 on the road against the #4 Phoenix Coyotes, which led to a 4-3 series win for the Redwings and a shot at the #1 San Jose Shark, who also took some key roadies against the #8 Colorado Avalanche.
Defense is the key to any championship in the NHL, and that's exactly how the best teams win on the road. The San Jose Sharks took 2 out of 3 on the road against the Avs, which can be traced directly to the play of Shark's keeper, Evgeni Nabokov, who has allowed less than 2 goals per game, pitched a shutout, and has a save percentage of nearly 92%.
In the NHL it's all about winning on the road and shutting down your opponents where they're most comfortable: their home ice. When this year's Cup is decided in June, I won't be the least bit surprised if I discover that the team that won it all also won the most road games and had the most productive defense in the entire league.
I'm going to spend the next couple of days watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Versus (available with some DIRECTV packages), where I get the most hockey year 'round. Ahem, thank you DIRECTV. I'll be back on Wednesday when I'll breakdown the power of the Power Play and which teams play best Short Handed.
