The O.C. versus the 313
Pop culture references y’all!! All kidding aside, the seeding worked out in the Western Conference as the finals will feature a matchup of the #1 seed and the #2 seed. My belief is that is generally a sign of strength within the conference. Even in the Eastern Conference, where the top seeded Sabres are facing the #4 seed, the Sens finished one loss behind New Jersey to tie for the #2 seed. That’s a far cry from the past two playoff years when lower seeds that barely eeked into the playoffs ended up coming within one win of claiming the Stanley Cup.
The Ducks arrived at the Conference Finals by dispatching two very similar teams that put heavy emphasis on playing defensive hockey. Those teams struggled to score goals against a very solid Anaheim defense that has been led by Chris Pronger, Scott Neidermayer and Jean-Sebastian Giguere. So that will be one of the big questions for Detroit: will the Red Wings be able to score enough goals in this series?
The Red Wings have taken a similar approach, playing team defense in order to ground two opponents who finished the regular season in the top ten in goals for. The approach worked as Detroit ranks just barely ahead of the Ducks in goals against average in the playoffs. The Red Wings allow 1.58 goals per game while Anaheim allows 1.70. So you can expect this to be a low-scoring series. The other big question for Red Wings fans is can the team do a better job containing the Ducks on offense than Minnesota and Vancouver did in the first two rounds?
This matchup doesn’t cause the same amount of anxiety for Detroit fans as the prospect of playing San Jose did. That isn’t a knock on the Ducks; it’s simply because the Sharks completely undressed the Red Wings early in the season when the two teams played all of their matchups. With the Red Wings having prevailed in that series the team seems to have gained a lot of confidence and there is reason to believe the Red Wings have improved quite a bit since late January. Detroit lost badly to Nashville on November 25 but then went on to sweep the Preds over 4 games in March.
Each team features excellent goaltending and top-shelf blueliners. That’s a big part of why I expect this to be a low-scoring series. Both Jean Sebastian Giguere and Dominik Hasek rank in the top 3 in goals against average in the playoffs. Sammy Pahlson, Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer are every bit as good as Nick Lidstrom, Chris Chelios and Danny Markov. Detroit’s depth on the blueline took a very significant hit when Mathieu Schneider broke his wrist, but I still think the matchup amongst the top 2 defensive pairings are going to be very even.
Nick Lidstrom is only +3 at this point in the playoffs, but look at the offensive threats he has faced: Jarome Iginla who finished the regular season #11 in the NHL in goals scored, along with Kristian Huselius and Daymond Langkow who finished in the top 30 in goals scored; Jonathan Cheecho who finished #15 in goals scored, along with Bill Guerin who finished #20 (but had a rough playoffs), in addition to Joe Thornton, who finished #2 to some kid named Sidney Crosby in the points race. That’s top end offensive talent and Detroit gave up an average of just under 1.60 goals per game in those series. Lidstrom had a big hand in that performance.
So I’d argue the defensive matchups are pretty even. I’d probably give the edge to Detroit if Schneider was healthy, but he’s not and Detroit is going to have to rely on their top 4 eating lots of minutes in this series. So the key thing to watch is whether they get worn down over the course of the series. If they do not Detroit has a good shot at holding the Ducks below a 2.00 goals per game average. If that happens their chances of winning the series obviously improve considerably.
Special teams probably favor Anaheim, as they converted 19% of their opportunities with the man advantage into goals against Detroit this year, while the Wings only converted 13% of their power plays into goals against the Ducks. But one thing to keep in mind is that both Calgary and San Jose were dominant on the power play during the regular season against Detroit but had much less success in the playoffs. Detroit and Anaheim each scored 3 even-strength goals total in their head-to-head matchups.
The teams are just about even in power play percentages during the playoffs but the Ducks have the better penalty kill stats. That could be due to playing a Vancouver team that struggled in both rounds on the power play, but the Ducks did shut down a very good Minnesota power play so I’d give them the edge on the specialty teams.
The area where I think Detroit is going to have to be better in order to win the series is going to be amongst the forwards. Detroit’s top line of Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom was the hottest line in the NHL earlier this year before Zetteberg sat out the last 19 games of the regular season due to an injury. The top line has started to show some signs they are rounding into form: Datsyuk is the leading goal scorer in the Western Conference and the line erupted for 3 goals and 5 assists when Tomas Holmstrom re-joined the lineup on May 5.
In the previous two rounds I took a look at each team’s performance since March 1. I think it gives you a long enough viewpoint to get an idea of how a team is really playing without going too far back in time. Since both teams rank in the top ten in goals for and goals against during the regular season I think it makes sense to look at how each team has done against opponents who also rank in the top ten in both categories.
Anaheim Ducks
Mar 2: San Jose, 3-1 win
Mar 4: Nashville, 3-2 win
Mar 26: Detroit, 0-1 loss
April 4: San Jose, 2-3 OTL
record: 2-1-1
goals for: 2.00
goals against: 1.75
Detroit Red Wings
Mar 6: Nashville, 4-3 win
Mar 13: Nashville, 5-2 win
Mar 14: Nashville, 4-2 win
Mar 26: Anaheim, 1-0 win
Mar 29: Nashville, 2-1 win
April 26: San Jose, 0-2 loss
April 28: San Jose, 3-2 win
April 30: San Jose, 1-2 loss
May 2: San Jose, 3-2 win
May 5: San Jose, 4-1 win
May 7: San Jose, 2-0 win
record: 9-2
goals for: 2.63
goals against: 1.54
Detroit and Anaheim scored nearly the same number of even-strength goals during the regular season, with Detroit holding a slight 6 goal advantage. But Detroit also gave up 24 fewer even-strength goals over the course of the season. With that being said, the Red Wings’ depth on defense has taken a big hit, so their blue line runs the risk of wearing down over the course of this series. But I think Detroit’s forwards, who chip in on defense as well as having better scoring depth than either Minnesota or Vancouver, will be the difference that will turn this series in Detroit’s favor. I think the Red Wings will win this series in 7 games.
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[…] Ansar Khan of MLIVE believes we’ll see a low scoring series. I agreed in my preview for the series. Khan also includes a quote from Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle on Detroit’s ability to withstand the forecheck. “They have played against two strong forechecking clubs in Calgary and San Jose and they’ve weathered the storm,’’ Carlyle said. “In a lot of ways, people have probably looked at them and said, `They weren’t going to do this, they weren’t going to do that,’ but they’ve done it. They have earned their opportunity to be here. They haven’t done it with smoke and mirrors.” […]
[…] Giguere goes fishing while Detroit celebrates Photo: Jeff Gross - Getty Images I’m sure the Anaheim faithful will have an explanation for why they should be up 3 games to none in the Western Conference Finals. The refrain that was heard after the first two games was that the Ducks should have been up 2 games to none heading to their arena. The Wings made a reasonably good case to have won Game 3 fair and square when Dominik Hasek shut out Anaheim en route to a 5-0 Detroit win. The ledger reads that Detroit is up two games to one in the best of seven series. Tomas Holmstrom sparked the Wings by scoring two goals and registering a helper. He was so effective that he drew a 5:00 penalty on Rob Niedermayer when he went headhunting to try and knock Holmstrom out of the game after he scored his second goal. Niedermayer was assesed a game misconduct and was removed for the remainder of the contest. Homer missed the extended power play while he was getting stitched up but he returned to notch his assist on Valtteri Filppula’s goal at the 10:58 mark of the third period to close out the scoring. Wings coach Mike Babcock said the team needed to do a better job playing at even-strength. He juggled his lines and the end result was highly effective: Detroit scored four goals while playing with five skaters a side. The other goal came on the power play during the second period when Anaheim completely lost composure and took five penalties. It’s one of the risks of their gameplan to push the envelope in terms of physical play. It looked like Babcock double-shifted his best forwards. Here are some of the lines I noticed during the game: Pavel Datsyuk - Henrik Zetterberg - Tomas Holmstrom Johan Franzen - Henrik Zetterberg - Mikael Samuelsson Valtteri Filppula - Pavel Datsyuk - Tomas Holmstrom As I mentioned in my preview of the series, Detroit has the advantage at forward. By playing Datsyuk and Zetterberg on two lines it makes it more difficult for Sammy Pahlson to match up against them. It worked: Datsyuk went +2 and had an assist; Zetterberg notched two assists and went +1. Scott Niedermayer had a rough game after scoring the game-winner in the game on Sunday night. He went -3 and didn’t register a shot on goal. With the game in hand by early in the second period, Nick Lidstrom skated just under 30:00. Chris Chelios was Detroit’s only other defensemen to register more than 20 minutes of ice time as he was on the ice for 23:00. So their rearguards should be in good shape going forward in this series. Jean Sebastien Giguere was removed from the contest after Detroit scored their third goal at the 3:17 mark of the second period. That goal came when Dan Cleary’s centering pass hit Todd Bertuzzi’s stick before it bounced off his leg and went into the net. Bert was credited with the goal. Johan Franzen scored the first goal at the 11:09 mark of the first period off a nice pass from Mikael Samuelsson. Tomas Holmstrom scored the second goal at the 19:17 mark of the opening period when he wristed a shot from near the right faceoff circle that beat Giguere on his blocker side. Tomas Kopecky had a mixed game in his first action since early in the season. He took two penalties but was physical, despite not being credited with a hit in the game. He skated a team low 7:05 amongst the forwards. Detroit has reclaimed home ice with the win and will have a chance to put themselves in the driver’s seat if they can pull out a win in Game 4 on Thursday night. Anaheim Ducks Dominik Hasek Johan Franzen NHL Playoffs Red Wings Todd Bertuzzi Tomas Holmstrom Valtteri Filppula […]