The Hockey anaylsis that will make your head explode

Hi, my name is Steve Acarino, Ed bought me on board to write about hockey and all its joys for KIRS overtime because:

1. Ed needed to find someone interested in hockey and I am a hockey fan

2. I would have probably blackmailed Ed or resorted extortion (the X makes the word sound badass)anyway

3. Not many people at Old Westbury are interested in hockey 

  Now first I will give all you readers out there a runaround of what hockey is. You might have heard the word hockey before but not have recieved any details of how it is played. You also might have thought hockey was a type of pie, board game or slang for venareal disease but it is actually a sport typically but not always played on ice between teams of 6 players based around scoring goals (remember goals, those desires and aspirations you used to have?). Hockey has a considerable fanbase throughout much of North America, central and Eastern Europe.  Okay, we got that out of the way, you might remember hockey from your youth through the oscar winning films of “The Mighty Ducks” series, where a group of ragtag youth hockey players are taken under the wing of Gordon Bombay played by Emilio Estavez become winners of their league champoinship, then in the end Charlie Sheen helps the Clevland Indians win the world series and sends Micheal Douglas to jail fortrading inside information on Wall Street…. sorry I got Emilio Estavez’s movies mixed up with Charlie Sheen movies since they are brothers.

 Wait a minute, this is an article about hockey so now to that. Righ now the NHL playoffs are in full swing with only 4 teams left in the conference championship round.  The Pittsuburgh Penguins and the Philidelphia Flyers are currently playing to represent the Eastern conference in the stanley cup.  The Penguins lead by Sidney Crosby, the NHL’s most markleted player and just as lethal Evgeni Malkin have a 2-0 lead over Philly.  The Penguins have been on fire in the playoffs and are 10-1 so far in their cup run.  While most of the attention goes towards Crosby and Malkin, the Pens are an incredibly deep team with the likes of Ryan Malone, Jordan Staal (brother of Rangers Marc Staal and Hurricanes Erik Staal), trade dedline aquisition Marian Hossa; vets Sergei Gonchar and  Gary Roberts. The Flayers made in to the conference with and improved offense and at times physical style of play lead by their biggest offseason additions Daniel Briere, Kimmo Timonen and Scott Hartnell and young scorers like Mike Richards and Jeff Carter. So far the Pens have manager to go up 2-0 at home but the Flyers will definetly have an advantage in games 3 and 4 in Philly where almost all the fans plan to dress in orange (this practices is common in some hockey cities in calgary red is worn during playoff games and some teams plan “whieouts with all fans wearing white).  The Flyers may not have the services of defensemen Brayden Coburn but they will certainly make this a close saeries in my opinion but in the end the Penguins should be able to overwhelm the the Flyers in 5-6 games.  

  In the West the Detriot Red Wings are surging through the playoffs and are up 2-0 against the Dallas Stars.  This Detriot team is not one that has burned out in the playoffs after a terrifc regular season like they have the past seasons after they one the cup in 2002.  This is a relativley new but somewhat old package in the past five years Sergei Fedorov, Shannahan and Steve Yzerman have left  as Niklas Lindtrom now is the Wings captain.  The team has been lead on offense by Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk. However, some relativly newer faces like Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula and Nick Kronwall. In terms of goaltending the Dallas Stars are lead by Marty Turco one of the games best goalies, this howwever is the first postseason that Turco has managed to help push Dallas deep into while Detriot is lead by tested veterans Chris Osgood and Domminik Hasek. The wings have outplayed the stars the first two games and I am conviced we will se them in the cup most likley and hopefully against the Penguins as this would bring a lot of energy and pull to the NHL if the bet team faces the team with the two of NHL’s brightest starts that are Crosby and Malkin.

We’ll that wraps up my hockey review, I will hopefully be able to write another article soon, I hope I’ve shead some light on the dark cold bathroom floor that is your interest in hockey.