Canes Go Up 1-0 Against Oilers

Hopefully you watched Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals last night between the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes. I did, and honestly it was one of the best hockey games I have ever seen. Not from a [http://www.nhl.com/cupcrazy/2004/index.html “my team won!!!”] mentality (after all, as a Bolts fan and someone who generally roots for Candian teams, I’m not really for Carolina winning) but from a completeness to the game standpoint, it had everything. One team dominating for 2 periods of play… a miracle comeback by the other team… only to have the game tied back up and look like it was going to OT… we had one-timer goals… break-away goals…power-play goals… a short-handed goal(!)… that crazy turn-over goal… a goalie injury/substituion… bunches of hits and a healthy dose of miracle saves; how many times did we see Ward diving back across the crease to glove someone’s shot on a wide open net? The only thing that is unfortunate is that with [http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs2006/news/story?id=2472159 Roloson out] I’m not sure the rest of the series can live up to game 1. (BTW… if you get a chance to watch a re-broadcast of that game do it). One other note… about the crazy turn over goal. Several times earlier in the period I noted that there were times that the puck came back but that Conklin stayed in net and just let his team-mates handle it… and that was the right move. When you come in completly cold at the end of a game, you main job is to stay in net… more so because you don’t want to get caught outside of the crease, but partially also because you don’t want to misplay the puck and have a disaster, which is exactly what happened! In those situations you just aren’t ready to be doing anything… you need to hunker down and make it through the period… so you can get some warm up time at intermission. Turns out to be a costly lesson for Conklin… it will be interesting to see if he falls apart or uses as motivation to stonewall the ‘Canes. (I’m betting on falling apart, but hopeing for stonewalling)