Last night, the 7-seed Washington Capitals defeated the defending Stanley Cup champions and 2-seed Boston Bruins to advance in the NHL Playoffs, and plenty of Boston fans were none too pleased. Sadly, instead of simply enjoying a great upset in an exciting series, most of us are enjoying a huge buffet of WTF today.

After Caps RW Joel Ward scored the game-winning goal, Bruins fans took their frustrations to Twitter, and the personal attacks on Ward got out of control quickly. Sadly, the attacks weren’t based on the fact that Ward only scored 6 goals this season and had no business being the hero. Nope, it was because he’s black. And in case you didn’t know, Twitter can be quite the haven for racism.

Thousands of Tweets were posted within minutes, calling Ward the worst word of them all, and they basically all looked like this (NSFW for language)…

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After a high flying game one that severely deviated from both teams’ style of play, game two of the Stanley Cup playoffs reverted back to the hard nosed brand of hockey everyone was expecting.

Early story lines revolved around the controversial decision by Flyers coach Peter Laviolette to bench prized rookie James van Riemsdyk in favor of the, well, angrier Danny Carcillo. A healthy scratch for the last three games, Carcillo was activated so he could do what he does best, which is run into stuff at high velocities. And boy did ever. Alas, his most notable victim wasn’t a Blackhawk playmaker but teammate Jeff Carter.

As a botched head hunting expedition midway throught the first period intended for Tomas Kopecky went awry, Carcillo plowed full bore into a helpless Carter for a bone crushing gore of the worst variety. Unfortunately for the Flyers, Carcillo decided that if he couldn’t put down a Blackhawk on the ice as he intended, he might as well pull out his bag of wits and engage in some old fashioned verbal bench to bench sparring with Blackhawk Adam Burish. After Burish cracked that the incident was Carcillo’s “First big hit of the year,” NBC cameras caught Carcillo shooting back a garbled stream of brainless f-bombs that had Flyers fans shaking their heads in disgust. Read the rest of this entry »

The Stanley Cup Final will deliver a marquee matchup for the third straight year. After the Philadelphia Flyers managed to dispatch that pesky Montreal squad in five games, they’ll face the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 1 starting on Saturday. Whoa…Saturday? They’re gonna take four days off? What kind of hotel is this?

Anyway, if you’re not a fan of hockey, here are a couple storylines that everyone is following: Flyers captain Mike Richards actually picked up the Wales conference championship trophy, which traditionally has been a no-no, but they’re from Philly. They specialize in unruliness. And then there’s Patrick Kane leading the Blackhawks; he and teammate Jonathan Toews are third and first in playoff points scored, respectively. You might remember Kane as the guy that punched out that cab driver last year. That was fun. I mean…not for the cabbie, obviously.

The Montreal Canadiens snuck into the Stanley Cup Playoffs as an 8-seed in the East, edging out the New York Rangers by a single point in the standings. They pulled off a sizable upset in the first round as they knocked out the 1-seed Washington Capitals in seven games. They drew the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round and managed to force that series to a seventh game as well. The Canadiens won again, 5-2.

“They did a lot of good things that good teams need to do to win,” Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby said. “Unfortunately for us, we didn’t do that.”

Pittsburgh did little right on Wednesday night — and the Canadiens played perhaps their best game of the playoffs.

Montreal took a 4-0 lead in the game’s first 26 minutes, chasing goalie Marc-Andre Fleury by scoring on four of just 13 shots. After that, the visiting team did what it has all series, limiting Pittsburgh’s high-powered offense with a suffocating plan in the defensive zone and relying on the brilliance of goalie Jaroslav Halak. –NHL.com

Oh, and we had some riots–in Montreal (did we mention this game was in Pittsburgh?) Read the rest of this entry »

Never had a No. 1 seed blown a 3-1 series advantage in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs before last night, when the Washington Capitals lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1. The Caps had three chances–two of which came at home–to put Montreal away. They could not.

Alexander Ovechkin had a goal disallowed on a ticky-tack call and Mike Green probably played as bad a game as anyone in the playoffs last night, giving up a bad penalty which led to one goal and giving up on a puck that was promptly buried behind the net for another. But Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak stood on his head for most of the game, recovering nicely from his debacle in Game 3.

I would feel bad for the Capitals’ diehard fans…if they had any. By now the red and blue has been tossed in the drawer in exchange for Redskins’ burgundy. Although, having spent some time in the area, it was fun to just see Caps jerseys everywhere on a given day and know that there was a game that night. But that’s all over for now. Now we’ll have to hear about how Donovan McNabb is…at least until the start of the Redskins’ season proves otherwise.

The San Jose Sharks couldn’t score a goal in regulation time during their playoff game against the Colorado Avalanche, but they would up scoring the game winner in OT. On themselves. Sharks defenseman Dan Boyle tried to flip the puck behind his own net when it actually went in his own net. Slipping one past the goalie, if you will.

“We didn’t beat their goalie,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. “We found a way to beat ours.”

Avalanche coach Joe Sacco said it was as strange an ending as he’s ever experienced.

“It’s certainly right up there, there’s no question,” he said. “I’d like to think I’ve seen my fair share of hockey, but once in a while you see something like that. We’ll obviously take it.

“I saw our guy chip the puck behind their ‘D,’ which is something we were preaching all night. Obviously it was a very fortunate bounce for us. I saw Boyle go back, he got the puck on his backhand. He was probably trying to go behind the net with it, I’m sure, and it just found a way to go in.” –NHL.com

Highlights are after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »